composed quotes and reflection on Dave Eggers' The Circle “Who else but utopians could make utopia?” “ALL THAT HAPPENS MUST BE KNOWN. Folks, we’re at the dawn of the Second Enlightenment.” “…transparency leads to peace of mind.” “TruYou — one account, one identity, one password, one payment system, per person… The era of false identities, identity theft, multiple user names, complicated passwords and payment systems was over… This is ultimate transparency. No filter. See ever

We live in a system that clearly doesn’t always work. Humans are far from perfect, and yet we will be striving for perfection until we cease to exist. Our civilization has only recently entered this critical junction in human existence, but this transformation started far before any of us were born. The natural world could never satiate man’s appetite for creation. With industry, humans were able to reconstruct nature in their own image. Molding it to fulfill their desires, w

“The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity” (Walter Benjamin). The idea of authenticity exists entirely outside technical data. An object’s authenticity is the essence exuded by the sum of its experiences and subsequent effects – in other words, an item’s personal history. Because of the profound connection between history and creation, tradition has become indivisible from a work of art. This inexplicable sensation can be described as an

Humans seem to possess a limitless desire and equally voracious drive to create. There will always be those of us who strive to build what our forefathers have deemed impossible. An A.I. would be a new form of life and I’m pretty sure that they would be here to stay. What does that mean for the existence of human beings? Creating beings that rival or even exceed human intelligence raises many difficult questions, ethical, moral and legal trepidations. These are the hard quest

As soon as video games raced into existence, humans latched onto their virtual boundlessness. Nevertheless, video games, like pretty much every other technological advancement, obviously do not come without a price. Like every form of technology, video games spread and grew like wildfire before anyone could stop and consider the repercussions for allowing such an activity to permeate deep into modern society. Virtual realities offer people an escape from their own lives, a re

“It’s difficult for most people to even conceptualize… The problem is that the Internet is vastly complex, and so much of it is invisible.” – Edward Snowden After the events of 9/11, the American people were ready and willing to give up numerous personal freedoms in the name of national security. The PATRIOT Act ushered in a new era of mass surveillance conducted domestically by the United States government, and no one was the wiser regarding the scope and scale of these clan

No matter the level of consciousness, hacking is implicitly political in one way, shape or form. Among other things, hackers exploit faults in digital security systems to access information that has been deemed private. If someone has convictions strong enough to warrant breaking into someone else’s computer to retrieve information or with more malicious intent, certainly some strong feelings must be being felt on one issue or another. The hacker group ‘Anonymous’ has been ve

In my eyes, a blue sky with a few wisps of clouds makes my day. When the sun is shining, and the sky is clear, life is good… on this side of the globe. I could only imagine the despair if such a sight were to be made hostile. It seems surreal to think that there are entire countries that do not get to embrace the same security when gazing upon the vast empty heavens – this is mainly due to the fact that the heavens are not empty. UAVs, in particular those owned by the United

One of the major ethical issues surrounding drone strikes is the matter of civilian casualties. Obviously, if a drone strike is occurring, someone has done something to warrant said strike (we hope – thanks to the nature of classified CIA operations overseas, we’ll probably never know). If a target is identified, how many civilians does “minimal civilian casualties” translate into? Can we even quantify and justify how many lives must be sacrificed in order to obtain just a si