Daniel Rourke /stream

Bookmark

Of all the buzzy 21st-century tech phrases, “machine learning” threatens to be the most important. Programming computers is slow, but we’re nearing the point where humans give the bots parameters and…

Bookmark

The bartender pouring free drinks glances around with nothing to do as the raucous room full of startup founders and software developers gravitates toward its preferred drug: networking.

Bookmark

Inside the many debates swirling around the rapid rollout of so-called artificial intelligence, there is a relatively obscure skirmish focused on the choice of the word “hallucinate”.

Bookmark

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need…

Bookmark

Is Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” this generation’s “end of history thesis”? For nearly thirty years Francis Fukuyama’s contention that “Western liberal democracy” represents “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” has…

Bookmark

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact. Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers,…

Bookmark

To the well-known political, economic, and cultural revolutions that inaugurated capitalist modernity, we ought to add a fourth: a pharmacological revolution, one that began innocently enough with a variety of foreign…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

Climate change is here. In the midst of the storm, an opportunity arises to break with capitalism and its vicious inequality. Let’s seize it while we can. The alternatives are unthinkable.

Bookmark

Genetic-ancestry tests are having a moment. Look no further than Spotify: On Thursday, the music-streaming service—as in, the service used to fill tedious workdays and DJ parties—launched a collaboration with AncestryDNA.

Bookmark

Veganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years – from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million – 5% of our…

Bookmark

Of all the buzzy 21st-century tech phrases, “machine learning” threatens to be the most important. Programming computers is slow, but we’re nearing the point where humans give the bots parameters and…

Bookmark

This is what happens when you turn the natural world into a profit-making machine. By and Jason W Moore The most telling symbol of the modern era isn’t the automobile or…

Bookmark

Fatbergs, the congealed mass of fat and discarded items that are increasingly blocking Britain’s sewers, are the consequence of the plastic crisis in Britain and contain potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, tests…

Bookmark

When science fiction writers first imagined robot invasions, the idea was that bots would become smart and powerful enough to take over the world by force, whether on their own or…

Bookmark

A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now…

Bookmark

Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery.

Bookmark

The Holocene is dead; welcome to the Anthropocene. Once a controversial stance, the notion that human activities have altered planetary geology adequately enough to warrant the demarcation of another epoch has…

Bookmark

Giant collection of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items called a ‘ticking time bomb’ as large items crumble into micro plastics 13.02 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 4 October 2016…

Bookmark

Among the many stories that can be told about the origins of the environmental movement in the West, perhaps the most common is that it began with the emergence of Romanticism…

Bookmark

When my daughter was little, we played a game on the way to her preschool called Count the Dog Poo. It was a game about counting, as you would play with…

Bookmark

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Edward E. Baptist Basic Books, $35 (cloth)

Bookmark

Of all the buzzy 21st-century tech phrases, “machine learning” threatens to be the most important. Programming computers is slow, but we’re nearing the point where humans give the bots parameters and…

Bookmark

The bartender pouring free drinks glances around with nothing to do as the raucous room full of startup founders and software developers gravitates toward its preferred drug: networking.

Bookmark

Late one recent night, I enlisted GPT-4 to fix my life. I began by soliciting broad-strokes summaries of my journalistic interests and an expedited five-step protocol for breaking in raw-denim jeans…

Bookmark

When we talk about artificial intelligence, we rely on metaphor, as we always do when dealing with something new and unfamiliar. Metaphors are, by their nature, imperfect, but we still need…

Bookmark

Is Mark Fisher’s “capitalist realism” this generation’s “end of history thesis”? For nearly thirty years Francis Fukuyama’s contention that “Western liberal democracy” represents “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” has…

Bookmark

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact. Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers,…

Bookmark

To the well-known political, economic, and cultural revolutions that inaugurated capitalist modernity, we ought to add a fourth: a pharmacological revolution, one that began innocently enough with a variety of foreign…

Bookmark

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…

Bookmark

Climate change is here. In the midst of the storm, an opportunity arises to break with capitalism and its vicious inequality. Let’s seize it while we can. The alternatives are unthinkable.

Bookmark

Genetic-ancestry tests are having a moment. Look no further than Spotify: On Thursday, the music-streaming service—as in, the service used to fill tedious workdays and DJ parties—launched a collaboration with AncestryDNA.

Bookmark

The novella-length piece represents the kind of media commitment that the climate crisis has long deserved but almost never received.

Bookmark

Of all the buzzy 21st-century tech phrases, “machine learning” threatens to be the most important. Programming computers is slow, but we’re nearing the point where humans give the bots parameters and…

Bookmark

Fatbergs, the congealed mass of fat and discarded items that are increasingly blocking Britain’s sewers, are the consequence of the plastic crisis in Britain and contain potentially deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria, tests…

Bookmark

Among the many stories that can be told about the origins of the environmental movement in the West, perhaps the most common is that it began with the emergence of Romanticism…

Bookmark

A NEW commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now…

Bookmark

Steve Huffman, the thirty-three-year-old co-founder and C.E.O. of Reddit, which is valued at six hundred million dollars, was nearsighted until November, 2015, when he arranged to have laser eye surgery.

Bookmark

The Holocene is dead; welcome to the Anthropocene. Once a controversial stance, the notion that human activities have altered planetary geology adequately enough to warrant the demarcation of another epoch has…

Bookmark

Giant collection of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items called a ‘ticking time bomb’ as large items crumble into micro plastics 13.02 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 4 October 2016…

Bookmark

Four decades after the book was published, Limit to Growth’s forecasts have been vindicated by new Australian research. Expect the early stages of global collapse to start appearing soon

Bookmark

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism Edward E. Baptist Basic Books, $35 (cloth)

Bookmark

The decisive violence imposed on life by the capitalist mode of production derives from its quest for radical simplification.