Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

Bookmark

According to the late Harvard University biologist Ernst W. Mayr, the greatest evolutionary theorist since Charles Darwin, “species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated…

Bookmark

The notion of SHEARING LAYERS is one of the centerpieces of Brand's How Buildings Learn [Brand 1994]. Brand, in turn synthesized his ideas from a variety of sources, including British designer…

Bookmark

It used to be so simple. A book had an author; a film, a screenwriter and director; a piece of music, a composer and performer; a painting or sculpture, an artist;…

Bookmark

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created…

Bookmark

As digital screens proliferate and people move from print to pixel, how will the act of reading change? America was founded on the written word. Its roots spring from documents—the Constitution,…

Bookmark

Because we perceive print and electronic media differently. Because Marshall McLuhan was right about some things. In case you don't recall one of the more influential thinkers of the late 20th…

Bookmark

“THE point of books is to combat loneliness,” David Foster Wallace observes near the beginning of “Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself,” David Lipsky’s recently published, book-length interview with…

Bookmark

Sometimes it's really hard to let go. Like that vinyl collection you've got stashed away in the attic or those VHS cassettes of movies that you've already replaced on DVD that…

Bookmark

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with…

Bookmark

A recent study provides intriguing information about the neural dynamics underlying behavioral changes associated with the development of new problem solving strategies. The research... supports the idea of "a-ha" moments in…

Bookmark

The genomes of most modern humans are 1–4% Neanderthal — a result of interbreeding with the close relatives that went extinct 30,000 years ago, according to work by an international group…

Bookmark

A proposal to change the formal name of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has significant implications for research in the life sciences.. Even if you haven’t worked directly with Drosophila…

Bookmark

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about…

Bookmark

The most familiar ideas of geometry were inspired by an ancient vision — a vision of the world as flat. From parallel lines that never meet, to the Pythagorean theorem discussed…

Bookmark

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History is one the most intelligent, stimulating, and rewarding books I have read in a long time - it even surpasses De Landa's previous War in…

Bookmark

Is our species, Homo sapiens sapiens, the first cyborg species? Gizmodo/New Scientist has a fascinating article up about how humans evolved as a result of technology. Timothy Taylor, an anthropologist and…

Bookmark

Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simple IT WAS a speech that changed…

Bookmark

The UK government is said to have set in motion a law change that will prevent the Pope from being arrested when he visits the country in September. Officials in Whitehall…

Bookmark

It used to be so simple. A book had an author; a film, a screenwriter and director; a piece of music, a composer and performer; a painting or sculpture, an artist;…

Bookmark

This Web-only article is a special rich-media presentation of the feature, "12 Events That Will Change Everything," which appears in the June 2010 issue of Scientific American. The presentation was created…

Bookmark

As digital screens proliferate and people move from print to pixel, how will the act of reading change? America was founded on the written word. Its roots spring from documents—the Constitution,…

Bookmark

Because we perceive print and electronic media differently. Because Marshall McLuhan was right about some things. In case you don't recall one of the more influential thinkers of the late 20th…

Bookmark

Look closely at what you're reading right now. See those little spaces between the words? They may look unimportant, but the invention of word spaces, back in the Middle Ages, changed…

Bookmark

Sometimes it's really hard to let go. Like that vinyl collection you've got stashed away in the attic or those VHS cassettes of movies that you've already replaced on DVD that…

Bookmark

In the late 1950s, psychologist Milton Rokeach was gripped by an eccentric plan. He gathered three psychiatric patients, each with the delusion that they were Jesus Christ, to live together for…

Bookmark

A recent study provides intriguing information about the neural dynamics underlying behavioral changes associated with the development of new problem solving strategies. The research... supports the idea of "a-ha" moments in…

Bookmark

The genomes of most modern humans are 1–4% Neanderthal — a result of interbreeding with the close relatives that went extinct 30,000 years ago, according to work by an international group…

Bookmark

A proposal to change the formal name of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has significant implications for research in the life sciences.. Even if you haven’t worked directly with Drosophila…

Bookmark

Traditionally, publishers have sold books to stores, with the wholesale price for hardcovers set at fifty per cent of the cover price. Authors are paid royalties at a rate of about…

Bookmark

ow does the character of the scientist differ from that of the humanist? The past century has seen an acceleration in the “scientization” of the humanities. The roots of this trend,…

Bookmark

The most familiar ideas of geometry were inspired by an ancient vision — a vision of the world as flat. From parallel lines that never meet, to the Pythagorean theorem discussed…

Bookmark

When Robinson Crusoe was stranded on a tropical island he did pretty well for himself, all things considered. But to the rest of the world he was as good as dead.…