yellow phillip copy 300 Hi, I'm Phillip Herndon. 👋 I'm a philosopher and a technologist. I'm interested in building pro-social technologies and commun...
Abstract The parallels between the moral problems raised by AI and corporations are commonly referenced, but the depth of their overlap is more than incidental. I argue that corporations and AI can both be categorized as artificial agential systems (AAS), a group of entities which pose unique moral problems relating to responsibility, accountability and agency cultivation. Considering AAS as a…
Five years ago the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs from the many of the largest American companies, released “ Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation .” The announcement was a signal that U.S. corporate leadership recognized the need to move from a shareholder-focused capitalism to a “stakeholder capitalism” undergirded by notions of long-term value, ethical action, fairness and…
For my second career I worked at consulting firms and agencies. I was a ‘digital strategist’. Companies were just trying to understand social media, really getting serious about their online presences, and were wondering how to move their communications and marketing (and more of their business) online. I got there at the time where just having a website turned out to be not a digital strategy.…
Lately I’ve been talking to more people who are eager to get jobs as product managers. How do you become a product manager? How do you become a PM at xyz company? How do I get a PM job? Here’s some of my advice on the subject. I plan to revisit this every now and then to update it. What this isn’t is a discussion of what product managers do . That’s different from what people are looking for when…
A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
⚠️ Heavy spoilers ahead for the Succession series finale. ⚠️ The Succession series finale aired last Sunday. By most accounts the creators nailed the landing. I thought so too! The show ended coherently and truly. It wasn’t satisfying, though. It didn’t try to tie up every loose end like a Game of Thrones . That’s ok. Despite all their maneuvering, none of the Roy children ended up running Waystar…
It takes so much time to learn, but it’s worth it, right? You know, maybe not. I’m reading St. Augustine’s Confessions , and though it was written 1600 years ago, the way he was taught doesn’t sound all that different from today. (Less focus on STEM.) The way he describes how he learned, and why, is a lot like what children are taught today. The effects are similar, too: they’re disastrous. To…
I heard a story once about a group of scientists who went down to Hill Country in Texas. In that part of Texas they have caves with huge amounts of bats. In one of these deep caves hundreds of thousands of Brazilian free-tailed bats roost together. Each evening at dusk they come flowing out of the cave mouth, looking for bugs to eat for the night. The scientists had asked themselves, how do all…
There’s a vibrant industry around user experience (UX) thought today, but as UX moves beyond flat screens we’re finding that a lot of the best practices and known methods are too specific. What applies to call-to-action styling and page navigation on desktop web and mobile is often totally inapplicable when interacting with Alexa or Siri, or diving into virtual reality headgear. Early UX and…
Phillip Herndon · Gettin' Jiggy Wit It