A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the Greenbelt Festival on whether a mature and confident society should encourage people to opt-out; if we have a successful and attractive way of living (capitalism and consumerism) then the number of people wanting something different would be insignificant and we should go out of our way to accommodate them, rather than bully them into our way of thinking.
Exploring this idea led me down a number of paths you might find interesting: Continue reading
I came across these two stories last week – there’s an algorithm that can detect deceit in your social media feed and Twitter has been telling people they don’t exist.
This led me to ponder what it would be like to be in charge of a social media company with a conscience.
Imagine you’re uncomfortable with providing a platform from which people tell lies that are stored for future generations as the accurate record of our social history.
If your algorithms can detect deceit and detect it more effectively than human beings – that’s the claim – then would you consider it your moral duty to find the lies and delete them all? Of course you’d have to trust the algorithms, and their creators, to not deceive you.
Would you delete everything that appeared to be a lie, no matter how big or small?
I wonder if Twitter is temporarily suspending accounts while it cleanses them.
Have you checked your social media history recently?
Maybe you should…
Fluence was published just over a month ago and after a fortnight of interviews and reviews the official launch took place on 21 July in a packed Primrose Hill Community Library.
I was really pleased that people took the time to come along on a sunny evening and I certainly enjoyed meeting them, reading extracts and talking about the inspiration behind the novel. The most enjoyable part for me (apart from the pub afterwards) was the Q&A at the end.
All the questions were thoughtful and wide-ranging, including Continue reading