Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

My Books and Me
The Bookworm, by Carl Spitzweg, a copy of which sits behind my desk.

A pile of them appeared on the countertop the other day. Ten, maybe twelve, the result of two trips to Vibes and Scribes in Cork who had just had a Theology PhD student’s entire library turned over for cash. Some were former library books, themselves acquired no doubt second-hand, still with their tags in place. Some older editions; a few primary texts; some contemporary commentaries. I note my name, the month and year, ‘Vibes and Scribes’ as the source, and log them on LibraryThing. This bunch of books was not acquired as part of a deliberate course of study or investigation – just generally interesting and opportunistically (and cheaply) sourced, so they don’t get much else in the way of notes – at least not immediately. If there was a particular thought or connection that caused me to select a particular book, I’ll note it. A book riffing on themes from the movie The Matrix – ‘ref Baudrillard; simulacra’; a book on angelic spirituality – ‘angelology; ref Agamben; Economic Theology; hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysus.’ I don’t care much for the intrinsic value of the things; so writing on them is part of how they are consumed. The second hand books are so much more valuable when they have legible clear notes, or emphasis added from former readers.

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Art, Heidegger, Uncategorized

Two Theories of Art

The recent BBC revisiting of the history of art – Civilisations – is fascinating for its juxtaposition against the 1969 predecessor by Kenneth Clark. The new version tries to be genuinely global, post-imperial, and generally woke, so to speak. However, it doesn’t quite get to the philosophy of the creative act, the artistic imperative. The series grapples with consequences and politics, with religion and hierarchy, but not really with any philosophy of art, or questions of meaning. The interpretations of Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuzes, while diametrically opposed in some ways, are illuminating on the subject.

Heidegger’s view (specifically on Modern Art) was that it was essentially destructive. In a 1956 Der Spiegel interview, published after his death ten years later, he argued that just as philosophers could not prescribe a new condition for humanity to confront modernity, art had no suitable perspective from which to contribute. Art in essence, as I read his comments, compounded the inherent entrapment of the modern, further distancing us from our essence, or being.

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Artificial Intelligence, Epistemology, Uncategorized

AI Reshaping Reality

I finally did the TEDx talk at Ballyroan Library a few weeks ago, and the video has just been published. As I’ve considered the impact of technology on politics generally, and AI on society more specifically, it seems to me that the most significant impact is on meaning, and understanding, on our systems of knowledge and epistemology. This crystallised somewhat in the talk. It was necessary for the format to simplify the ideas somewhat. I think at least in part that worked.

Alienation, Artificial Intelligence, Bewilderment, Carl Schmitt, Critical Theory, Ecology, Environment, Hayek, Heidegger, Juergen Habermas, neoliberalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of SCience, Political Theology, Uncategorized

Machine Generated Illusions of Intimacy

Later this week I’m speaking to the UCC conference on Eco-cosmology, Sustainability and a Spirit of Resilience, on the subject of ‘Machine Generated Illusions of Intimacy’, about the challenges of modernity and computational epistemology. Here’s a sneak peak.

Economy and Society Summer School, Uncategorized

Economy and Society Summer School 2018: Synopsis

Summer School
The Ruins of Bridgetown Priory, a fitting location for a provocative lecture during the 2018 Economy and Society Summer School

The fifth Economy and Society Summer School this week was an immersion in critique, ecology and theology, and this is a quick summary. Held in the wonderful surroundings of Blackwater Castle, and adorned in splendid sunlight for the duration, my own interests in politics and technology found good company and themes that illuminated my research. Organised by Dr Tom Boland and Dr Ray Griffin, it is becoming an important resource for students of sociology and culture in Ireland and beyond. While for me there are new avenues and new subjects to investigate, it has nevertheless begun to reveal a direction for a more extended research. Continue reading “Economy and Society Summer School 2018: Synopsis” →

Brexit, constitution, Europe, History, Human Rights, Identity, international community, Markets, measuring legitimacy, Uncategorized, United Nations

Is Ireland a Legitimate Country?

lemass-on-time
Lemass committed Ireland’s future to one of sovereign compromise. He had no choice.

The international system is a complex and convoluted thing, and sets the framework against which States are measured for their effectiveness, righteousness, or other measures that could serve as proxies for legitimacy: transparency, robustness, even happiness, or goodness. According to these indices, Ireland performs reasonably well – very well actually. It is the seventh most ‘unfragile’ country in the world; the eleventh most ‘good’; the 18th most transparent; and the 19th happiest. Most of these indices combine different metrics such as GDP, social metrics like unemployment, education rates, and so on, which tend to mean that Ireland – and other countries – won’t deviate too much from one ranking to the next. So Ireland performs well as a country. However, the combination of the EU Crisis, Brexit, and Trump’s America seem to represent a trifecta of bad things over which Ireland has little or no control, and could send the country hurtling down those indices. So if Ireland has so little control over these shaping factors, is Ireland in fact a legitimate country, a genuinely sovereign power?

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Big Data, constitution, Data Privacy, Data Protection, Democracy, Identity, law, Philosophy, political philosophy, science fiction, Uncategorized

Algorithmic Governance and its Discontents

AG Workshop
Dr Rónán Kennedy Chairs a session at the Algorithmic Governance workshop at NUI Galway

I had the privilege to participate in a workshop on algorithmic governance this past Friday at my alma mater, the National University of Ireland, Galway, under the supervision of Dr Rónán Kennedy and Dr John Danaher of the Law Faculty. and co-funded by the Colleges of Business and Public Policy. It’s part of a wider program of research grandly titled ‘Algocracy and the Transhumanist Project‘, which promises to tread some fascinating pathways. Comprehensive synopses of the event have already been published by Dr Danaher and one of the speakers Dr Muki Haklay, so I won’t re-do their work, but instead refer to one of the particularly interesting themes that emerged from the work.

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Uncategorized

MoD study sets out how to sell wars to the public

Interesting pickup in the Guardian yesterday on how the British defense mandarins plan to ‘sell’ war. It’s not as easy as a hashtag…

http://gu.com/p/3j4ze

Informal Economy, Informal Justice Systems, internet, Justice, law, Philosophy, Uncategorized, Zizek

National Security and the Legitimacy of the State

Edward Snowdon
Edward Snowdon: His revelations (though not new) have launched an avalanche of introspection and head scratching.

The New York Times and the Guardian have been digging ever deeper into the activities of the US National Security Agency or NSA following the leaking by Edward Snowdon of information about how they were spying both on countries and ordinary people at home.  Hot on the heels of the Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks diplomatic cables episode, there has been a constant flow of stories reporting on nefarious activities of spooks and governments, embarrassing opinions, and the mechanisms by which international diplomacy and spying are conducted, though Wired Magazine had got there first.   There are numerous angles to all of this.  There is the technology problem, an Orwellian, Kurtzweilian post-humanist dystopia where technology trumps all, and big data and analytics undermines or redefines the essence of who we are and forces a kind of a re-evaluation of existence.  There is the human rights problem, the balancing of the right to privacy and – generally speaking – an avoidance of judgement of the individual by the state, with the obligation to secure the state.  This issue is complex – if for example we have an ability to know, to predict, to foretell that people are going to do bad things, but we choose not to do that because it would require predicting also which people were going to do not-bad things, and therefore invade their privacy, is that wrong?  Many people said after 9/11 ‘why didn’t we see this coming?’ Which leads to the question – if you could know all that was coming, would you want to know?

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