The Fifth Head of Cerberus dramatizes the fragility and constructedness of identity in a way that feels urgent in the age of AI. Through stories of cloning, memory, and colonial domination, Wolfe forces us to confront how the self may not be some sort of indivisible essence but something that is shaped, copied, and manufactured.
As AI begins to challenge our assumptions about consciousness, creativity, and authenticity, Wolfe’s work is obviously relevant. It suggests that flourishing may not come from rigidly defending the boundaries of traditional ideas on humanity, rather we need to cultivate a new understanding grounded in humility. We need to gain a new sense of humility in acknowledging that human consciousness and creativity are not sovereign or absolute, but part of a larger ecology of intelligences, whether AI or institutional.
The Fifth Head of Cerberus reminds us that human flourishing in the age of AI may depend less on superiority or mastery, and more on our willingness to reimagine what it means to be human: as a shared, ongoing project of recognition, responsibility, and renewal.
The text shows what has been lost: The assumption written words are of human origin. Yet it also shows how this might be a chance to return to a reading without regard to origin.
A scheme for human progress based on science and planetary management — was the basis for a club founded by Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, who later spoke of “human potentialities”
The article describes the danger posed by Albert Borgmann's device paradigm to the values of the Kingdom of God, which aim towards human flourishing, in Latinx communities. And proposes a view of Christian education to address digital technologies/culture, which grounds AI and which AI is a part of.
In this text, Ellul makes a critical point about technology that cuts against one of the enduring myths around it's development and use, namely that technology is "neutral". Ellul argues that all technology has an embedded ideology, specifically the desire for efficiency, and that this desire deeply impacts both how we use technology and how we see the world. He unpacks the implications for our society of the dominance of this ideology.
The importance of human articulation face to face in language in light of the philosophical history of Alan Turing and early sociological study of mobile technology
Ravaged by war and the collapse of previous norms, peacetime Germans struggled to understand a world that was turning West and embracing industry. Many believed consumerism and a bourgeois lifestyle could offer a path to national progress. Philosopher Josef Pieper believed otherwise, insisting that we work so as to have the restful freedom to dream, create, and connect spiritually with the world. Pieper's elegant answer to alienation then has so much to say in an era when technology is again promising liberation - but somehow, will end up again leaving us doing to dishes while it writes ever cheaper poetry.
