Daniel Rourke /stream

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Algorithms have long adjudicated over vital processes that help to ensure our well-being and survival, from pacemakers that maintain the natural rhythms of the heart, and genetic algorithms that optimise emergency…

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The ‘mimetic faculty’ is an elusive concept, foregrounding a human inclination to mimic or to imitate, to produce symbolic forms, representations and artefacts that mirror and also perhaps transform their objects.

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It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting…

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Steven Levy writes in Wired on the unexpected turn of the Artificial Intelligence revolution: rather than whole artificial minds, it consists of a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would…

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Didja Know? This short story first appeared in Astounding Stories, August 1938, and is the inspiration for the 1951 film The Thing from Another World and 1982's The Thing. The 1982…

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Does this key made using a 3D printer compromise your security? This video demonstrates a plastic bump key for the ABUS E20/E30 6-pin tumbler lock.

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HOLLYWOOD, California—Picture a movie theater, packed for the opening night of a blockbuster film. Hundreds of strangers sit next to each other, transfixed. They tend to blink at the same time.…

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The promise of virtual reality has always been enormous. Put on these goggles, go nowhere, and be transported anywhere. It’s the same escapism peddled by drugs, alcohol, sex, and art —…

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Since Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, the National Cancer Institute has poured some $90 billion into research and treatments. Yet a cure remains elusive.

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One does not have to look far to find intellectuals trained in the humanities, even the social sciences, who feel the need to ‘critique’ the concept of the Anthropocene.

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La Jolla geneticist J. Craig Venter has hired one of the world’s top computer scientists to help him try to prolong and improve people’s lives by deciphering hundreds of thousands of…

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by Ben Woodard /0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as…

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Jonathan Russell Clark sits at his desk, writing an essay about free indirect discourse. Surrounding him are books by authors who employ the technique with considerable skill: Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert,…

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Philosophy of mind and the nature of consciousness are fascinating topics, which recur both here at Scientia Salon [1] and at my former writing outlet, Rationally Speaking [2].

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Between 2009 and 2010, Iran's nuclear program was the target of a devastating cyber attack. A virus, reportedly developed by the American and Israeli governments and known as Stuxnet, took control of…

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Corinna Kern documented the life of George Fowler, a compulsive hoarder. In her photographs is "a closeness between the young woman behind the camera and the old man in front of…

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Corinna Kern: George’s World

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Charles Darwin and Alan Turing, in their different ways, both homed in on the same idea: the existence of competence without comprehension. Francis Crick and James Watson closed their epoch-making paper…

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We must consider the possibility that intelligence, creativity and even consciousness are purely functions of the material world, with human beings as a peculiar kind of computer.

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There are film theories, and then there is Deleuze.

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The Incredible Effects of The Thing, Cinefantastique issue detailing the design and implementation of many of The Thing’s effects sequences. The visuals of both the desolate Antarctic and the ever-morphing alien…

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The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

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In 1952, the UN issued an urgent report warning that American comic books and their sadistic superhero characters had become a threat to world peace: "By undermining or warping the traditional…

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There was plenty of outrage earlier this month when a London storefront revealed sidewalk spikes meant to keep the homeless from getting too cozy. Tags: stream city desire paths list objects…

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Algorithms have long adjudicated over vital processes that help to ensure our well-being and survival, from pacemakers that maintain the natural rhythms of the heart, and genetic algorithms that optimise emergency…

Bookmark

The ‘mimetic faculty’ is an elusive concept, foregrounding a human inclination to mimic or to imitate, to produce symbolic forms, representations and artefacts that mirror and also perhaps transform their objects.

Bookmark

Steven Levy writes in Wired on the unexpected turn of the Artificial Intelligence revolution: rather than whole artificial minds, it consists of a rich bestiary of digital fauna, which few would…

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Does this key made using a 3D printer compromise your security? This video demonstrates a plastic bump key for the ABUS E20/E30 6-pin tumbler lock.

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{I was invited to teach a seminar at City College’s MFA program in Digital & Interdisciplinary Art Practice. This is the syllabus for the course I came up with.

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The promise of virtual reality has always been enormous. Put on these goggles, go nowhere, and be transported anywhere. It’s the same escapism peddled by drugs, alcohol, sex, and art —…

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Since Richard Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, the National Cancer Institute has poured some $90 billion into research and treatments. Yet a cure remains elusive.

Bookmark

One does not have to look far to find intellectuals trained in the humanities, even the social sciences, who feel the need to ‘critique’ the concept of the Anthropocene.

Bookmark

La Jolla geneticist J. Craig Venter has hired one of the world’s top computer scientists to help him try to prolong and improve people’s lives by deciphering hundreds of thousands of…

Bookmark

Published in The New York Review of Science Fiction Issue 218, Vol. 19, No. 2 (October 2006) Some books and authors come into your life at precisely the right moment.

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Jonathan Russell Clark sits at his desk, writing an essay about free indirect discourse. Surrounding him are books by authors who employ the technique with considerable skill: Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert,…

Bookmark

Between 2009 and 2010, Iran's nuclear program was the target of a devastating cyber attack. A virus, reportedly developed by the American and Israeli governments and known as Stuxnet, took control of…

Bookmark

Uvula Audio‘s James Campanella has added a complete reading of H.P. Lovecraft’s “quintessential work of horror” to his podcast feed. In China Miéville’s introduction to the Modern Library paperback edition of…

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Corinna Kern: George’s World

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Charles Darwin and Alan Turing, in their different ways, both homed in on the same idea: the existence of competence without comprehension. Francis Crick and James Watson closed their epoch-making paper…

Bookmark

We must consider the possibility that intelligence, creativity and even consciousness are purely functions of the material world, with human beings as a peculiar kind of computer.

Bookmark

There are film theories, and then there is Deleuze.

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In 2007 game designer and Second Life CEO Rod Humble wrote a video game called The Marriage[1]. The player’s goal in The Marriage is to prevent two squares from shrinking or…

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The United States has a trash problem. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces more than 4 pounds of garbage per day. That’s more than double the…

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There was plenty of outrage earlier this month when a London storefront revealed sidewalk spikes meant to keep the homeless from getting too cozy. Tags: stream city desire paths list objects…

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Given that mediation is, like time (or, indeed, life itself), both invisible and indivisible, any attempt at its representation must ultimately fail. It seems that the intellect can therefore understand photographs…