The Truman Show Embedded in our Reality of Smart Homes: Will We Be Held Captive Like Truman Burbanks?

        The concept of smart homes as modern panopticons and surveillance mechanisms is a thought-provoking perspective that raises concerns about the privacy and security implications of connected technologies within our living spaces. Han (2022) says that Google presents the interconnected smart home of the future as an “electric orchestra” with the resident as a “conductor” (5)….

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Dataism as a Religion and an Exodus from Humanism : The Martyrs and Prophets    

Dataism posits that the universe operates as a network of data flow, wherein humans function as organisms driven by biochemical algorithms, and machines rely on electronic algorithms. Both these systems are viewed as algorithms, highlighting their fundamental similarity.  According to this perspective, intuition is subjective, and the growing influence of big data could render it…

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Rhetorical Unconscious

Movie cameras give us the “optical unconscious” (Benjamin). In a way, they’re like Kenneth Burke’s terministic screens. Because people perceive the world differently through language and symbols that lend themselves to abiding certain beliefs, we could think of Burke’s screens as revealing the “rhetorical unconscious”; or capturing interpretations that we otherwise take for granted. The…

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Big Data Lacks Vision

It’s awfully presumptive of Dataists to say humans would prefer a robot to the same democracy that gave them the robot. The Marvel character Ultron once observed that humans always create things that supplant them: “Men of peace create engines of war and people create children” (Avengers: Age of Ultron). He then turned around and…

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