Two Visions of Utopia

Reconciling Two Visions of Modularity

The prevelance of threats and attacks in modern systems demands programming techniques that help developers maintain security and privacy. In particular, frameworks for composing components written by multiple parties must enable the authors of each component to erect safeguards against intrusion by other components. Object-capability systems have been particularly prominent for enabling encaps...

Response Two Visions of Corporate Law

What explains the persistence of certain debates in corporate law? Many fundamental questions remain unresolved despite dozens of years of research, countless conferences, and innumerable studies, both theoretical and, more recently, empirical. This is puzzling because one would expect time and evidence to move us toward a resolution of debates about what is the most efficient way of doing some...

Ambient Utopia

This chapter presents an analysis of the ambitions that lie behind the concept of Ambient Intelligence as it is presented by the advocates and researchers working in the field. In particular it looks at the ideas regarding the forms of natural and intuitive forms of interaction that are envisaged including agents and robots from a philosophical perspective. The views on interaction are analysed...

Engineering Utopia

The likely advent of AGI and the long-established trend of improving computational hardware promise a dual revolution in coming decades: machines which are both more intelligent and more numerous than human beings. This possibility raises substantial concern over the moral nature of such intelligent machines, and of the changes they will cause in society. Will we have the chance to determine th...

Utopia Rising