Work and Study, Week of January 13, 2019

Lots more to do on “Global vs. Local”. I had a couple of conversations over the weekend with an old friend who was in town for my birthday. He challenged some of my thinking about why globalization is unappealing to “people” whereas it’s pretty interesting for “corporations”. And in particular he wanted me to give a better account of global capitalist companies and what they mean for the future of the nation-state.

But I’m going to stick with moving on to the next vomitout, and catch up on these themes in the future.

The next antinomy is “Technology vs. People”, which is really three things for me:

  1. Techies vs. non-Techies. Not all non-techies are Luddites, but many of them are. What’s going on with the two different groups? This really begins with C.P. Snow’s idea from the 1950’s about “Two Cultures”, but there are a lot of threads to it.
  2. Intelligent Machines vs. Humans. Are we doomed? Are AI scenarios that have us being Terminated really possible? What kind of time frame?
  3. Future of Work in the age of intelligent machines. Are robots going to “replace” us? What does this mean? How might we manage this? What are the possible outcomes?

So I’ll be vomiting out on all these themes this week.