Daniel Rourke /stream

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Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be…

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As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn’t cascaded into…

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Levels of inequality have changed dramatically during the course of human evolution: from the social hierarchies of our great ape ancestors to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale…

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It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable. Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean.

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Rosemary Woodhouse has unwrapped a piece of steak from its waxy brown paper. She cuts it in half and drops it into a hot pan. It sizzles. She flips it. She…

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When humans started to tame dogs, cats, sheep, and cattle, they may have continued a tradition that started with a completely different animal: us.

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Onstage at the November 20 Democratic debate, presidential candidate and Universal Basic Income evangelist Andrew Yang used one of his precious minutes of speaking time to casually claim that “data is…

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Among the white nationalists on 4chan’s “politically incorrect,” or /pol/ board and on “alt-right” Twitter — or anywhere you might run into a picture of Pepe the Frog — there is…

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Calculating the patterns and cycles of the past could lead us to a better understanding of history. Could it also help us prevent a looming crisis? By In its first issue…

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Beginning with the figure of Roko’s Basilisk, a hypothetical vengeful future AI that emerged in online forums, Ana Teixeira Pinto launches her analysis of the psychological state engendered by online interaction…

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On an April afternoon in 1929, a timid-looking man with a broad face appeared at Moscow’s Academy of Communist Education and asked to see a memory specialist. The man, who would…

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If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some…

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If you’re excited to see Terminator: Dark Fate this week, chances are you’ve seen the first two films starring Sarah Connor. And chances are, when given a say, you prefer to…

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“I don’t care what people say,” asserts Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department and author of one of the most controversial articles in the realm of science last year…

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In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, circa 58-50 BC, Julius Caesar reported, in third person, on his conquest of the German and Celtic tribes that unsuccessfully resisted the advances of…

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Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be…

Bookmark

As the decade began, there were rea­sons to be optimistic: America had elected its first black president, and despite a global recession just two years earlier, the world hadn’t cascaded into…

Bookmark

A year ago, I came across an article by Stephen Elliott, a writer I’d admired.

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It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable. Unless you are given to chronic anxiety or suffer from nihilistic despair, you probably haven’t spent much time contemplating the bottom of the ocean.

Bookmark

When humans started to tame dogs, cats, sheep, and cattle, they may have continued a tradition that started with a completely different animal: us.

Bookmark

In her new book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Ruha Benjamin breaks down the “New Jim Code,” technology design that promises a utopian future but serves racial…

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Among the white nationalists on 4chan’s “politically incorrect,” or /pol/ board and on “alt-right” Twitter — or anywhere you might run into a picture of Pepe the Frog — there is…

Bookmark

Calculating the patterns and cycles of the past could lead us to a better understanding of history. Could it also help us prevent a looming crisis? By In its first issue…

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In 2007, Kenneth Stanley, a computer scientist at the University of Central Florida, was playing with Picbreeder, a website he and his students had created, when an alien became a race…

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On an April afternoon in 1929, a timid-looking man with a broad face appeared at Moscow’s Academy of Communist Education and asked to see a memory specialist. The man, who would…

Bookmark

If you want to appear very profound and convince people to take you seriously, but have nothing of value to say, there is a tried and tested method. First, take some…

Bookmark

If you’re excited to see Terminator: Dark Fate this week, chances are you’ve seen the first two films starring Sarah Connor. And chances are, when given a say, you prefer to…

Bookmark

“I don’t care what people say,” asserts Avi Loeb, chairman of Harvard University’s astronomy department and author of one of the most controversial articles in the realm of science last year…

Bookmark

In his Commentaries on the Gallic War, circa 58-50 BC, Julius Caesar reported, in third person, on his conquest of the German and Celtic tribes that unsuccessfully resisted the advances of…

Bookmark

Donna Haraway famously pronounced, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” in her influential A Cyborg Manifesto.