Daniel Rourke /stream

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In the last decade, human vanity has taken a major hit. Traits once thought to be uniquely, even definingly human have turned up in the repertoire of animal behaviors: tool use,…

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While the Internet is a text-saturated world, reading online screens tends to be significantly different from reading printed text. This review essay examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the…

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The word “meme” first appeared in Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book “The Selfish Gene.” Dawkins defined a meme as being any sort of idea that spreads from person to person within a…

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Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our…

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Researchers at The University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology have taught robots how to develop their own language. That way, when they're about to deal the finishing blow to…

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Humanity's profound impact on this planet is hard to deny, but is it big enough to merit its own geological epoch? This is the question facing geoscientists gathered in London this…

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Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of…

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by Hito Steyerl What happens to identification at this point? Who can we identify with? Of course, identification is always with an image. But ask anybody whether they’d actually like to…

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The historians of 2061 will want to study the birth of the world wide web. How on earth will they know where to start? Today, historians have to piece together the…

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The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods,…

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A team of engineers has discovered how colonies of ants survive floods by forming themselves into life rafts. The work shows how many simple components can interact to create complex structures…

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In 2000, Roy Cullimore, a microbial ecologist and Charles Pellegrino, scientist and author of Ghosts of the Titanic discovered that the Titanic --which sank in the Atlantic Ocean 97 years ago…

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Just as this is an age of great wealth inequality, it is also an age of great inequality of knowledge or, more exactly, factual information. For all its democratic potential, the…

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It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40 percent of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this…

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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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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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The origin of animals was one of the most astonishing and important transformations in the history of life. From single-celled ancestors, they evolved into a riot of complexity and diversity. An…

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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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In the last decade, human vanity has taken a major hit. Traits once thought to be uniquely, even definingly human have turned up in the repertoire of animal behaviors: tool use,…

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While the Internet is a text-saturated world, reading online screens tends to be significantly different from reading printed text. This review essay examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the…

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Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to be called “Lying for a Living”. On the surviving footage, Brando can be seen…

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Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our…

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Researchers at The University of Queensland and Queensland University of Technology have taught robots how to develop their own language. That way, when they're about to deal the finishing blow to…

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GIFs (the name stands for graphics interchange format and can be pronounced with either a hard or soft G) began life in the mid-'80s, image files so efficiently compressed that sluggish…

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Humanity's profound impact on this planet is hard to deny, but is it big enough to merit its own geological epoch? This is the question facing geoscientists gathered in London this…

Bookmark

Biology used to be about plants, animals and insects, but five great revolutions have changed the way that scientists think about life: the invention of the microscope, the systematic classification of…

Bookmark

by Hito Steyerl What happens to identification at this point? Who can we identify with? Of course, identification is always with an image. But ask anybody whether they’d actually like to…

Bookmark

The historians of 2061 will want to study the birth of the world wide web. How on earth will they know where to start? Today, historians have to piece together the…

Bookmark

The shift that has happened in 40 years which mainly has to do with climate change. Forty years ago, I could say in the Whole Earth Catalog, "we are as gods,…

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Dusty vinyl records, vintage film cameras, rickety typewriters and antiquated recording equipment … these are the creative tools being used by some emerging artists. Pure nostalgia? Or a laudable refusal to…

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Just as this is an age of great wealth inequality, it is also an age of great inequality of knowledge or, more exactly, factual information. For all its democratic potential, the…

Bookmark

It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40 percent of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this…

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…

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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…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

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,…