A fair example of my prior experience in philosophy could include a basic knowledge of epistemology, ontology, or metaphysics. Bridging the pre-Socratics to modern minds like Robert Pirsig, Alan Watts, or Christopher Phillips (the clever originator of the ‘IRL’‘Socrates Café’ groups), good books, websites, and deep existential conversations with bright minds, perhaps around campfires or across time zones, long after midnight, are some mind-and-soul-nourishing fuels.
The inception of this independent work involved parsing a truer definition of the possibility of “a second dark age.” The idea of a second dark age as a trajectory – and a side effect – of the technosphere remains elusive to futurists and the common consensus alike. Within this site, you’ll discover a partial chronicle of scores of websites, dozens of books, primary data sources, and opinion pieces. Each was vetted for veracity, relevance, and validity.
I could not have expected so much work in the process of concluding that I could not answer a question; a UVA technology professor had asked me to define a concept that neither I nor web searches could readily answer. An excellent and experienced writer, programmer, and technologist-turned-academic-infrastructure-expert, Professor Yitna Firdyiwek encouraged this project over several months. In tandem with the raw materials of a subject that has no exact/formal definition (i.e. second dark age), learning about the roots of the various kinds of philosophies, bridging disciplines, was required to internalize an understanding of the new philosophy of technology along the way. It is the newest branch of philosophy by a long shot – and thus a rarity due to its relative youth.
This site may still grow. Additional entries may include economics, techno-feudalism, geopolitics/trade/government, and some hypothetical evolutions of the human condition itself. ‘What-if’ scenarios for various proposed watershed events (e.g. general AI, first contact, meteor impact, et alia) are considerations. A section addressing the degrees of sophistication of various societies, while seeming to be the most important subject of all, is hopelessly subjective and impossible to foresee.
The focus on the impacts of all of this – at the level of the individual human being’s quality of life and health – led to my capstone topic: predicting the incidence/prevalence of various mental health, behavioral, social, or developmental complaints in future therapeutic populations (so as to wager which evidence-based therapeutic modalities will be the most valuable and in-demand skillsets), for the therapists, counselors, and psychologists who will treat the patients of the next quarter century within the affluent and otherwise psychotherapy-affirming nations.
Considering the most seismic of technological paradigm shifts unfolding before our eyes and within our lifetimes, that of AI, the timing of such a philosophical inquest makes a terminally-mercurial topic that much more untenable.
Dark Age Two 