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Be Warned: Copy Silicon Valley and You Will Surely Fail

presented by Nilofer Merchant

As I’ve been get­ting ready to actu­al­ly return back to Silicon Valley after two years I’ve got this feel­ing in my gut that some­thing is ter­ri­bly wrong if Europe adopts Silicon Valley’s metaphor for success.

Ethical Machines episode 1: Mark Riedl

presented by Mark Riedl, Roelof Pieters, Samim Winiger

Computers can tell sto­ries but they’re always sto­ries that humans have input into a com­put­er, which are then just being regur­gi­tat­ed. But they don’t make sto­ries up on their own. They don’t real­ly under­stand the sto­ries that we tell. They’re not kind of aware of the cul­tur­al impor­tance of sto­ries. They can’t watch the same movies or read the same books we do. And this seems like this huge miss­ing gap between what com­put­ers can do and humans can do if you think about how impor­tant sto­ry­telling is to the human condition. 

Religion and World Politics part 4
The Problems of Resacralization on the Path to a Post-Secular World

presented by Stephen Chan

When you try to ana­lyze the resacral­iza­tion of the sec­u­lar state sys­tem, there are many mis­takes that schol­ars par­tic­u­lar­ly in the West make. They assume that resacral­iza­tion is sim­ply sec­u­lar­ism plus the sacred added on. As if the sys­tem was still con­ceived in the same way, even it wish­es to behave in a dif­fer­ent way. But what in fact is going on is frag­men­tary, a mixture.

Religion and World Politics part 3
The Problems of Desacralization on the Path to a Post-Secular World

presented by Stephen Chan

To sec­u­lar­ize the state is not sim­ply a mag­i­cal oper­a­tion that hap­pens at the wave of a hand. You’ve got to desacral­ize the state.

Are We Living Inside an Ethical (and Kind) Machine?

presented by Mark Surman

This is a moment to ask as we make the plan­et dig­i­tal, as we total­ly envel­op our­selves in the com­put­ing envi­ron­ment that we’ve been build­ing for the last hun­dred years, what kind of dig­i­tal plan­et do we want? Because we are at a point where there is no turn­ing back, and get­ting to eth­i­cal deci­sions, val­ues deci­sions, deci­sions about democ­ra­cy, is not some­thing we have talked about enough nor in a way that has had impact.

Religion and World Politics part 2

presented by Stephen Chan

When we look back at our his­to­ry here in Europe, we often cel­e­brate the roman­ti­cized ver­sion of that his­to­ry and for­get the import that that roman­ti­cism often cloaked. For instance when we have films, when we read the books of Alexandre Dumas, par­tic­u­lar­ly The Three Musketeers, all we see are three (plus one) swash­buck­ling, sword-bearing gen­tle­man usu­al­ly of an exquis­ite hand­some­ness. And there’s an evil car­di­nal, Cardinal Richelieu, lurk­ing in the back­ground. But the idea that France was just like this for no appar­ent rea­son is some­thing that we nev­er real­ly real­ly investigate.

Religion and World Politics part 1

presented by Stephen Chan

We’re look­ing at reli­gion as an orga­nized and above all insti­tu­tion­al­ized sys­tem of beliefs. The orga­ni­za­tion par­tic­u­lar­ly of tex­tu­al or oth­er record­ed teach­ings that form the basic faith frame­work of the reli­gion, and the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion which polices those teach­ings, polices the extent, the lim­its, and above all the inter­pre­ta­tion of what those texts might mean.

Computers That Just Work
Trying to Finally Automate Away Bureaucracy

presented by Vinay Gupta

Everybody thinks of bureau­crats as being kind of a neu­tral force. But I’m going to make the case that bureau­crats are in fact a very strong­ly neg­a­tive force, and that automat­ing the bureau­crat­ic func­tions inside of our soci­ety is nec­es­sary for fur­ther human progress.

The Conversation #48 — Chris Carter

presented by Aengus Anderson, Chris Carter, Micah Saul

When you talk about learn­ing and tra­di­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al styles, there’s this very com­mon incli­na­tion to try and force infor­ma­tion upon peo­ple rather than hav­ing them just kind of dis­cov­er it of their own voli­tion or dis­cov­er it by accident.

The Spawn of Frankenstein: Fear of the Unknown

presented by Annalee Newitz, Bina Venkataraman, Charlotte Gordon, David Guston, Jacob Brogan

It’s not the strange­ness of new tech­nolo­gies that fright­ens us but the way tech­nol­o­gy threat­ens to make us strangers to our­selves. In a semi-Freudian spir­it, then, I’d like to pro­pose that where Frankenstein and its spawn are con­cerned, our fear of the unknown may real­ly be about our dis­com­fort with knowing. 

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