Reality is just a game now

And we’re all losing. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

How Stewart Made Tucker

A world of authentic, post-spin journalism: The dream Jon Stewart spent a decade making real is now America’s waking nightmare. What did he get so wrong? | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

The Secret Life of Leftovers

Cheese, curry, beer: We can thank our ancestors who put food scraps to creative use. What we’re leaving our children is garbage. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Stuck Between Climate Doom and Denial

The failure of a mega-popular critique of climate science shows why we need a third option in the debate. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

The Technocrat's Dilemma

Expert rule is destroying itself. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Why I, a Physician, Write

I remember my first encounter with great literature. Before bedtime, my father would read Great Expectations to me, using different voices for different characters. I remember Pip and Miss Havisham, though I don’t think I fully understood Miss Havisham’s peremptory and eery comma … | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Tech Reform Diminishes Us

Earnest critics of social media are repeating the dehumanizing mistakes that got us here. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Sad Trek – How an exhausted liberalism killed sci-fi’s sunniest franchise

How an exhausted liberalism killed sci-fi’s sunniest franchise | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Reading Ourselves to Death

This essay is not real. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

Hell Is Ourselves

On the creepiness of an Internet that caters to who it thinks we are | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

StarCraft as Statecraft

It’s time for defense strategy to update its favorite gaming metaphors. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 1 year ago

A theory of why we’re all going nuts online

Alan Jacobs spies demons | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Walmart, but for Space

Cheapness isn’t just about rockets — it will change the design of everything we send up. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Covid and the Brittle West – The New Atlantis

The state of exception during the pandemic was not an inevitability. It became an inevitable political reality in those countries that proved unable to take control of events. When rules and routines are inflexibly followed, a moment arrives when they have to be forcefully abando … | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, The New Atlantis revisits Hannah Arendt’s classic 1963 essay about modern science and the human meaning of our forays into space. Five commentators respond to her argument and discuss its relevance today. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

The Myth of Multitasking (2008)

Christine Rosen on doing too much at once | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

How to Fix Social Media

Nicholas Carr on bringing America's spirit of the common good to online governance | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Understanding Heidegger on Technology (2014)

On whether thinking can save us | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Dance Till We Die – Why Covid Security Theater Failed

Why Covid security theater failed | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Defying the Data Priests: On the threat of rule by algorithmic fiat

Matthew B. Crawford on the threat of rule by algorithmic fiat | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

Correlation, Causation, and Confusion. Clearing misconceptions about statistics

Nick Barrowman on some misconceptions about statistics in science and everyday life | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of discovery a 1000 years apart

The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of discovery a thousand years apart | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

The Case Against the Case Against Space

If we had to solve the human condition before we tried anything new, we’d never try anything new. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 2 years ago

The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks

Alan Jacobs on Iain M. Banks's "Culture" novels and the price of bliss. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

At Home with Down Syndrome

In storage at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is the secret to what one professor calls “the first Down Syndrome Association in the history of the world.” In 1982, Dr. Brian Stratford, a specialist in developmental disabilities at the University of Nottingham, suggested in the … | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

“Follow the Science” Is a Cop-Out

How feckless Covid leadership turned us against each other | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Fantasy and the Buffered Self (2014)

Alan Jacobs on how the genre offers re-enchantment without risk | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

From Tech Critique to Ways of Living Neil Postman Was Right. So What?

Neil Postman was right. So what? | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

The Egghead Gap

If America wants to keep China from setting the global course of science, we need a crash program to recruit international talent. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Alexander von Humboldt: A Scientist’s Mind, a Poet’s Soul

On the unified cosmic vision of Alexander von Humboldt, the nineteenth century’s great naturalist-adventurer | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Is our reliance on search engines making us more gullible?

Robert Herritt on how we know what we know, and what to do when experts disagree | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Put not thy trust in Nate Silver

How polls replaced reality | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Shop Class as Soulcraft

Our rejection of craftsmanship wrongly ignores the cognitive, social, and remunerative rewards of skilled manual work, and wrongly assumes that white-collar work always engages the mind. Matthew B. Crawford recounts life as a motorcycle mechanic and makes a case for the manual tr … | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Why the Arabic world turned away from science (2011)

Hillel Ofek on the lost Golden Age and the rejection of reason | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Science as Scorekeeping

On Covid-19, America’s political leaders need to stop acting like spectators and get in the game. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Driverless Cars and the End of History

Bidding farewell to America’s car culture — and its democratic virtues | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

The Mathematician and the Mystic: André and Simone Weil

Simone Weil, her brother André, and truths that do not converge | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Tribalism comes for pandemic science

Can our polarized country act on provisional knowledge? | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Making Technological Miracles

We need creative breakthroughs in energy, medicine, and transportation. How can we plan for them? Great inventions are often unpredictable and serendipitous — and so curiosity-driven research remains essential for technological progress. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

The Analog City and the Digital City

L. M. Sacasas on how online life breaks the old political order | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Why fighting about Covid-19’s fatality rate is pointless

Why fighting about Covid-19’s fatality rate is a distraction | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 3 years ago

Covid-19: Not Like the Flu, Not Like Car Crashes, Not Like

It’s about the spike. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

Is there a plan to end the Covid-19 shutdown?

Yes, the Covid-19 shutdown is necessary — but it won’t work without a vision of how it ends. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

“A Coronavirus Winter”: Interview with Center for Infectious Disease Director

An interview on the state of the pandemic with the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

We All Wear Tinfoil Hats Now

How fears of mind control went from paranoid delusion to conventional wisdom | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

Must Growth Doom the Planet?

Ted Nordhaus on limiting growth in an age of stagnation | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

After Climate Despair [Unpaywalled]

The dream of a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. Energy abundance is our best hope for living well with warming — and reversing it. | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago

Crusoe at the Crossroads

On ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘Lost,’ and why we keep returning to mysterious islands where science blurs with the supernatural | Continue reading


@thenewatlantis.com | 4 years ago