I sense a morbid fear behind our catastrophizing about androids, which I reckon is to do with a loss of autonomy. It’s true that for periods in history tribes and people have assumed they have no autonomy, life being driven by the fates or by a predetermined design or creator, so this could be a particularly modern malady in an era that luxuriates in free will. But concern about the creep of cyborgism through the increasing use of technology in and around our bodies seems to produce a frisson of existential dread that I have been struggling to diagnose. Technology has always attracted its naysayers, from the early saboteurs to the Luddites and the Swing Rioters, and all the movements that opposed the Industrial Revolution, but this feels less about livelihoods and more about personhood. Read More
I love google. All that data out there. One click and the google elves trot about the web fetching it for you. Wheelbarrows of the stuff. At Ashridge I have decided our next generation 3Rs for learning are Receptiveness, Retention and Retrieval: how can we optimise a leader’s receptiveness to learning, to what extent can we help them retain in their memory what they have learned, and how effectively will they be able to retrieve this knowledge when they need to use it. These 3Rs are now defining our agenda for the Centre for Research in Executive Development (CRED). Read More
