Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Facebook

  • To Share or Not to Share (On Social Media)

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ There is a joy to not sharing one’s thoughts with others. This is an unexpected benefit I stumbled onto when I recently all but gave up social media. A story might illustrate. I made the decision in very late 2021 to radically restrict my social media use. [1] Around two weeks…

  • The (Im)Possibility of Discussion on Social Media

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Sheena Mason (SUNY Oneonta) and Kevin Currie-Knight dialogue about the perils and promises of discussion on social media. (Sheena is more optimistic about the potential than Kevin is.) Along the way, they talk about perspectives on truth and whether humans are capable of getting it in an objective way, the postmodern-y…

  • A Time to Keep Silent and a Time to Speak

    by Andrew Gleeson ____ There is a great difference between doing what one does not approve and feigning to approve what one does. The one is the weakness of a feeble person, the other befits the temper of a lackey.                  –Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America On 6 July 1535, Sir Thomas More, the…

  • Will A.I. Be The Death of Us?

    by Charles Justice ____ Here are a number of scenarios, most of them science fiction, that have to do with computers or machines taking over the world: An apprentice learns a magic trick for making a tool take over all the work of cleaning his master’s workshop, but he can’t figure out how to shut…

  • New Year Musings

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ 2020 will be remembered in the US for three things: the Covid-19 pandemic; racial unrest, rioting, looting, and vandalism across a number of American cities; and the defeat of Donald Trump by Joe Biden in the US presidential race. Beyond their qualities as spectacle, notable enough in their own right,…