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Society

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future
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video

Space exploration

Mind-bending speed is the only way to reach the stars – here are three ways to do it

5 minutes

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video

Film and visual culture

An augmented-reality filter reveals the hidden movements all around us

7 minutes

The International Space Station is seen at an angle through a window against the darkness of space
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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

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video

Computing and artificial intelligence

A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’

9 minutes

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video

Future of technology

Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system

6 minutes

Human figures beneath a glass dome watch the launch of a rocket from the surface of Mars
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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

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video

Future of technology

Artificial ‘creativity’ is unstoppable. Grappling with its ethics is up to us

23 minutes

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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

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video

Film and visual culture

With human help, AIs are generating a new aesthetics. The results are trippy

9 minutes

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Art

What does an AI make of what it sees in a contemporary art museum?

15 minutes

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video

Ecology and environmental sciences

Producing food while restoring the planet – a glimpse of farming in the future

7 minutes

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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

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video

Technology and the self

When an AI rejects him for life insurance, Mitch wonders if he can escape his fate

7 minutes

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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

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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

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video

Computing and artificial intelligence

Algorithms are sensitive. People are specific. We should exploit their respective strengths

36 minutes

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video

Future of technology

Tech companies shroud their algorithms in secrecy. It’s time to pry open the black box

4 minutes

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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

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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

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video

Technology and the self

A handful of executives control the ‘attention economy’. Time for attentive resistance

4 minutes

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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

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video

Future of technology

Ceramic coral reefs and sawdust houses – the architects 3D-printing the future from scratch

4 minutes

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idea

Computing and artificial intelligence

Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past

Catherine Stinson

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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