Daniel Rourke /stream

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The best way to think about the remaining tribes in 2011 is to imagine a series of concentric circles, all of which interact on each boundary. There are the tribes that…

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"Risks are always interesting," writes George Dyson," especially in this case where you have such a mix of probabilities — the earthquake/tsunami that most agree was unpredictable, if inevitable, and the…

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JUST AS IN OUR DAY a fervid minority denounces the digitization of literary experience, fifteenth-century literati responded to their own depredations. In 1492, Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote De Laude…

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Archaeologists and other scientists report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science that excavations show hunter-gatherers were living at the Buttermilk Creek site and making projectile points, blades, choppers and other…

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Gleick makes his case in a sweeping survey that covers the five millenniums of humanity’s engagement with information, from the invention of writing in Sumer to the elevation of information to…

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Is studying the brain a good way to understand the mind? Does psychology stand to brain anatomy as physiology stands to body anatomy? In the case of the body, physiological functions—walking,…

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[ED: Nearly all of the text in this post is taken from R. Gerald Nelson's independently published, occasionally problematic but more often brilliantly concise treatise DDDDoomed. Anyone concerned with issues of…

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Any time we interact with a representative art work – be it a painting, a sculpture, a song, a novel, a comic, a play, a film, or a game – it…

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it must have been when i was a boy at school that the phonograph was invented. at any rate it was at that time a chief object of public wonder; this…

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There is a seductive image of contemporary culture circulating today. Our world, Jean Baudrillard tells us, has been launched into hyperspace in a kind of postmodern apocalypse. The airless atmosphere has…

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Maybe you’re young enough to remember Blue’s Clues, or old enough to have a little one hanging on the mystery-solving adventures of Steve and Blue as you read this. If, by…

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Information flows everywhere, through wires and genes, through brain cells and quarks. But while it may appear ubiquitous to us now, until recently we had no awareness of what information was…

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The views of machinery which we are thus feebly indicating will suggest the solution of one of the greatest and most mysterious questions of the day. We refer to the question:…

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The group first came to prominence in February 2008, two days before the carefully choreographed elections that brought President Dmitry Medvedev to power. About 12 activists, one of whom was a…

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The pairs of images in this "Similarities" set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of…

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We human beings persist in thinking of ourselves as a unique species, endowed with special insight into a universe that we can manipulate. In fact, this notion is based on unexamined…

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In case you haven’t heard, the newest champion of "Jeopardy!," the popular TV game show, is a computer. Watson, an enormous computer developed by researchers at IBM, was pitted against the…

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Professor Hawking has probably been talking to the wrong philosophers, or picked up some wrong ideas about the kinds of discussion that currently go on in philosophy of science. His lofty…

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"Watson is a computer that uncovers meaning in our language, and pinpoints the right answer, instantly. It uses deep analytics to answer questions computers never could before, even the ones on…

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In preparing paintings for the exhibition, the head of oil painting conservation noticed usual things about some of them, prompting her to X-ray, among others, 'A view of Pickersgill Harbour, Dusky…

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"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back…

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The best way to think about the remaining tribes in 2011 is to imagine a series of concentric circles, all of which interact on each boundary. There are the tribes that…

Bookmark

"Risks are always interesting," writes George Dyson," especially in this case where you have such a mix of probabilities — the earthquake/tsunami that most agree was unpredictable, if inevitable, and the…

Bookmark

JUST AS IN OUR DAY a fervid minority denounces the digitization of literary experience, fifteenth-century literati responded to their own depredations. In 1492, Johannes Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote De Laude…

Bookmark

Gleick makes his case in a sweeping survey that covers the five millenniums of humanity’s engagement with information, from the invention of writing in Sumer to the elevation of information to…

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This year marks the 40th anniversary of Creeper, the world’s first computer virus. From Creeper to Stuxnet, the last four decades saw the number of malware instances boom from 1,300 in…

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[ED: Nearly all of the text in this post is taken from R. Gerald Nelson's independently published, occasionally problematic but more often brilliantly concise treatise DDDDoomed. Anyone concerned with issues of…

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Any time we interact with a representative art work – be it a painting, a sculpture, a song, a novel, a comic, a play, a film, or a game – it…

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it must have been when i was a boy at school that the phonograph was invented. at any rate it was at that time a chief object of public wonder; this…

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Every day an incomprehensible number of new digital media files are uploaded to hosting sites across the internet. Far too many for any one person to consume. Infinite Glitch is a…

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There is a seductive image of contemporary culture circulating today. Our world, Jean Baudrillard tells us, has been launched into hyperspace in a kind of postmodern apocalypse. The airless atmosphere has…

Bookmark

Information flows everywhere, through wires and genes, through brain cells and quarks. But while it may appear ubiquitous to us now, until recently we had no awareness of what information was…

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This view of the future of humankind is grounded in an appreciation of the biologically innate powers bestowed upon us by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This deep respect…

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The group first came to prominence in February 2008, two days before the carefully choreographed elections that brought President Dmitry Medvedev to power. About 12 activists, one of whom was a…

Bookmark

The pairs of images in this "Similarities" set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgement as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of…

Bookmark

We human beings persist in thinking of ourselves as a unique species, endowed with special insight into a universe that we can manipulate. In fact, this notion is based on unexamined…

Bookmark

In case you haven’t heard, the newest champion of "Jeopardy!," the popular TV game show, is a computer. Watson, an enormous computer developed by researchers at IBM, was pitted against the…

Bookmark

Imagine it: a flower blossoming inside the brain, nanometer stalks splitting away from a micrometer stem. Expanding into every available capillary, touching every cubic millimeter of the brain, collecting terabytes of…

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"Watson is a computer that uncovers meaning in our language, and pinpoints the right answer, instantly. It uses deep analytics to answer questions computers never could before, even the ones on…

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"I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back…

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But what happens the rest of the time? Away from the world of freak glitches, what fate befalls the writer as his or her magnum opus enters the publishing production chain?…