Daniel Rourke /stream

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In this text, we introduce Txtblock, a decentralized tool for publishing and distribution of digital text in a format called the block—a squarely defined, eternally immutable unit of information. The block…

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Entrusting your money to a bank once seemed strange and risky. Similarly, entrusting all of your data to a company and letting its algorithms build a detailed model of you from…

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Like many of you, I suspect, I have a love hate relationship with the internet. I love the access it gives me to all sorts of information, and how it connects…

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When Michael Haas, a former senior airman with the US air force, looks back on the missions he flew over Afghanistan and other conflict zones in a six-year career operating military…

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I believe that the present century is the most precarious in which humanity has ever lived. On the one hand, certain emerging technologies are placing an ever-greater amount of power in…

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While humanity continues to become more reliant on technology swipe by swipe, the computers at our fingertips are becoming smarter – so smart, that they might just get fed up of…

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It’s 7 AM, April 13th, 2025. Your smart clock rouses you from a dreamless sleep and you climb from bed as your house comes to life. The bathroom light turns itself…

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Parents already put their children under intense pressure to compete in the world. Will gene editing make it worse?

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Previously, previously.

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An Open Access anthology edited by Matteo Pasquinelli forthcoming (Fall 2015) for Meson Press, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

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In an introduction to her 1969 science-fiction masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin sought to correct the assumption that science fiction is about the future.

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Worldbuilding is the art of creating an alternate universe where the rules of present-day Earth life don't apply, and you have been appreciating that art for as long as you've been…

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Paintings by the masters da Vinci, Rembrandt, Goya, and Caravaggio are often accepted as absolute works. Today, we use mobile devices to capture these images, compressing them onto tiny screens, and…

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McKenzie Wark gets at some very important issues in what we might call “the ontology of the Anthropocene” in this review of Jason Moore’s book Capitalism in the Web of Life.

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Anna Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of Santa Cruz, California and the Nils Bohr professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she heads the Living in the Anthropocene research…

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Would you want to inherit your friends' stuff? Your valuables might mean just as little Look around the homes of loved ones whose objects you might at some future date have…

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Hayden (not his real name, for reasons that will become obvious) is 18 years old and he will never forget the moment when he first realized he was a necrophile. He…

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My friend June Thunderstorm and I once spent a half an hour sitting in a meadow by a mountain lake, watching an inchworm dangle from the top of a stalk of…

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In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so.

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Skip Article Header. Skip to: Start of Article. In the mid-’90s, a computer program called Chinook beat the world’s top player at the game of checkers. Three years later, to much…

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The second post in our forum on Nick and Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future, from Steven Shaviro. Steven is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. He blogs at The…

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The U.S. military has always been the one place in government with a plan, forever in preparation mode and ready to yank a blueprint off the shelf for almost any contingency.…

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 The oil major Shell has a blisteringly slick and seductive new advert that extols the virtues of gas as a ‘transition fuel’ (which it isn’t).  As a piece of propaganda, it…

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Many people think of Facebook as just the big blue app, or even as the website, but in recent years we’ve been building a family of apps and services that provide…

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In this text, we introduce Txtblock, a decentralized tool for publishing and distribution of digital text in a format called the block—a squarely defined, eternally immutable unit of information. The block…

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Entrusting your money to a bank once seemed strange and risky. Similarly, entrusting all of your data to a company and letting its algorithms build a detailed model of you from…

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A strawberry Christmas cake, sexy pants, a pool table, three red jet planes, a hippy bandana, a dog sled, a jetpack, a pair of Adidas trainers, a Tudor throne, a bullet…

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When Michael Haas, a former senior airman with the US air force, looks back on the missions he flew over Afghanistan and other conflict zones in a six-year career operating military…

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While humanity continues to become more reliant on technology swipe by swipe, the computers at our fingertips are becoming smarter – so smart, that they might just get fed up of…

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In the May 15, 2014, edition of the journal Nature, Floyd Romesberg’s chemistry lab at San Diego’s Scripps Research Institute published a paper titled “A Semi-Synthetic Organism with an Expanded Genetic…

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Parents already put their children under intense pressure to compete in the world. Will gene editing make it worse?

Bookmark

Previously, previously.

Bookmark

An Open Access anthology edited by Matteo Pasquinelli forthcoming (Fall 2015) for Meson Press, Leuphana University Lüneburg.

Bookmark

In an introduction to her 1969 science-fiction masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin sought to correct the assumption that science fiction is about the future.

Bookmark

Worldbuilding is an essential part of any work of fiction. But especially for science fiction or fantasy, it's the lifeblood of storytelling. But when worldbuilding fails, it can wreck your whole…

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Paintings by the masters da Vinci, Rembrandt, Goya, and Caravaggio are often accepted as absolute works. Today, we use mobile devices to capture these images, compressing them onto tiny screens, and…

Bookmark

Anna Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of Santa Cruz, California and the Nils Bohr professor at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she heads the Living in the Anthropocene research…

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Kaylene Kau from Taipei made the remarkable invention as part of a design school project. The limb would be able to grip many different objects by curling up with the help…

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Hayden (not his real name, for reasons that will become obvious) is 18 years old and he will never forget the moment when he first realized he was a necrophile. He…

Bookmark

My friend June Thunderstorm and I once spent a half an hour sitting in a meadow by a mountain lake, watching an inchworm dangle from the top of a stalk of…

Bookmark

In many ways, computers are becoming invisible and will continue to do so.

Bookmark

Skip Article Header. Skip to: Start of Article. In the mid-’90s, a computer program called Chinook beat the world’s top player at the game of checkers. Three years later, to much…

Bookmark

It is possible that the climate wars have already started. The ‘aridity line’ is usually considered to be 200mm of annual rainfall. Below that, you have desert.

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The U.S. military has always been the one place in government with a plan, forever in preparation mode and ready to yank a blueprint off the shelf for almost any contingency.…

Bookmark

Many people think of Facebook as just the big blue app, or even as the website, but in recent years we’ve been building a family of apps and services that provide…

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Your future windows, walls, and possibly boats will be made of ants — or at least of an ant-like substance. New research shows why ants classify as both a solid and…