Kevin Brown

In his 1939 sermon Learning in Wartime, CS Lewis considered whether education should continue amid high-stakes global conflict. Is learning something that should be suspended during a war, saved only for times of peace and predictability? Or does the acquisition of knowledge, learning, thinking, and prudential judgment become more important during moments of upheaval? Predictably…

Not all value can be measured in dollars. Consider a cautionary tale shared by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. While he was studying as an Oxford Rhodes Scholar in the 1970s, one of the all-women’s colleges, St. Anne’s, became tangled in a debate over evolving sexual mores. Resident halls for men and women had traditionally been…

You’ve heard the story. Advanced technology is created, turns deviant, and coldly proceeds to supplant humanity.  It is one of the more enduring science fiction tropes. From the cautionary imagery of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Tom Cruise battling Artificial Intelligence in the latest Mission Impossible blockbuster, the robots going rogue theme consistently occupies our imaginative…