Daniel Rourke /stream

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We humans are changing. We have become so intertwined with what we have created that we are no longer separate from it. We have outgrown the distinction between the natural and…

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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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To the computer scientist Leslie Valiant, “machine learning” is redundant. In his opinion, a toddler fumbling with a rubber ball and a deep-learning network classifying cat photos are both learning; calling…

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Samim Winiger spends a lot of his time playing around with neural networks, primitive artificial brains trained to autonomously run through algorithms for some kind of output, whether image recognition or…

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Contra-Internet engages the emerging militancies and subversions of “the Internet,” such as the global proliferation of autonomous mesh networks, encryption tactics, and darknets.

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You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. To kill spam, email filters might need to act a bit more like ants.

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Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil famously and accurately predicted that a computer would beat a man at chess by 1998, that technologies that help spread information would accelerate the collapse…

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Anthropologist danah boyd (uncapitalization hers) is the author of It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (Yale University Press). In May, she told reason three ways kids find privacy online.…

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Bitcoin is giving banks a run for their money. Now the same technology threatens to eradicate social networks, stock markets, even national governments.

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Astronauts on a routine repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope find themselves coping with more than they bargained for in the pulse-pounding opening sequence of Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar-winning film, Gravity.…

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Late one night last August, on the chalk downlands of southern England, Paul Kingsnorth stood in a field beside an old-growth forest, two yurts and a composting toilet. Kingsnorth is 41,…

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Yearly reminder: unless you're over 60, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia. Here you go. An always-on, pervasive computer network offers addictive levels of immersion…

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The feather original evolved for regulation of temperature, but then evolved for flight. In 1942 a scientist at Raytheon was testing a magnetron, a key component of radar, and noticed that…

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“Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments and to integrate the individual into a technological world” (Ellul xvii). How might future research into digital…

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We humans are changing. We have become so intertwined with what we have created that we are no longer separate from it. We have outgrown the distinction between the natural and…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

According to a new study, humankind is now entering the “Age of Plastic”. The research investigates the evidence that we are living in the Anthropocene, a time in which humanity is the…

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Contra-Internet engages the emerging militancies and subversions of “the Internet,” such as the global proliferation of autonomous mesh networks, encryption tactics, and darknets.

Bookmark

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. To kill spam, email filters might need to act a bit more like ants.

Bookmark

Author, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil famously and accurately predicted that a computer would beat a man at chess by 1998, that technologies that help spread information would accelerate the collapse…

Bookmark

Astronauts on a routine repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope find themselves coping with more than they bargained for in the pulse-pounding opening sequence of Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar-winning film, Gravity.…

Bookmark

Late one night last August, on the chalk downlands of southern England, Paul Kingsnorth stood in a field beside an old-growth forest, two yurts and a composting toilet. Kingsnorth is 41,…

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In this second of three posts on exaptation I am going to continue to build on reporting discussions and ideas that came out of the Durham conference. In the final post…

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The feather original evolved for regulation of temperature, but then evolved for flight. In 1942 a scientist at Raytheon was testing a magnetron, a key component of radar, and noticed that…

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“Propaganda is called upon to solve problems created by technology, to play on maladjustments and to integrate the individual into a technological world” (Ellul xvii). How might future research into digital…

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Metaphor wants to be… ‘[...] metaphors work to change people’s minds. Orators have known this since Demosthenes. [...] But there’s precious little evidence that they tell you what people think. [...]…