We have drifted so far from the physical world that we now speak about reality as if it were a software layer.
Food arrives under plastic and clean lighting, as if it were manufactured by barcode. Money moves without weight. Work happens in files, calls, decks, and glowing rectangles. “The cloud” stores our lives in a phrase so absurd it should embarrass anyone old enough to remember weather. We order, … Read the rest
We keep talking about the Great Filter like it’s a cosmic bear trap: some external horror waiting in the dark, a gamma-ray burst, a plague, a meteor with bad manners. Something that happens to you. Something you can blame. Something that lets you die with your dignity intact, whispering, “Well, what could we do?”
But what if the Filter is not outside.
What if the Great Filter is a mirror.… Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
One of my students put this article under my nose yesterday during a class discussion. He is Swiss, and the original article was in German. So here is a translation of the gist of it:
Germany: In front of a nursing home for people with dementia in Duisburg, a fake bus stop has recently been installed. A fictitious timetable hangs on the typical bus … Read the rest
Sometimes, late at night, when the city finally remembers that it is allowed to be quiet, I catch myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about the strange future we are building with our own hands. Not just faster phones, not just more clever recommendation engines that push us more cat videos and more outrage, but something else. Something like the Minds from Iain Banks’ Culture novels: artificial intelligences so … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ In all things human, when we try to get to the nitty-gritty of who we have been, who we are, and who or what we will become, the chicken before the egg debate can be counted on to enter the conversation at some point. For instance, no matter how far science can take us back or forward, religion always counters by asking “And … Read the rest
