Daniel Rourke /stream

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The set-up for David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly is straightforward enough. The handsome, eccentric scientist Seth (Jeff Goldblum) is trying to perfect a teleportation device.

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You encounter so many people every day, online and off-, that it is almost impossible to be alone. Now, thanks to computers, those people might not even be real.

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Ask yourself the following: Would you feel confident taking an over-the-counter medication if you were 98 percent sure it would work safely? Would you dare to gamble all your savings in…

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Bruce Sterling wasn’t originally meant to be part of the discussion. It was March 13, 2010, in Austin, Texas, and a small group of designers were on stage at the South…

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A proposal to build two huge barriers — one that would connect Norway to Scotland, the other France to England — was described as a warning about the urgency of the…

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Yes, that Charles Murray, who in 1994 co-authored “The Bell Curve,” with Richard J. Herrnstein, arguing in two notorious chapters that I.Q. differences between the races were mostly innate and mostly…

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Go meatless to save the earth! After all, the meat industry contributes 14.

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What does it take to think beyond the human? Can we imagine our human selves in other lives? And should we? While contemporary answers to these questions have highlighted the desirability…

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Of all the weird scenes that populate seventies science-fiction cinema, the most bizarre might be in 1971’s The Omega Man.

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No matter how President Trump’s impeachment trial plays out in the Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the center of the story, the process will change very…

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Afew​ years ago, when it suddenly occurred to us that the internet was a place we could never leave, I began to keep a diary of what it felt like to…

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Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be…

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Levels of inequality have changed dramatically during the course of human evolution: from the social hierarchies of our great ape ancestors to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale…

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A year ago, I came across an article by Stephen Elliott, a writer I’d admired.

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It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable. Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean.

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When humans started to tame dogs, cats, sheep, and cattle, they may have continued a tradition that started with a completely different animal: us.

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In her new book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Ruha Benjamin breaks down the “New Jim Code,” technology design that promises a utopian future but serves racial…

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Onstage at the November 20 Democratic debate, presidential candidate and Universal Basic Income evangelist Andrew Yang used one of his precious minutes of speaking time to casually claim that “data is…

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Calculating the patterns and cycles of the past could lead us to a better understanding of history. Could it also help us prevent a looming crisis? By In its first issue…

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Beginning with the figure of Roko’s Basilisk, a hypothetical vengeful future AI that emerged in online forums, Ana Teixeira Pinto launches her analysis of the psychological state engendered by online interaction…

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In 2007, Kenneth Stanley, a computer scientist at the University of Central Florida, was playing with Picbreeder, a website he and his students had created, when an alien became a race…

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If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some…

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If you’re excited to see Terminator: Dark Fate this week, chances are you’ve seen the first two films starring Sarah Connor. And chances are, when given a say, you prefer to…

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“I don’t care what people say,” asserts Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department and author of one of the most controversial articles in the realm of science last year…

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The set-up for David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly is straightforward enough. The handsome, eccentric scientist Seth (Jeff Goldblum) is trying to perfect a teleportation device.

Bookmark

You encounter so many people every day, online and off-, that it is almost impossible to be alone. Now, thanks to computers, those people might not even be real.

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Updated at 7:43 p.m. on Feb. 25, 2020. In May 1997, a 3-year-old boy developed what at first seemed like the common cold. When his symptoms—sore throat, fever, and cough—persisted for…

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Bruce Sterling wasn’t originally meant to be part of the discussion. It was March 13, 2010, in Austin, Texas, and a small group of designers were on stage at the South…

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Yes, that Charles Murray, who in 1994 co-authored “The Bell Curve,” with Richard J. Herrnstein, arguing in two notorious chapters that I.Q. differences between the races were mostly innate and mostly…

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While technology critics drag technological solutionism in five thousand words or 280 characters, artist and environmental engineer Tega Brain wields solutions against themselves, in the form of objects and installations.

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What does it take to think beyond the human? Can we imagine our human selves in other lives? And should we? While contemporary answers to these questions have highlighted the desirability…

Bookmark

Of all the weird scenes that populate seventies science-fiction cinema, the most bizarre might be in 1971’s The Omega Man.

Bookmark

No matter how President Trump’s impeachment trial plays out in the Senate, one thing is certain: Despite the incontrovertible facts at the center of the story, the process will change very…

Bookmark

Afew​ years ago, when it suddenly occurred to us that the internet was a place we could never leave, I began to keep a diary of what it felt like to…

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As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn’t cascaded into…

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Levels of inequality have changed dramatically during the course of human evolution: from the social hierarchies of our great ape ancestors to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale…

Bookmark

It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable. Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean.

Bookmark

Rosemary Woodhouse has unwrapped a piece of steak from its waxy brown paper. She cuts it in half and drops it into a hot pan. It sizzles. She flips it. She…

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In her new book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Ruha Benjamin breaks down the “New Jim Code,” technology design that promises a utopian future but serves racial…

Bookmark

Onstage at the November 20 Democratic debate, presidential candidate and Universal Basic Income evangelist Andrew Yang used one of his precious minutes of speaking time to casually claim that “data is…

Bookmark

Calculating the patterns and cycles of the past could lead us to a better understanding of history. Could it also help us prevent a looming crisis? By In its first issue…

Bookmark

Beginning with the figure of Roko’s Basilisk, a hypothetical vengeful future AI that emerged in online forums, Ana Teixeira Pinto launches her analysis of the psychological state engendered by online interaction…

Bookmark

On an April afternoon in 1929, a timid-looking man with a broad face appeared at Moscow’s Academy of Communist Education and asked to see a memory specialist. The man, who would…

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If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some…

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“I don’t care what people say,” asserts Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department and author of one of the most controversial articles in the realm of science last year…

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In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, circa 58-50 BC, Julius Caesar reported, in third person, on his conquest of the German and Celtic tribes that unsuccessfully resisted the advances of…