Futurists have figured out the most failure-proof job–no one will live long enough to find out whether they’re good at it. Futurism is a sort of applied science fiction. Those of us who have adult memories from the twentieth century have experienced wonders that rival the science fiction of our childhoods. Start with the artificial…
Picture our moral imagination as a series of concentric circles. At the center of this model is the self. As we grow, we generally move outward from there. Our capacity for empathy guides us to invest in the suffering of our immediate families, then our various tribes, communities, and nations. The moral innovators of our…
Driven by curiosity and lured by unlimited streaming music, I bought an Amazon Echo this summer. Using it to play music gives me the vertigo of limitless choice similar to that of using Napster the first time, or the early days of the iPod. I can ask it, “Alexa, play music from 1984” and ZZ…
