Effective Altruism and Religion

A new movement is on the scene: effective altruism—the combination of love and efficiency, making the world a better place not just with a bleeding heart and empathy but with a radical focus on reason and evidence and never losing sight of the goal of maximal impact. Its adherents typically stem from strongly secular environments such as elite philosophy departments or Silicon Valley. So far, a religious perspective on this movement has been lacking. What can people of faith learn from effective altruism, how can they contribute, and what must they criticise? This volume offers a first examination of these questions, providing both a Buddhist and an Orthodox Jewish perspective on them, in addition to various Christian contributions. With contributions by Calvin Baker, Lara Buchak, Mara-Daria Cojocaru, Stefan Höschele, Markus Huppenbauer, Robert MacSwain, David Manheim, Kathryn Muyskens, Stefan Riedener, Dominic Roser and Jakub Synowiec.

„Der Landwirt kann das Feld verlassen“

Vergangene Woche hat John Deere auf der weltgrößten Technologiemesse, der CES in Las Vegas, einen völlig autonomen Traktor präsentiert. Auch der Award „Best of Innovation“ ging an John Deere. Möglich gemacht hat das die Zusammenarbeit mit Blue River – einem in 2017 für 305 Mio. US-$ übernommenen Silicon-Valley-Start-up.

Intersection: Reimagining the Future of Mobility Across Traditional Boundaries

Mobility and transportation mean different things to people, even to those who work in various aspects of the ecosystem - from the movement of people or goods to the development of the infrastructure that enables mobility. For decades these different parts of the ecosystem have been approached as entirely independent industries, but the quickened pace of technological change has driven the need to reconsider how these distinct groups create the vibrant tapestry that is our mobility ecosystem. This book seeks to capture the varied perspectives as a collection of diverse views on the future of mobility, to provide a clearer view on the broad base of possibility and opportunity across this interconnected system. Contributors: Jonathon Baugh, Geoffrey Boquot, Reilly Brennan, Tiffany Chu, Jordan Davis, Courtney Erlichman, Elaina Farnsworth, Valerie Lefler, Wolfgang Lehmacher & Mikail Lind, Shoshana Lew, Suzanne Murtha, Mary Nichols, Trevor Pawl, John Perrachio, Aishwarya Raman, Karina Ricks, Alex Roy, Avinash Ruguboor, Anthony Townsend, Marla Westervelt, and Candace Xie. "Amazing roster of thought leaders come together to paint a picture of a whole new mobility paradigm in the interest of safety, sustainability, and equity." -- Sven Beiker, PhD. Managing Director at Silicon Valley Mobility and Lecturer at Stanford University

Wisdom of the Crowd as Arbiter of Expert Disagreement

How can state-of-the-art probabilistic forecasting tools be used to advance expert debates on big policy questions? Using Foretell, a crowd forecasting platform piloted by CSET, we trialed a method to break down a big question—”What is the future of the DOD-Silicon Valley relationship?”—into measurable components, and then leveraged the wisdom of the crowd to reduce uncertainty and arbitrate disagreement among a group of experts.

The Manufacture of Disconnection

<p>In Silicon Valley, the world’s most famous site of technological innovation, technology professionals are rejecting their own inventions and disconnecting from the internet. According to reports, technologists believe their designs and algorithms “hijack” user’s brains (Lewis 2017) and executives are sending their children to technology-free schools (Jenkin 2015). These technologists are not disillusioned by digital technology per se, but rather by the ideological and socio-economic system underpinning digital technology. This system is the ‘attention economy’ where media companies, advertisers and technology platforms compete for end user attention (Crogan and Kinsley 2012), which in turn incentivises technologists to create compulsive experiences for users to maximise time spent on device (Lanier 2018). In response to concerns about the attention economy, some technologists have become ‘disconnectionists’―opponents to the culture of constant connection they helped create (Jurgenson 2013). Not only are they disconnecting from their own inventions but, in true Silicon Valley style, are also inventing new technology-based ways to disconnect from the internet (“technologies of disconnection”). In other words, these disconnectionists are manufacturing disconnection. This research investigates the manufacture of disconnection as a mode of resistance to the attention economy. I contend that the manufacture of disconnection does not separate the user from the internet, but rather deploys technical and social practices to reorganise user relations to themselves and the internet in order to resist the attention economy. I critically assess the new types of user/technology relations that are produced by the manufacture of disconnection and discuss what the implications are for resisting the attention economy. To do this, I analyse five technologies of disconnection utilising the walkthrough method (Light, Burgess, and Duguay 2016) and data from semi-structured interviews from the disconnectionists behind the technology. The research questions ask: what are the new modes of relations that the manufacture of disconnection produces, and how do these relations implicate resistance to the attention economy and culture of connectivity? My thesis builds upon research from disconnection scholars who relate disconnecting from the internet to the work of Michel Foucault (Guyard and Kaun 2018; Karppi 2018; Karppi and Nieborg 2020; Portwood-Stacer 2012b). Foucault’s turn in the 1980s to ethics of the self (“late Foucault”) makes him an ideal theorist for a study on the manufacture of disconnection because of his consideration on how to resist the forces he believed were shaping society and individuals. Adopting a late Foucauldian perspective, this thesis identifies new relations of space and self that are produced by the manufacture of disconnection: a rehabilitative space; a sanctuary space; the fixable self, the intentional self and the available self. These spatial and self relations are digital architectures that enable inhabitants to resist dominant communicative norms or their own unconscious smartphone behaviours to transform their relationship to themselves, as well as seek refuge from certain surveillance activities that undergird the attention economy. Throughout my analysis I demonstrate that the manufacture of disconnection offers users an effective mode of lifestyle resistance to the attention economy but orients disconnection to be in service of productivity, wellbeing and gender norms that require users to subject themselves to additional self-governance methods. The thesis concludes that the manufacture of disconnection encourages new self-disciplinary modes of living for users in the attention economy without dismantling the structures of the attention economy.</p>

