For those of us who would like to see a revival of the ‘techno-critical’ tradition in public debate (the tradition of Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman and Langdon Winner, inter many alia), it is a cause of some irritation that the hegemonic view of technology remains the ‘instrumental’ one.
Interview with The Paradigm Shift on Brisbane’s 4ZZZ
https://paradigmshifton4zzz.com/2024/07/15/s2e30-technocriticism-with-richard-king/
Simon Gilby: Figuring out the individual
On a bleak industrial state outside Fremantle, Simon Gilby is smiling broadly, waving me up towards the spacious unit that temporarily serves as his artistic studio. His advice was to wrap up warm, which I’ve done, though I notice that Gilby himself is wearing a motorcycle jacket so spectacularly derelict a gust of wind may... Continue Reading →
A Review of Here Be Monsters
By the excellent Bruce Menzies, in The Fremantle Shipping News: https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2024/10/16/roaming-among-monsters/
Podcast for Fremantle Shipping News
Today I had the pleasure of sitting down with Michael Barker, editor of the Fremantle Shipping News, to chat about technology and the human condition. We went deep! https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2024/06/17/interview-with-richard-king-thinker-author-critic-poet
Chess, nostalgia and AI: Two recent essays for Griffith Review
Paywalled, I'm afraid, but consider subscribing! The defence: Chess vs artificial intelligence Nostalgia on demand: Streaming memories in the experience machine
The eighth day of creation: how the new cultural technologies take us into the posthuman
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2018), the British writer Aaron Bastani puts a leftist spin on the Promethean view of technological development. While noting the revolutionary potential of recent genetic innovations, he insists that the latter are no different in kind from the selective breeding practices of the past: they are simply another great leap... Continue Reading →
Big Tech goes ballistic
A month or so out from Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated biopic Oppenheimer, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community is having its own Oppenheimer moment. Like the director of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos Laboratory, who famously came to regret his part in the development of the atomic bomb, the Big Tech Titans are falling over each... Continue Reading →
A review of Rai Gaita’s Justice and Hope
As philosopher and broadcaster Scott Stephens suggests in his introduction to Justice and Hope, Raimond Gaita’s principal contribution to the practice of moral philosophy is to have opened it up to readers and audiences that wouldn’t usually encounter it. Most notably in his memoir Romulus, My Father (1998), but also in A Common Humanity (2000)... Continue Reading →
Here Be Media
A talk to the Economic Society of Australia: Monsters in the Machine, Technology, Growth & Human Flourishing An Author Talk with Goldfields Libraries An appearance on the Breaking the Spell podcast