Category: Philosophy
The Prison of New Technology
There is a line in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death that has been haunting me for months now. It reads in part: “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” The idea is counter-cultural. We believe, intrinsically, that new technologies empower us to think. The ...
Can creativity SAVE your job from automation?
Around 40% of all law jobs are at risk of automation, according to a 2016 Deloitte report. Traditional skills expected of law graduates are increasingly going to be undertaken by new AI-driven software. Basic skills such as database research and document drafting are already being automated by large Australian law firms. The race is on ...
How to Keep Learning for Life: Learning After School and University
When we talk about learning, we’re often talking about school or university or a workplace training seminar. But to be a lifelong learner is to understand how to learn by yourself, outside of an institution, after that stage of life is over, without any teacher to show you the way. Learning for life, is about ...
The Problem with Ping Pong: How Companies Psychologically Manipulate Employees into Working Longer Hours
Ping pong. Bean bags. Free lunch. I've spent two months researching the psychological tools companies use to get employees to work longer hours for free. This builds on my previous work on social psychological research and law including my first book: Us vs Them: A Case for Social Empathy. In my research, I've discovered that companies use the same techniques ...
Public Talks in Sydney
It is nearly time for Vivid Sydney, and I thought in light of that I'd share some of my thoughts on the current state of public talks and events in the city. For a long time there has been an underground movement of public intellectuals in Sydney, trying to fight back against the corporatisation of the ...
How Technology Can Divide Us Up: Connection in the Digital Age
There is a common argument in favour of technology: If we are divided, surely technology can help solve the problem? Surely technology can bridge the gaps between different groups in society and connect us? Connection need not be face-to-face if artificial connection is sufficient. In such a system, social interaction can be facilitated if not ...
A History of Law Schools: A Battle Between Law as a Science and Law as a Liberal Art
The history of law schools is a battle of ideas. Ideas over what the law is, how it should be taught and the kinds of student a law school should produce. Frequently, law schools have been the battleground of fierce intellectual rivalries, with rival schools of thought battling for supremacy.
What Will The Jobs of the Future Look Like?
My book Essays in AI looks at the future of traditional work and the upheaval about to hit the economy from AI, automation and new technologies. Having already seen a rapidly changing workforce in the early 2000s, the future looks confusing and bleak for workers. New technology will fundamentally shift the way we work - transforming ...
We Should Have a 15 Hour Working Week (Says an Economist from 1930)
By 2030, Keynes wrote, we should all be working 15 hours a week at full time wages (not pro rata). The question why haven't we got there yet? I answered in a previous post, which you can read by clicking the link. Here, I share John Maynard Keynes' full essay from 1930 on the topic. At ...
What happened to the 15-hour workweek? Productivity gains went to the top 1%.
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological change and productivity improvements would eventually lead to a 15-hour workweek. But, despite significant productivity gainsover the past few decades, we still work 40 hours a week on average. Keynes’s reasoning was that by producing more with less (also known as being more productive), all of our needs would be met ...
