Daniel Rourke /stream

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When anthropologists discover a new set of hominid fossils, the first questions are obvious: What is this creature? Where does it fit in on the evolutionary tree? But it has to…

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Photo by Ars Electronica / FlickrLittle Lewis, my son, I see some evidence that you have the ability to learn science, number and proportions, and I recognize your special desire to…

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An adorable black kitten is sitting on a bookshelf, eyes fixed on an insect. It sits, paws perfectly aligned. Then, out of nowhere, it pounces — leaping off the shelf and…

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Among the many stories that can be told about the origins of the environmental movement in the West, perhaps the most common is that it began with the emergence of Romanticism…

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Just after World War II, when the atomic bombs fell and our thirst for coal and oil became a full-blown addiction, Earth entered the Anthropocene, a new geologic time when humanity’s…

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It’s important to photograph the hermit crabs in their natural habitat.  I prefer to photograph them using a wide angle lens to achieve a unique perspective. Hermit crab in a glass…

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Russia is fighting a mysterious anthrax outbreak in a remote corner of Siberia. Dozens of people have been hospitalized; one child has died. The government airlifted some families out because more…

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Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects, which sets out a series of thoughts about “dark ecologies,” has become central to thinking about storytelling in the modern era, in my opinion.

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The US wants to press ahead with asteroid mining, but rights to the riches buried in space are a grey area. How should we draw up rules for harvesting the heavens?…

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Janet Vertesi, assistant professor of sociology at Princeton University, had an idea: would it be possible to hide her pregnancy from big data? Thinking about technology—the way we use it and…

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Libraries tend to occupy a sacred space in modern culture. People adore them. (Perhaps even more than that, people love the idea of them.

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I have two cyborg implants. One is in my hand, and it lets me unlock phones and doors by waving at them. The other is in my uterus, and it lets…

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Last year, a man in an exoskeleton kicked off the Men’s World Cup. Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old from Brazil, was outfitted by a team of scientists from the Walk Again Project…

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Slime mold—a living network of tendrils found on rotting wood and other plant debris—is easily one of the strangest things alive. Neither plant, nor fungus, it’s a collection of individual cells…

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“Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth.” So begins one of the more depressing scientific papers I’ve ever read.

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When anthropologists discover a new set of hominid fossils, the first questions are obvious: What is this creature? Where does it fit in on the evolutionary tree? But it has to…

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Photo by Ars Electronica / FlickrLittle Lewis, my son, I see some evidence that you have the ability to learn science, number and proportions, and I recognize your special desire to…

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Mikhail Bakhtin was one of the most important theorists of discourse in the twentieth century. He is sometimes termed the most important Soviet thinker in the social sciences. His work also…

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Among the many stories that can be told about the origins of the environmental movement in the West, perhaps the most common is that it began with the emergence of Romanticism…

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It’s important to photograph the hermit crabs in their natural habitat.  I prefer to photograph them using a wide angle lens to achieve a unique perspective. Hermit crab in a glass…

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In an advert for Recognition Equipment in 1966, a young woman with a charming smile places an arm around her male colleague’s shoulder, and rests her head gently against him as…

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Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects, which sets out a series of thoughts about “dark ecologies,” has become central to thinking about storytelling in the modern era, in my opinion.

Bookmark

More than five years after the devastating tsunami and the 8.9-magnitude earthquake struck north-eastern Japan, causing the explosion of the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, the Japanese town remains abandoned. Since…

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I have two cyborg implants. One is in my hand, and it lets me unlock phones and doors by waving at them. The other is in my uterus, and it lets…

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We are living in the Anthropocene age, in which human influence on the planet is so profound – and terrifying – it will leave its legacy for millennia. Politicians and scientists…

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Last year, a man in an exoskeleton kicked off the Men’s World Cup. Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old from Brazil, was outfitted by a team of scientists from the Walk Again Project…

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“Human activity is leaving a pervasive and persistent signature on Earth.” So begins one of the more depressing scientific papers I’ve ever read.

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Silicon Valley’s sunny outlook on technology and opportunity ignores systematic inequalities. Just over a century ago, an electric company in Minnesota took out a full-page newspaper advertisement and listed 1,000 uses…