A follow-up to my last post is still forthcoming. In the meantime, here are a few links for your reading pleasure.

At The New Atlantis, Joshua Schulz writes about “Machine Grading and Moral Learning.” The essay is a critique of machine-based grading of student essays, but it ranges widely and deeply in its argument. Here’s an excerpt:

“The functional- and efficiency-centric view of technology, and the moral objections to it, have been around for a long time. Look to the tale of John Henry, the steel-driving man of American folklore who raced a tunnel-boring steam engine in a contest of efficiency, beating the machine but dying in the attempt. The moral of the tale is not, of course, that we will always be able to beat our machines in a fair contest. Rather, the contest is a tragic one, highlighting a cultural hamartia, namely, the belief that competing with the steam engine on its own terms is anything other than degrading.”

A post at Librarian Shipwreck asks, “Whose Afraid of General Ludd?” You may remember that Borg Complex symptoms include, “Uses the term Luddite a-historically and as a casual slur.” That observation is echoed here:

“Whenever the term ‘Luddite’ appears as an insult it acts less as a reflection of the motives of those being slurred and more as a reflection of the fears of the person delivering the insult. But far from undermining Luddism, all that these insults do is underscore the tremendous power that a critique of technology couched in ‘commonality’ can still command.”

Read the whole thing for a historically grounded look at the Luddites and their motives.

Relatedly, here is a video and transcript of an interview with the late Jacques Ellul posted at Second Nature Journal.  His insights resonate still. Here are two from the interview:

“Technology also obliges us to live more and more quickly. Inner reflection is replaced by reflex. Reflection means that, after I have undergone an experience, I think about that experience. In the case of a reflex you know immediately what you must do in a certain situation. Without thinking. Technology requires us no longer to think about the things. If you are driving a car at 150 kilometers an hour and you think you’ll have an accident. Everything depends on reflexes. The only thing technology requires us is: Don’t think about it. Use your reflexes.

…

Technology will not tolerate any judgment being passed on it. Or rather: technologists do not easily tolerate people expressing an ethical or moral judgment on what they do. But the expression of ethical, moral and spiritual judgments is actually the highest freedom of mankind. So I am robbed of my highest freedom. So whatever I say about technology and the technologists themselves is of no importance to them. It won’t deter them from what they are doing. They are now set in their course. They are so conditioned.”

Keep that last paragraph in mind as you read this last story: “For One Baby, Life Begins with Genome Revealed.”