The Manufacture of Disconnection

<p>In Silicon Valley, the world’s most famous site of technological innovation, technology professionals are rejecting their own inventions and disconnecting from the internet. According to reports, technologists believe their designs and algorithms “hijack” user’s brains (Lewis 2017) and executives are sending their children to technology-free schools (Jenkin 2015). These technologists are not disillusioned by digital technology per se, but rather by the ideological and socio-economic system underpinning digital technology. This system is the ‘attention economy’ where media companies, advertisers and technology platforms compete for end user attention (Crogan and Kinsley 2012), which in turn incentivises technologists to create compulsive experiences for users to maximise time spent on device (Lanier 2018). In response to concerns about the attention economy, some technologists have become ‘disconnectionists’―opponents to the culture of constant connection they helped create (Jurgenson 2013). Not only are they disconnecting from their own inventions but, in true Silicon Valley style, are also inventing new technology-based ways to disconnect from the internet (“technologies of disconnection”). In other words, these disconnectionists are manufacturing disconnection. This research investigates the manufacture of disconnection as a mode of resistance to the attention economy. I contend that the manufacture of disconnection does not separate the user from the internet, but rather deploys technical and social practices to reorganise user relations to themselves and the internet in order to resist the attention economy. I critically assess the new types of user/technology relations that are produced by the manufacture of disconnection and discuss what the implications are for resisting the attention economy. To do this, I analyse five technologies of disconnection utilising the walkthrough method (Light, Burgess, and Duguay 2016) and data from semi-structured interviews from the disconnectionists behind the technology. The research questions ask: what are the new modes of relations that the manufacture of disconnection produces, and how do these relations implicate resistance to the attention economy and culture of connectivity? My thesis builds upon research from disconnection scholars who relate disconnecting from the internet to the work of Michel Foucault (Guyard and Kaun 2018; Karppi 2018; Karppi and Nieborg 2020; Portwood-Stacer 2012b). Foucault’s turn in the 1980s to ethics of the self (“late Foucault”) makes him an ideal theorist for a study on the manufacture of disconnection because of his consideration on how to resist the forces he believed were shaping society and individuals. Adopting a late Foucauldian perspective, this thesis identifies new relations of space and self that are produced by the manufacture of disconnection: a rehabilitative space; a sanctuary space; the fixable self, the intentional self and the available self. These spatial and self relations are digital architectures that enable inhabitants to resist dominant communicative norms or their own unconscious smartphone behaviours to transform their relationship to themselves, as well as seek refuge from certain surveillance activities that undergird the attention economy. Throughout my analysis I demonstrate that the manufacture of disconnection offers users an effective mode of lifestyle resistance to the attention economy but orients disconnection to be in service of productivity, wellbeing and gender norms that require users to subject themselves to additional self-governance methods. The thesis concludes that the manufacture of disconnection encourages new self-disciplinary modes of living for users in the attention economy without dismantling the structures of the attention economy.</p>

The Gender of Math

The politics of math are of newfound concern today, due to the outsize influence of algorithms and code in contemporary life. While only a few years ago, tech authors were still hawking Silicon Valley as the great hope for humanity, today one is more likely to hear how Big Tech increases social inequality, how algorithms are racist, and how math is a weapon. Do algorithms discriminate along gendered lines? Do mathematical systems harbor an essential bias? This essay shows that mathematics has long been defined through an elemental gendering, that within such typing there exists a prohibition on mixing the types, and that the two core types themselves (geometry and arithmetic) are mutually intertwined using notions of hierarchy, foreignness, and priority. The author concludes that whatever incidental biases it may display, mathematics also contains an essential bias.