Daniel Rourke /stream

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Modern technology seems always to have been judged according to its utility for human beings. To the extent that technologies have been viewed as tools, instruments, or prostheses for human use, and thus under human control, they have…

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Could we stop worshipping rich men who are jerks? On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, took to Twitter once again with bizarre comments, saying how “strange” it is that the cave diver who rescued the…

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The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers. Mr. Hyman is an economic historian.

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Undiagnosed by the mainstream media and much of the academic community, a major intellectual renewal is underway across the left. It is energetic and tech-savvy, building platforms such as Novara Media.

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In 2006 a man walked into an internet cafe in Kassel, Germany, and shot dead Halit Yozgat, a 21-year-old member of the Turkish-German family who owned it. It was the ninth in a series of racist killings by…

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Is civilization good for us? Has it made us any happier?

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Earlier this year I went to an event in Austin, Texas, billed as a sneak preview of the evolution of our species.

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There are good reasons to worry about the future of humanity. Do we have a future, and if so, how much and what kind? For most people, it’s easier to feel these existential concerns for our species than…

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The end of the world is a growth industry. You can almost feel Armageddon in the air: from survivalist and ‘prepper’ websites (survivopedia.com, doomandbloom.net, prepforshtf.

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Glitch art resonates with the increasingly complex love-hate relationship humans have with technology. Errors, and by extension the changes, that can occur within software source code and data can provide a fertile foundation for the imagination.

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One of the big trends we’ve seen over the last five years is automation. At the same time, we’re also seeing more intelligence built into tools we already have, like phones and computers. Where do you see this…

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Humans invented it—and not that long ago. How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers and other erudite scholars with endless explanations.

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Throughout history, the world’s greatest minds have been obsessed with immortality. The scientists and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley are no exception “I’ve already lowered my biological age and upgraded my IQ,” says Silicon valley entrepreneur Dave Asprey.

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Fig. 1: Illustration for Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror (1868-1869). Marco Saccaperni, 2011. I am filthy [Je suis sale]—writes Lautréamont—I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit.

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Trevor Paglen is a photographer, writer and investigator. His work takes aim at the U.S. government’s network of secret facilities and programs that have burgeoned since September 11; as he puts it, this means that “there is very…

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If the transhumanists have their way, technology will, slowly but surely, erase metaphorical and physical borders.

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When I read Donna Haraway's Manifesto for Cyborgs in 1989, I was intrigued and inspired. Here was a piece that resonated with my political, feminist and moral values.

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The things we create define us, as a culture and as a species. Yet, so often, as we hurtle into the future, our creations seem to take on a life of their own.

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Last year, a man in an exoskeleton kicked off the Men’s World Cup. Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old from Brazil, was outfitted by a team of scientists from the Walk Again Project with a complex framework of braces and…

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Modern technology seems always to have been judged according to its utility for human beings. To the extent that technologies have been viewed as tools, instruments, or prostheses for human use, and thus under human control, they have…

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Could we stop worshipping rich men who are jerks? On Tuesday, Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla, took to Twitter once again with bizarre comments, saying how “strange” it is that the cave diver who rescued the…

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I wonder if the reason we keep on cycling back to hope about cool things like VR is that for all the tech news and our fetishizing about our touch devices, we’re still a little disappointed in the…

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Undiagnosed by the mainstream media and much of the academic community, a major intellectual renewal is underway across the left. It is energetic and tech-savvy, building platforms such as Novara Media.

Bookmark

In 2006 a man walked into an internet cafe in Kassel, Germany, and shot dead Halit Yozgat, a 21-year-old member of the Turkish-German family who owned it. It was the ninth in a series of racist killings by…

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A few days ago, I came across an old post on the Web site Bored Panda called “10+ Times People Accidentally Found Their Doppelgängers in Museums and Couldn’t Believe Their Eyes.” The post consisted of around thirty photos…

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Earlier this year I went to an event in Austin, Texas, billed as a sneak preview of the evolution of our species.

Bookmark

There are good reasons to worry about the future of humanity. Do we have a future, and if so, how much and what kind? For most people, it’s easier to feel these existential concerns for our species than…

Bookmark

The end of the world is a growth industry. You can almost feel Armageddon in the air: from survivalist and ‘prepper’ websites (survivopedia.com, doomandbloom.net, prepforshtf.

Bookmark

Monkeys have been shown to mourn a robot baby they accepted as one of their own. In a new BBC show, Spy In The Wild, the monkeys gather around the artificial creature and appear to go into a…

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Glitch art resonates with the increasingly complex love-hate relationship humans have with technology. Errors, and by extension the changes, that can occur within software source code and data can provide a fertile foundation for the imagination.

Bookmark

Humans invented it—and not that long ago. How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers and other erudite scholars with endless explanations.

Bookmark

Human-level intelligence is familiar in biological hardware – you’re using it now. Science and technology seem to be converging, from several directions, on the possibility of similar intelligence in non-biological systems.

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Fig. 1: Illustration for Lautréamont’s Les Chants de Maldoror (1868-1869). Marco Saccaperni, 2011. I am filthy [Je suis sale]—writes Lautréamont—I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit.

Bookmark

Trevor Paglen is a photographer, writer and investigator. His work takes aim at the U.S. government’s network of secret facilities and programs that have burgeoned since September 11; as he puts it, this means that “there is very…

Bookmark

If the transhumanists have their way, technology will, slowly but surely, erase metaphorical and physical borders.

Bookmark

We humans are changing. We have become so intertwined with what we have created that we are no longer separate from it. We have outgrown the distinction between the natural and the artificial. We are what we make.

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The things we create define us, as a culture and as a species. Yet, so often, as we hurtle into the future, our creations seem to take on a life of their own.

Bookmark

Last year, a man in an exoskeleton kicked off the Men’s World Cup. Juliano Pinto, a 29-year-old from Brazil, was outfitted by a team of scientists from the Walk Again Project with a complex framework of braces and…

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Silicon Valley’s sunny outlook on technology and opportunity ignores systematic inequalities. Just over a century ago, an electric company in Minnesota took out a full-page newspaper advertisement and listed 1,000 uses for electricity.