War follows the ground

Humans have probably always killed one another. Warfare is something narrower. It implies groups, planning, logistics, memory, leadership, and enough social organisation that violence stops being a personal act and becomes a collective institution. The interesting question is not when humans first killed. It is when ki…

July 16, 2026 · 20 min

The myth of objectivity

Picture a journalist, a scientist, or even your neighbour declaring with solemn authority: “I am being objective.” Dignified, is it not? Objective, impartial, fact-driven, like a well-polished broom sweeping all bias into the corner. Only, as with most magical brooms, it has a particular corner it prefers: the one that…

September 29, 2025 · 4 min

The myth of neutrality

Imagine standing on the pavement, observing an injustice unfold. Perhaps a villain is performing egregiously bad deeds, or a bureaucrat is quietly rearranging paperwork in a way that ruins lives. You shrug. You mutter, “Not my circus, not my monkeys,” and continue scrolling through social media. This is the practical m…

September 29, 2025 · 4 min
A hungry child sitting at a school desk made of circuit boards and screens, looking confused and isolated amid a background of headlines about poverty, underfunded schools, and rising military budgets

Thirty years of not listening to Joseph Weizenbaum

In 1991, The Tech at MIT published an interview with Joseph Weizenbaum, the computer scientist best known for creating ELIZA and later becoming one of the field’s sharpest internal critics. Speaking with Diana ben‑Aaron, he dissected the role of computers in education, their entanglement with the military, and the ethi…

August 3, 2025 · 6 min