My co-author, Andy Hoffman, sent me a link to an article in The Guardian about some recent utterances of James Lovelock. Lovelock has been raising attention to the environment for about as long as any living person has. Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain’s most respected – if maverick – independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the… Read More
Continue ReadingProdigal Sons
My frequent source of inspiration for these blogs, David Brooks, has reached all the way back to the Christian Bible for his column today. Drawing on the parable of the Prodigal Son, Brooks makes an analogy to two major segments of today’s society. When the Father embraces his second son, who has squandered his life away, the hard working conscientious first son gets his nose out of joint, turning on the father for essentially dissing his high-minded life style. Brooks makes an analogy to what he deems is our broken society today, full of metaphorical second sons who are pissing… Read More
Continue ReadingRobots Win the Right to Vote
Fast forward a few decades and **imagine** this post’s headline, above, on the front page of the *Wall Street Journal* associated with the following story. > (Washington, February 13, 2030) Today the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the robots in a landmark case, Robots United v. Federal Elections Commission. Echoing prior cases involving corporations, the SCOTUS deemed intelligent robots to be people with a right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution. The court’s creation of new classes of persons began all the way back in 1886 in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (118 U.S. 394). In the… Read More
Continue ReadingLove Involves Real People
I found another arrow for my quiver in the NYTimes this morning in an oped piece on long distance relationships. Daniel Jones in a [piece](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/sunday-review/romance-at-arms-length.html?hpw&rref=opinion) to be published in the upcoming Sunday Review, titled “Romance at Arm’s Length,” discusses the growing numbers of people engaged in computer-based “love affairs.” Starting with quick review of Spike Jonze’s movie, “Her.” Jones paints a realistic, but disillusioning, picture of this practice > Other than the sci-fi wrinkle of the woman’s being a microchip, the couple’s ill-fated romance, which involves zero physical contact and relies on electronic communication for emotional sustenance, isn’t futuristic at… Read More
Continue ReadingIs Seeing Always believing?
I am about to spend a few days in Cleveland, weather permitting. I am doing a repeat of a class I did last year for the Weatherhead School Doctor of Management candidates. It will be the first class I have taught that was assigned Flourishing instead of Sustainability by Design. In preparing for this class, I had to carefully revise my presentations to reflect the changes that have entered my thinking and vocabulary in recent months. I use a wonderful video to raise questions about the Cartesian model of the mind as a mirror. This time as I was reviewing… Read More
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