Irl: Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital World by Chris Stedman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"At its best, our online play can give us the tools we need to become fuller, more complex versions of ourselves. To discover who we are and remember it."

This is simply one of the best books I've read on the internet and social media. The focus is whether our online selves are our "real selves," and Stedman thinks they are. Our use of social media allows us to explore and experiment with our identity. Yes, there are dangers, and we have to cultivate better online habits, but he reminds us that we are still in the early years of learning how to do all of this well.

I also appreciated the queer aspects of this reflection and analysis as well.

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The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning by Justin E.H. Smith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fascinating exploration of the roots of the internet and how we use it to see and engage with our world. My only real criticism is that I wanted a coda, some final chapter or statement that drew everything together and advanced the argument.

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Goodreads is making an odd recommendation.  Here's a screenprint:

Notice the recommendation off to the side.  Usually these make sense.  This one does not.

Crazy Horse's Vision is a children's book about the thing indicated in its title.  What relation does this book or its content or that it is children's literature have to the letters between Sackville-West and Woolf?  Some algorithm is clearly broken.

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

According to Bostrom the "essential task of our age" is preparing for the possibility of superintelligence (through AI or something similar) and the potential risks involved. He writes that "our principle moral priority" is "the reduction of existential risk and the attainment of a civilizational trajectory that leads to a compassionate and jubilant use of humanity's cosmic endowment."

So when America spends decades ignoring the clear rational and moral imperative of global climate change, much less when it elects Donald Trump, it's difficult to imagine that we will develop the skills to prepare for this possibility.

I actually don't believe that strong AI (John Searle's phrase) is ontologically possible. Reading Searle's argument in the 1990's convinced me of that. Bostrom never addresses Searle's arguments, but he clearly believes it is not only possible but likely within this century.

After grasping the main points of the book in the opening chapters, I then dragged while reading half of it as he imagines all sorts of various scenarios. Frankly I was bored and considered putting the book down, but in the second half the interest increases as he ethical issues, how to teach a superintelligence morality, and what criteria should be used in determining our longterm values. I still skimmed heartily.

Frankly, this is among the strangest books I've ever read, but there are nuggets of interests and the overarching thesis is provocative. Bostrom thinks all the best people should begin working on this problem and not waste their time on less important issues. Well, I don't plan to do that.

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Like many (and I hope most people) I've been puzzled all along as to what the supposed Clinton e-mail scandal was supposed to be about other than a bad information technology decision and the type of mess that almost any professional can get into.  Haven't all of us had e-mails that should have gone one place go another place or that should have been saved somehow disappear?  And we aren't working with all the record-keeping rules of the federal bureaucracy.  

So, I was glad to see this column from the Washington Post summarizing the new FBI report (which I haven't read).  Here is the essential, summary paragraph:

One doesn’t come away from this memo feeling that one has spotted any effort on the part of Clinton to deceive. She sought convenience and delegated to others the project of producing an efficient and easily usable communications system. Her mistake was in failing to recognize that her communications also needed to fulfill other functions. Clinton forgot that she needed to ask for sound records management.

And, then, this conclusion:

But what does this memo mean for voting Americans? I think it’s basically this: If you’re trying to weigh Donald Trump’s and Clinton’s characters against one another, look elsewhere than this email scandal. No deep Clinton character flaws are in evidence here. This is a story about a moment when Clinton failed to recognize that professional expertise was necessary, in a rapidly evolving area where many are struggling.

Now, can we please finally take Bernie Sanders' advice and move on from the damn e-mails to actual issues?

Ross Douthat writes on how virtual reality (particularly gaming, pornography, and social media) have altered behaviors in young adults and adolescents.  The digital world has helped alleviate some social problems while generating others.

A startling essay at the NYTimes writes about how we have increasingly become digital persons and that we don't understand this yet.  It is one reason we don't really know how to respond to reports of NSA data collection, etc.  We require a new infopolitics that is based upon this reality that we are digital persons.  An excerpt: 

We like to think of ourselves as somehow apart from all this information. We are real — the information is merely about us. But what is it that is real? What would be left of you if someone took away all your numbers, cards, accounts, dossiers and other informational prostheses? Information is not just about you — it also constitutes who you are.

We understandably do not want to see ourselves as bits and bytes. But unless we begin conceptualizing ourselves in this way, we leave it to others to do it for us. 

In 2004, when I was Thirty, I wrote about why I would never have a cell phone.  You can read the entire blogpost here.  An excerpt:

A cell phone? Sure, convenient now and then. But I would venture to say, having observed its use by almost everyone around me now for a while, more a nuisance and a bother. Why do I want to detract from my well-being and that of my neighbors?

Go ahead, call me a crank.

I didn't think I needed one.  I wrote:

I'm perfectly reachable in reasonable time via phones at home and work, e-mail at home and work, IM, a blog, and good old letters.

How quaint.

That post was in response to a Robert Samuelson column in Newsweek in which is presciently wrote: 

Cell phones -- and, indeed, all wireless devices -- constitute another chapter in the ongoing breakdown between work and everything else. They pretend to increase your freedom while actually stealing it. People are supposed to be always capable of participating in the next meeting, responding to their e-mails, or retrieving factoids from the Internet. People so devoted to staying interconnected are kept in a perpetual state of anxiety, because they may have missed some significant memo, rendezvous, bit of news or gossip. They may be more plugged in and less thoughtful.

Yet, when I went to CoH-OKC because they did not have an office, they gave me a cell phone.  Argh.

Yeah, I did succumb to making calls and texting and even ruining the wonderfully long silent drives I used to take by talking.

I had little use for cell phones before Michael got a smart phone, and we used it for GPS and other purposes when traveling to California in 2008.

I didn't get my own smart phone till 2010 (I've still got that one).

After nine years of use, I find them convient, but I still despise them.  Keep calling me a crank.

Facebook today helped humanity progress in killing the gender binary.  They now allow 58 different gender-identifiers.  Read them all here.

The final two paragraphs merit being quoted in full:

The virtual and physical civilizations will affect and shape each other; the balance they strike will come to define our world.  In our view, the multidimensional result, though not perfect, will be more egalitarian, more transparent and more interesting than we can even imagine.  As in a social contract, users will voluntarily relinquish things they value in the physical world--privacy, security, personal data--in order to gain the benefits that come with being connected to the virtual world.  In turn, should they feel that these benefits are being withheld, they'll use the tools at their disposal to demand accountability and drive change in the physical world.

The case for optimism lies not in sci-fi gadgets or holograms but in the check that technology and connectivity bring against the abuses, suffering and destruction in our world.  When exposure meets opportunity, the possibilities are endless.  The best thing anyone can do to improve the quality of life around the world is to drive connectivity and technological opportunity.  When given the access, the people will do the rest.  They already know what they need and what they want to build, and they'll find ways to innovate with even the meagerest set of tools.  Anyone passionate about economic prosperity, human rights, social justice, education or self-determination should consider how connectivity can help us reach these goals and even move beyond them.  We cannot eliminate inequality or abuse of power, but through technological inclusion we can help transfer power into the hands of individual people and trust that they will take it from there.  It won't be easy, but it will be worth it.

That next to the last sentence seems very Congregationalist!