Wrapping Up...For Now

I wanted to do a couple more posts last week, but I'm afraid the end-of-semester rush swept away those aspirations. I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the commenters for your critiques, elaborations, and suggestions. I've learned a great deal, and I think we've collaboratively made some good inroads on defining "technology," an important first step for the symposium.

I'll be back during the break to examine how technological "arms races" may play out in the cognitive domain, and how they might be regulated. I now see just how different are the issues raised by potentially "optimized emotion" (a challenge to authenticity and moral judgment), and cognitive "doping" (ala Art's example of nontherapeutic Ritalin use, which raises more traditional distributional and efficiency concerns). Teasing out those differences should prove an interesting project.

But for now, let me sign off, and cede the stage to Gaia Bernstein, whom I'll introduce in the next post.