… where politics & culture meet
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 →
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 →
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 →
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
An open invitation to the Fremantle launch ...
The reviews for HBM are coming in and, so far, have been enormously positive ...
Order your copy here!
Me on Schwartz Media's The Weekend Read, reading my article on ChatGPT, published in the April edition of The Monthly
Towards the end of Dreamers and Schemers, his ‘political history of Australia’, Frank Bongiorno tells us that the term ‘democracy sausage’ first entered public discourse in 2012. The date, he suggests, is significant, for while the coinage seemed on one level to speak to the relaxedness and egalitarianism of the Australian electorate, and even to a sense of celebration and fun as regards the institutions of democracy, its introduction coincided with a sharp decline in public trust in politicians and the political process.
In How to Rule Your Own Country, Harry Hobbs and George Williams consider the phenomenon of micronations, which is to say territorial entities whose members claim independence or sovereignty but which lack diplomatic recognition.
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