Archives for category: Ethics

Chimpanzees, Wasps and Functionless Functionality

1 December 2007 //
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When is a tool, not a tool? Appar­ently when it is a quasi-tool or a proto-tool. A tool provides func­tion­less func­tion­al­ity. ballen.jpg
These were a couple of the epi­gra­mat­ics Barry Allen shared dur­ing a talk on tech­no­logy, cul­ture and civil­iz­a­tion.1
I could not pos­sibly do justice to philo­soph­ical reflec­tions on the nature of a tool, so I stop there on the philo­soph­ical and refer you to my foot­note, but as an eco­nom­ist I was par­tic­u­larly drawn into his dis­cus­sion of the pro­gres­sion from first to second order machines. First order being ‘devices that extend human capa­cit­ies by exploit­ing a mech­an­ical advant­age’ and second-order fea­tur­ing ‘an assembly of first-order machines, coupled to pro­duce a mul­tiply­ing effect.’ This form of organ­iz­a­tion seemed to dove­tail with a sim­ilar dis­cus­sion that Allen raised about our abil­ity to effect­ively fix prices, but our seem­ing imab­il­ity to determ­ine the true cost of a tool. Read the rest of this entry »

  1. Quasi-tools as I under­stand are objects used by beings without con­scious or intel­li­gent aware­ness that the object provides any par­tic­u­lar func­tion. Innate use of a pebble by a wasp to block the entrance to a birth cham­ber for example. In con­trast, a proto-tool, is con­sciously chosen for use, but has not be fash­ioned to per­form that func­tion, lack­ing delib­er­ate design to enable that func­tion. A ‘tool’ per se shares two descript­ive aspects: that its func­tion is man­i­fold and not lim­ited by pur­pose, instead exten­ded by tech­nique to form cul­tural tech­no­logy. Secondly, the tool is an arti­fact that lacks defin­i­tion without hav­ing a place within an eco­nomy — that is, it has been pre­vi­ously linked to oth­ers in an eco­nomy of socially com­pli­ment­ary action (design, man­u­fac­ture, sale, license, etc.) when we engage with it. [↩]
Categories Ethics, McMaster, Speakers

Digital Nomadacity

24 November 2007 //
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The con­sist­ently thought-provoking Chris Brogan explores how cur­rent digital tools opensocial.jpgprovide for greater free­dom in employ­ment and life in gen­eral. Chris makes some pres­ci­ent refer­rals to tech­no­lo­gies and pon­ders why one should focus on being more mobile or con­sider being more nomadic. His post explores the equa­tion from the per­spect­ive of the nomad. I won­der what the per­spect­ive is from the other side — from those that would con­sider the nomad’s ser­vices. He raises the crit­ical ques­tion about data secur­ity and I won­der if this doesn’t extend to a lar­ger ques­tion of trust. I have only rarely been on the nomad employ­ing side of the equa­tion, but even by appre­ci­at­ing the nomadic per­spect­ive, I am chal­lenged to feel com­fort­able with the nomad. It’s not really about the res­ults — or about my level of trust. I agree with Chris and with Mark Har­rison who affirmed that the nomad should be paid for deliv­er­ing res­ults. What con­cerns me is the breadth of digital rela­tion­ships. Read the rest of this entry »

Categories Blogging, Ethics, Social Network Analysis

Curious Putin Shadows

25 March 2007 //
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2.jpgOnce more I plun­der from the idio­syn­cratic Eng­lishRus­sia blog. There’s always a daily dose of intrigue at the site. What bet­ter to fea­ture today — espe­cially after Putin has taken another step towards restor­ing tra­di­tion by sus­pend­ing one of the last cred­ible oppos­i­tion parties in the Rus­sian Fed­er­a­tion — but some eerie/spooky shad­ows he cast recently. Check them out…

