Society
essay
Space exploration
The skyhook solution
Space junk surrounds Earth, posing a dangerous threat. But there is a way to turn the debris into opportunity
Angelos Alfatzis
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’
9 minutes
video
Future of technology
Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system
6 minutes
essay
Space exploration
The final ethical frontier
Earthbound exploration was plagued with colonialism, exploitation and extraction. Can we hope to make space any different?
Philip Ball
video
Future of technology
Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us
23 minutes
essay
Music
Give the drummer some
As AI drum machines embrace humanising imperfections, what does this mean for ‘real’ drummers and the soul of music?
Jack Stilgoe
video
Film and visual culture
With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy
9 minutes
video
Art
What does an AI make of what it sees in a contemporary art museum?
15 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
Producing food while restoring the planet – a glimpse of farming in the future
7 minutes
essay
The environment
The power of shit
Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it
Lina Zeldovich
video
Technology and the self
When an AI rejects him for life insurance, Mitch wonders if he can escape his fate
7 minutes
essay
Future of technology
Learn from machine learning
The world is a black box full of extreme specificity: it might be predictable but that doesn’t mean it is understandable
David Weinberger
essay
Stories and literature
The cliché writes back
Machine-written literature might offend your tastes but until the dawn of Romanticism most writers were just as formulaic
Yohei Igarashi
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Algorithms are sensitive. People are specific. We should exploit their respective strengths
36 minutes
video
Future of technology
Tech companies shroud their algorithms in secrecy. It’s time to pry open the black box
4 minutes
essay
Future of technology
How vulnerable is the world?
Sooner or later a technology capable of wiping out human civilisation might be invented. How far would we go to stop it?
Nick Bostrom & Matthew van der Merwe
essay
Technology and the self
Zoom and gloom
Sitting in a videoconference is a uniformly crap experience. Instead of corroding our humanity, let’s design tools to enhance it
Robert O’Toole
video
Technology and the self
A handful of executives control the ‘attention economy’. Time for attentive resistance
4 minutes
essay
The future
Where did the grandeur go?
Superlative things were done in the past century by marshalling thousands of people in the service of a vision of the future
Martin Parker
video
Future of technology
Ceramic coral reefs and sawdust houses – the architects 3D-printing the future from scratch
4 minutes
idea
Computing and artificial intelligence
Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past
Catherine Stinson
essay
Future of technology
Engines of life
At the level of the tiny, biology is all about engineering. That’s why nanotechnology can rebuild medicine from within
Sonia Contera
essay
Technology and the self
Collaborators in creation
Our world is a system, in which physical and social technologies co-evolve. How can we shape a process we don’t control?
Doyne Farmer, Fotini Markopoulou, Eric Beinhocker & Steen Rasmussen
idea
Chemistry
Could mining gold from waste reduce its great cost?
Wendy Lee Queen & Mirko Bischofberger