Even before the idea of climate change took hold, sci-fi began to think of the planet as something that preceded our species and could conceivably continue without us. | Continue reading
During WWI the act of hearing was recast as a tactical activity — one that could determine human and even national survival. | Continue reading
From literature to films and advertising, when it comes to translation, the opportunities for misinterpretation are rife. | Continue reading
For nearly two decades, French sound artist Yannick Dauby has journeyed all over Taiwan capturing the songs of frogs. | Continue reading
In a city fixated on public health and order, a viral extreme sport offers a challenge to the status quo. | Continue reading
Linguistic and cognitive anthropologist Stephen Chrisomalis reckons with numbers and the mind. | Continue reading
Learn how to perform a deep-learning side-channels attack using TensorFlow to recover AES cryptographic keys from a hardware device power traces, step by step. | Continue reading
Facebook has developed a machine learning system that can recognize speech without the need for transcribed data.. | Continue reading
To measure was to apprehend and be made accountable, and nowhere was this more resonant than in the identification and classification of criminals. | Continue reading
Two D&D experts discuss the influences on the world’s most popular role-playing game, from pulp magazines to fantasy fiction. | Continue reading
A nation that identifies itself with nature begins to fall apart when it can no longer agree on what nature is. | Continue reading
Experience is in unexpected places, including in all animals, large and small, and perhaps even in brute matter itself. | Continue reading
The sublime underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic. | Continue reading
Nearly consigned to oblivion, Sequoyah’s numerals can be seen as evidence for the ongoing capacity and tendency for humans to develop new numerical notations. | Continue reading
Experience is in unexpected places, including in all animals, large and small, and perhaps even in brute matter itself. | Continue reading
A glimpse of an alternative economic and industrial history and future, in which the Luddites were successful in their battle against alienating technology. | Continue reading
An illustrated guide to the often-humble final resting places of famous architects, from Alvar Aalto to Frank Lloyd Wright. | Continue reading
Our built-in biases help explain our post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. | Continue reading
Children today are the very first generation of citizens to be datafied from before birth. The social and political consequences of this historical transformation have yet to be seen. | Continue reading
Over the course of the 20th century, capitalism preserved its momentum by molding the ordinary person into a consumer with an unquenchable thirst for more stuff. | Continue reading
From the ancient Greeks to the 17th century, a terrestrial phenomenon baffled scientists: Where did the birds go in winter? | Continue reading
An excerpt from the science fiction master's memoir “Highcastle: A Remembrance." | Continue reading
Many of our most influential experiences are shared with and, according to a growing body of cognitive science research, partly shaped by other people. | Continue reading
Three international security experts chart the rise and fall of radiological weapons programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. | Continue reading
The original game is at the root of a rich design tradition, one that goes well beyond detailed graphics and fluid controls. | Continue reading
While word-finding failures can be taken as evidence of memory problems, they may not be harbingers of befuddlement after all. | Continue reading
Controlling pollutions through disinfection, rather than preventing them outright, marked a critical feature of the chemical revolution that crested in the 1770s. | Continue reading
The El Rancho, a self-contained and luxurious resort built along a busted-up highway in 1941, set the tone for the Las Vegas Strip. | Continue reading
Whether they are tools, toys, or mirror reflections, external objects temporarily become part of who we are all the time. | Continue reading
The fever around data bunkers, manifested in the desire to secure or defend data, is in fact a melancholic attachment to the data. | Continue reading
The Oaxacan vision of community, indigenous rights, and autonomy from which Telecomunicaciones Indígenas Comunitarias has emerged can be tied to a far more familiar story: that of the Zapatista indigenous rebellion. | Continue reading
The system of scientific communication appears to be more fragile than was once believed. | Continue reading
It is only in the last couple of centuries that we have begun to grasp that our existence might one day cease to exist forever. | Continue reading
Reading linguistic thought directly from the brain has brought us closer to answering an age-old question — and has opened the door to many more. | Continue reading
A host of studies examining animals in their ecological environments suggest that they have evolved to use numbers in order to exploit food sources, avoid predators, and reproduce. | Continue reading
“In effect the single word is a new reading process; like electricity — instant and continuous.” | Continue reading
Urban designer Eran Ben-Joseph charts the evolution of the humble parking lot. | Continue reading
Opinion | Small businesses are not the engine of job growth, but that hasn't stopped small-is-beautiful advocates from continually making the claim. | Continue reading
I checked out the scene at this burgeoning international conference. Here's what I learned about protecting my privacy online. | Continue reading
A wave of statistical enthusiasm, coupled with new technologies, paved the way for data visualization that laid the foundations for social reform in 19th-century Britain. | Continue reading
As the fate of the USPS hangs in the balance, postal scholar Ryan Ellis looks back at its creation and reveals how the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 transformed postal politics for good — and for ill. | Continue reading
A handy guide to distinguishing the notoriously slippery concept from its distant cousins coincidence, satire, parody, and paradox. | Continue reading
A combination of greed, colonial mismanagement, and gross incompetence has brought Nauru, once dubbed ‘Pleasant Island,’ to the brink of collapse. | Continue reading
If evolution is seen as the study of unseen development, the camera provided the illusion of quantifiable benchmarks, an irresistible proposition for the advocates of eugenics. | Continue reading
Recycling may be an imperfect solution for an imperfect world, but it is no less valuable as a point of potential environmental engagement. | Continue reading
A Google researcher looks into the mind of a computer. | Continue reading
Against the grim background of the Covid-19 catastrophe, there is some small cause for hope in the current renewal of enthusiasm for cycling. | Continue reading