Categories Ethics, Russia, Soviet

the real social

23 February 2007 //
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I have spent the last dec­ade nat­ur­ally evolving towards a work day that largely takes place in cof­fee shops. arik-coffe-shop-laptopscan70_jpg.jpgHav­ing writ­ten my MA largely at the Second Cup in Guelph and turned to the Star­bucks before that to do busi­ness plan­ning, I cur­rently spend the bulk of my time at the Second Cup in West­dale. Dur­ing this time, I have evolved from rely­ing on pen and paper to hope­lessly attached to my laptop. That same append­age has gone from teth­er­ing to an elec­trical out­let to crav­ing attach­ment through wire­less con­nectiv­ity. The way in which I work away from the office or home has evolved, tech­nic­ally and socially.

The pen and paper days also involved a good book and allowed for read­ing dur­ing the day. As data con­nectiv­ity has pro­gressed, dir­ect social con­nectiv­ity has decreased. Read the rest of this entry »

Categories Culture, Ethics, Food, Social Network Analysis

Wow. Strong Words.

18 January 2007 //
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Big kudos to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the sen­ate judi­ciary com­mit­tee for mak­ing an impas­sioned demand to dis­cover what happened to Maher Arar. The text is enlight­en­ing. He actu­ally seems to see Cana­dians as strong and ‘valu­able’ allies. Haven’t heard that in awhile. Do we remem­ber the glar­ing omis­sion of Canada fol­low­ing 9/11. Cer­tainly Canada doesn’t seem to exist as any­thing other than a north­ern parian in the Bush mind. The foot­age at the CBC cer­tainly cap­tures the tenor of the ques­tion­ing. Does the re-alignment of forces in the US legis­lature actu­ally mean that a new account­ab­il­ity can be real­ized? Well, if Alberto Gonza­lez actu­ally deliv­ers a report on the Arar case as deman­ded things cer­tainly bode a pos­it­ive change for the future.

Categories Ethics

Journal versus Diary

4 January 2007 //
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Allan Bishop and I engaged in a rather inter­est­ing short dis­cus­sion this morn­ing on blogs, pub­lic dis­course and what it means to share your thoughts in the inter­net era. He raised the story of the chap that went online and sud­denly dis­covered extens­ive dis­cus­sion amongst class­mates over his short­com­ings. Com­ment­ary was writ­ten with the assump­tion that the sub­ject of their dis­cus­sion would never actu­ally see the con­tent. I made the state­ment that when I throw stuff online I simply pre­sume that it is pub­lic, even if I do not inten­tion­ally make it so. Case in point…this blog site. Although it can be accessed and shows up in Google searches, I don’t actu­ally link to it from any­where. Only a couple people have been poin­ted to it at dif­fer­ent points. I am not delib­er­ately keep­ing it secret or hid­den, I just want to see if and how I actu­ally use it before decid­ing how I would inten­tion­ally share it. So it remains unlinked, but still find­able should someone make a delib­er­ate attempt to search for it.
But how much of this is actu­ally in my con­trol. Not as much I would sus­pect I or most people would think. There­fore I try to exer­cise some dis­cre­tion on what an how I write to the blog.
What about anonym­ous broad­sheets of the 17th and 18thCs? Although pub­lished under pseud­onyms, small circles were often aware of to whom each could be attrib­uted. So, is there any degree of anonym­ity today. Much less I would argue unless one takes great tech­nical pains to cover ones foot­steps. How­ever, sniff­ing out the bread­crumbs is also tied to how tech­nic­ally ept one is…so there are vary­ing degrees of anonym­ity and no uni­ver­sal applic­a­tion to a single indi­vidual. Not sure what all of this means, but it raised the ques­tion of author’s inten­tions. I per­ceived that a diary was much more private than a journal and Allan held the oppos­ite. I related a journal to a more busi­ness­like entry of daily trans­ac­tions and a diary to a more emo­tion­ally driven cri­tique of thoughts and feel­ing. The journal, Allan thought was more of this…and fur­ther, a gender issue arises. I had always felt that journ­als were some­thing that was in the male domain and a diary apply­ing more to the fem­in­ine. This too is some­thing of dis­cus­sion. Thoughts?

