Fantastic conference in the gorgeous town of Freiburg yesterday - thank you @martinbaesler.bsky.social for the invitation to come and speak!
20.09.2025 07:24 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0@carolineashcroft.bsky.social
20th century political thought at Harris Manchester College and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Author of Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought (EUP, 2024)
Fantastic conference in the gorgeous town of Freiburg yesterday - thank you @martinbaesler.bsky.social for the invitation to come and speak!
20.09.2025 07:24 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Long been of the opinion that child development is a missing piece in creating a machine that can truly think. (Maybe the only way to replicate a human mind is replicate how human minds are made.)
More thought-through analysis here π
luciantruscott.substack.com/p/why-artifi...
"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."
- Hannah Arendt
"I like to dream about a people who have the wits and the strength of character to choose what they like and want from complex technology, and just leave what they don't need aside - instead of letting everything become a need and then an obligation and then a mess..." - Ursula K. Le Guin
11.05.2025 04:35 β π 111 π 40 π¬ 0 π 0...Musk might go/be sacrificed before too long (after declaring victory/bogus figures about fraud eliminated, of course)...
...but we might still be stuck with a unitary executive, with far too much power concentrated in the president's hands:...
I'll be speaking (online) about technology and nature at the LUPS Research Institute for Politics and Government this Wednesday at 1pm UK time. Please do join! ripg.uni-nke.hu/hirek/2025/0...
11.03.2025 11:56 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0I wrote about technology, catastrophe and the risks of techno-optimism:
iai.tv/articles/tec...
Two salaried 4-year PhD positions open at the Department of History of Science and Ideas in Uppsala, one in idΓ©historia (intellectual/cultural history, broadly speaking), the other in history of science:
www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...
π New on the blog!
From nuclear war to climate breakdown, how do we make sense of the catastrophic potential of technology? @carolineashcroft.bsky.social explores perspectives on the place of technology in the end of the world.
Read now π edin.ac/4h0Hi65
For people who need villains to wear shirts saying βIβm the villain,β here you go.
28.01.2025 00:45 β π 1477 π 667 π¬ 51 π 93I wrote about Catastrophic Technology for the page 99 test: page99test.blogspot.com/2024/12/caro...
19.12.2024 10:27 β π 5 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Just out: my latest for the ICRC Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog, in which I highlight some persistent tensions that complicate the notion of 'Responsible AI' for the military domain. #civmilsky #milsky blogs.icrc.org/law-and-poli...
13.12.2024 06:12 β π 27 π 10 π¬ 0 π 4Thank you π
03.12.2024 16:13 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Thank you! Enjoy!
02.12.2024 15:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Very pleased and excited that Catastrophic Technology is NOW OUT! (And just in time for Christmas π) edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-catastr...
02.12.2024 07:50 β π 29 π 4 π¬ 1 π 1"In 1977, Ivan Illich, an Austrian-born philosopher, vagabond priest, and ruthless critic of metastatic bureaucracies, declared that we had entered 'the age of Disabling Professions.'"
Interesting to see Illich appear again in the news!
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...
Very pleased to have a new paper out in Journal of the Philosophy of History (open access!) on Foucault and Arendt on technology and history. brill.com/view/journal...
20.11.2024 19:23 β π 39 π 6 π¬ 1 π 1