ARTICLE: Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design
How should we design technologies that in turn shape our minds?
I recently began following an interesting online publication / organization – The Consilience Project. Having done a podcast series (Consciousness & Consilience) on the topic, I’ve been interested in hearing what they have to say. The “consilience” that EO Wilson was talking about in his 1995 book was the “jumping together” of knowledge from the various disciplines of science, with the goal of a unified, perfected empirical understanding of all there is – a grand “theory of everything.” The kind of consilience I would like to see is the “jumping together” of our empirical and spiritual modes of being and understanding – a grand synthesis of the human phenomenological experience (including the religious and the spiritual) with the empirical modes of knowing. The goal would be to be able to live and understand the world as an integrated whole. The closest I’ve come to articulating that synthesis is in the essays – particularly “The Door That Has no Key”, and “The How and The Why”.
The Consilience Project is a more practical effort: “The Consilience Project publishes novel research at the leading edges of global risk mitigation, governance design and culture. Our content explores the key challenges and existential threats facing humanity, and the underlying problems with current approaches for addressing them. We outline how our social systems and institutions need to be redesigned if free, open, non-authoritarian societies are to survive.”
I’m interesting in seeing where this journey takes them! In this article, the focus is on the fact that our relationships with technology change us – not always for the better. They call for a values-centered approach to thinking about technological change. It is definitely worth a read!
Article: Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design