Categories Ethics, Technology

“I’m sorry, we don’t do God”

3 January 2007 //
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Yes, it’s Tony Blair when asked whether he prayed with George Bush when he vis­ited the White House. A quick quip. What did he mean by this answer? No he and George W. don’t share reli­gious prac­tise, or is it simply not in his brief to dis­cuss his reli­gious views. In the US for bet­ter or worse, reli­gion is sud­denly *very* pub­licly avowed. Whether this reli­gion is one of pub­lic appear­ance or whether it is a deeply held belief, they cer­tainly *do* some­thing pro­fess­ing to be God in the US these days.
I was was intrigued by an art­icle car­ried in the Toronto Star today claim­ing that ‘Islamo­pho­bia’ makes integ­ra­tion tough for the continent’s 15 mil­lion Muslims. Inter­est­ing thought. What I find most fas­cin­at­ing is the charge that Europe has become a vast sea of sec­u­lar­ism and that the US is in fact a more hos­pit­able host to muslim immig­rants. Is racism more endemic in europe than in North Amer­ica? Is this a phe­nomenon stem­ming from the French Revolu­tion? Inter­est­ing points to ponder.

Categories Ethics

Privacy Concerns in the 21stC

2 January 2007 //
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Another inter­est­ing list I came across dur­ing the sea­son of list­ing. This one comes from a bit of a site of paranoia…but maybe we should be afraid :-0. On the upside, this is a list of 13 Easy Ways to Safe­guard Your Pri­vacy in 2007 which seem like some very prudent steps. Although I don’t advoc­ate run­ning scream­ing in the streets, these seem to be some con­crete simple things one can be aware of or prac­tise to safe­guard one’s iden­tity. Its real and after I had those 15 laptops shipped to my Que­bec address a few years back, am cer­tainly more on the watch. Things such as avoid­ing the use of your middle ini­tial is some­thing that I wouldn’t have thought of but you know…it makes some sense.

Categories Ethics, Info Architecture, Technology, Web2.0

Social Lending — Empowerment?

27 November 2006 //
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zopaIs this an up and com­ing phe­nom? Zopa and Prosper are two two star­tups offer­ing to bring together bor­row­ers and lenders and offer . The sense of ‘Sim­ness’ (as in simcity/sim this sim that) is an inter­est­ing note. … As the author of this sur­vey on these two ser­vices note, they even add fun to the act of bor­row­ing and lending…quite an accomplishment.

Categories Business Idea, Ethics, HCI, Social Network Analysis

The Other Side: The Secret Mulroney Tapes on the CBC

21 November 2005 //
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Ok. The con­stant CBC warn­ings that this pro­gramme con­tains coarse lan­guage is cer­tainly the hint that the CBC has yet to warm to Brian Mul­roney. A rather tepid present­a­tion. The chal­lenge to the film maker was to take the taped con­ver­sa­tions and find a way to make them visu­ally com­pel­ling. Although a good col­lec­tion of doc­u­ment­ary foot­age and occa­sional switched between soundtrack and voice overs, Peter Newman’s self-described role as ‘pet news­man’ causes a real lack of counter voice or even nar­ra­tion that does come across in the book. All in all des­pite the good foot­age, the book is a far more com­pel­ling product. Nonetheless,listening to a man seek­ing to con­stantly jus­tify his actions, remind of his hard knocks, our former prime min­is­ter comes across as a sniv­el­ing twit, para­noid, and con­vinced that he was a bet­ter man than the coun­try deserved…always con­vinced that he was doing the right thing…his remark refer­ring to the ‘genu­ine mediocrity’ of the Cana­dian media seems to really cap­ture his feel­ings towards the cit­izens of Canada in general.

Categories Canada, Culture, Ethics