Philosophy as a Way of Life

  • How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine | The Nation

    Mechanical Turk is the innovation behind “crowdworking,” the low-wage virtual labor phenomenon that has reinvented piecework for the digital age. Created by Amazon in 2005, it remains one of the central platforms—markets, really—where crowd-based labor is bought and sold. As… Continue reading

    How Crowdworkers Became the Ghosts in the Digital Machine | The Nation
  • Mona Lisa stopped smiling – A Conversation on the Phenomenology of News | Circa Blog

    If the goal of the news is to make sense of the world — then we must “model” the shape of the world with our stories. I would argue many traditional tools and processes reflect the world, but don’t model… Continue reading

    Mona Lisa stopped smiling – A Conversation on the Phenomenology of News | Circa Blog
  • Burned, Bombed, Beaten

    Education is under attack worldwide. The report issued by the  United Nations speaks to conditions in the most physically violent locales around the globe. We should pay close heed to these. Because they are the physical counterpart of the psychosocial… Continue reading

    Burned, Bombed, Beaten
  • Forgetful echoes

    “Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.” E. M. Cioran, The Book of Delusions… Continue reading

    Forgetful echoes
  • Dawning Jedi

    This semester, I find myself contributing to a number of university courses. One is Metaphysics. As designed by my colleague, the class moves between classical metaphysics (what we have thought about Being in the past) and transhumanist metaphysics (what human… Continue reading

    Dawning Jedi
  • The Question Concerning Technoscience

    A good show from the BBC. I begin the episode a bit of the way in. Worth watching the whole thing, but this gives you a taste of things to come in Humanity 2.0… Maybe. Continue reading

    The Question Concerning Technoscience
  • Playfulness: the Point of Existence

    “A man’s maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil “To escape boredom, man works either beyond what his usual needs require, or else he invents play, that… Continue reading

    Playfulness: the Point of Existence
  • Tears of Joy in my Life

    When tears begin to flow in the moment of an ecstatic joy, I find an awareness of just how much the body–with all its pains and perturbations–is the necessary crossroads of possible Transcendenz. The feel of my gut contacting, my… Continue reading

    Tears of Joy in my Life
  • Textimony 20140208

    To say that we are on the ONE WAY is not to say there is only a single way. Get to it, now… EXPLORE!!! Continue reading

    Textimony 20140208
  • Afternoon Memo 20140202

    My MEMO Status update on FB: Some caricature metaphysics as the most meaningless of abstractions: e.g. pondering how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Such examples work precisely to say that the “beyond” trumps the now/here… Continue reading

    Afternoon Memo 20140202
  • Night Vigil 20140201

    Night Vigil has been occupied with the issue of anthropocentrism. Of course anthropo– means human and –centric means center. So the term means to place humankind at the center of everything. Knowing how -centric got the usage, however, is very… Continue reading

    Night Vigil 20140201
  • Marsilio Ficino

    Probably one of the least known yet most influential philosophers in the last 1000 years. Another way to understand Ficino and his academy is to examine the various ways he uses the word “academy” and its variants. What one finds… Continue reading

    Marsilio Ficino
  • Keeping Vigil

    I call the time between first and second sleep the Night Vigil, following the old monastic traditions. For me, Night Vigil begins with an examination of conscience: Oh thou Encompassing, thou All, thou One. How can I give myself over… Continue reading

    Keeping Vigil
  • Greater Means Yet Less Meaning

    Aristotle, in his Nichomachean Ethics, examines eudaimonia (happiness or flourishing) as the end or purpose of human life. He does this at first through a series of negatives: Happiness is not… Pursuit of Pleasure because even animals can experience pleasure… Continue reading

    Greater Means Yet Less Meaning