Daniel Rourke /stream

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There have been plenty of conferences about the future of publishing, but few, if any, have been aimed at writers. The Literary Consultancy remedied this recently with a two-day conference –…

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Huddled within one of the most influential theories of human desire and the destiny of democracy is an image of history and its future. This image is of a horizon. In…

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Much has been written about the ‘crisis of capitalism’ and the associated events known, for short, as the ‘Arab Spring’, ‘student protests’, ‘Occupy’ and ‘August riots’. Yet to what extent does…

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Virtual worlds. Terraforming complexes. Star-spanning generation ships. Science fiction is chock-full of massive technological artifacts born of humankind's desire to create, to explore. What do they all have in common? They…

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Everyone seems to be talking about the New Aesthetic lately. Have you seen it? It might possibly have shattered records of attention credits/takes in its opening weekend. In its tumblr form,…

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In the very first lines of “Exegesis” Dick writes, “We see the Logos addressing the many living entities.” Logos is an important concept that litters the pages of “Exegesis.” It is…

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Revolutions are often thought of in terms of conflict and disorder, but they just as often come on waves of peaceful obsolescence. The old way of doing things is allowed to…

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I’m more hesitant about the idea that neuroscience will kill the idea of ‘the self.’ I think it might be a good thing if it did, but some ideas are recalcitrant…

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Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own. To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the…

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For the past dozen years, several distinguished thinkers about law and technology have warned that a golden age of Internet freedom may be about to close. The most influential alarm-ringer has…

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There’s a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs—present company included—don’t escape their wrath. But in fact…

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What is a book, really? For that matter, what is an article, a record, or a movie? For each of these, I have a very clear picture in my mind that…

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Interview with Nick Bostrom Our long track record of survival–humans have been around for about 100,000 years–gives us some assurance that the natural risks have been rather small. If they have…

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There have been plenty of conferences about the future of publishing, but few, if any, have been aimed at writers. The Literary Consultancy remedied this recently with a two-day conference –…

Bookmark

Huddled within one of the most influential theories of human desire and the destiny of democracy is an image of history and its future. This image is of a horizon. In…

Bookmark

Virtual worlds. Terraforming complexes. Star-spanning generation ships. Science fiction is chock-full of massive technological artifacts born of humankind's desire to create, to explore. What do they all have in common? They…

Bookmark

In the very first lines of “Exegesis” Dick writes, “We see the Logos addressing the many living entities.” Logos is an important concept that litters the pages of “Exegesis.” It is…

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As paper and dyes deteriorate, acetate degenerates, and the minute magnetic flux recorded in analog tape fades with the ages, how do we preserve cultural artifacts like photographs, music, and film?…

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I’m more hesitant about the idea that neuroscience will kill the idea of ‘the self.’ I think it might be a good thing if it did, but some ideas are recalcitrant…

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Before we can understand an alien civilization, it might be useful to understand our own. To help in this task, anthropologist Kathryn Denning of York University in Toronto, Canada studies the…

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When Philip K. Dick died in 1982 of a series of strokes brought on by years of overwork and amphetamine abuse, he was seen within the science fiction genre as a…

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What will the digital world look like in ten years?  The trends are already clear. Capacities in bandwidth and storage will continue on their exponential path.  The explosion in the volume…

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There’s a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs—present company included—don’t escape their wrath. But in fact…

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Interview with Nick Bostrom Our long track record of survival–humans have been around for about 100,000 years–gives us some assurance that the natural risks have been rather small. If they have…

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We will always debate: the quality of the paper, the pixel density of the display; the cloth used on covers, the interface for highlighting; location by page, location by paragraph. But…