Daniel Rourke /stream

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by Manuel DeLanda The plan of the essay is as follows. I will begin with a few definitions of technical terms ("source code", "compiler", "operating system") which are necessary to follow…

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Read any newspaper or magazine and you will notice the many flavors of the one big question that everyone is asking today. Or you can just stay on the page and…

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Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest…

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A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural…

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A concept-map exploring the Left vs Right political spectrum. A collaboration between David McCandless and information artist Stefanie Posavec, taken from my book The Visual Miscellaneum (out Nov 10th). Of course,…

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For some reasons it seems to be anathema to say that there might be an intrinsic reason for the correlation between educational level and the rejection of religion: atheism takes training,…

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Technology so pervades our culture that it's sobering to consider how poorly we understand it. How do new tools and techniques arise? What principles guide their evolution? And how does their…

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Star Trek has long been described as a cult phenomenon…but is it an actual cult? Some anthropologists think so. Following the example of anthropologist Margaret Mead, they lived among the natives…

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Mediation means that which stands, comes or moves between things otherwise separated or opposed. Serres’s work has never ceased to meditate upon mediation in every possible sense: as arbitration; moderation; mediocrity;…

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I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the…

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by Manuel DeLanda The plan of the essay is as follows. I will begin with a few definitions of technical terms ("source code", "compiler", "operating system") which are necessary to follow…

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by Bertolt Brecht In our society one can invent and perfect discoveries that still have to conquer their market and justify their existence; in other words discoveries that have not been…

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Critics have called alien epic Avatar a version of Dances With Wolves because it's about a white guy going native and becoming a great leader. But Avatar is just the latest…

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A classical, although often implicit, view in social science is that the human brain, unlike that of other animals, is a learning machine which can adapt to essentially any novel cultural…

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Let’s say a new drug appears to be effective in combating a condition like chronic anxiety and is the subject of popular news stories. When the drug enters clinical trials, patients…

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For some reasons it seems to be anathema to say that there might be an intrinsic reason for the correlation between educational level and the rejection of religion: atheism takes training,…

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Technology so pervades our culture that it's sobering to consider how poorly we understand it. How do new tools and techniques arise? What principles guide their evolution? And how does their…

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We know it's insane. We know people will ask why on earth we think that an 1875 British satirical novel is the book you need to read right now—or, for that…

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Mediation means that which stands, comes or moves between things otherwise separated or opposed. Serres’s work has never ceased to meditate upon mediation in every possible sense: as arbitration; moderation; mediocrity;…

Bookmark

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the…