Cameron Allan McKean
Editor, Aeon+Psyche
Cameron is a writer, editor and underwater anthropologist in Melbourne, Australia. After a decade in Tokyo working as an arts journalist, he began doctoral studies at Deakin University involving fieldwork with scientists and divers at coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean. Cameron is a former books and culture editor for The Japan Times, and a past contributor to CNN, ArtAsiaPacific, Dwell, Apartamento, and art-agenda.
Edited by Cameron Allan McKean
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History of technology
We’ve always been distracted
Worried that technology is ‘breaking your brain’? Fears about attention spans and focus are as old as writing itself
Joe Stadolnik
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Deep time
The Rift
Splitting the African continent, it is the only place where our human story can be read continuously from the very start
Tristan McConnell
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The environment
Our contaminated future
In Fukushima, communities are adapting to life in a time of permanent pollution: a glimpse of what’s to come for us all
Maxime Polleri
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Thinkers and theories
The generous philosopher
Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world, respecting their right to exist and act on their own terms
Stephen Muecke
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Deep time
Mutual entrapment
As Neolithic people transformed prehistoric forests, they stumbled into an ecological trap. Domestication goes both ways
Mette Løvschal
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Knowledge
A sliver of reality
Science and mathematics may never fully capture the physical universe. Are there hard limits to human intelligence?
David H Wolpert
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Cities
Living closer together
Urban density was once seen as a sign of unhealthiness and poverty. But today it is necessary to make cities sustainable
Max Holleran
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Subcultures
The great regression
To understand why so many adults are acting just like children, don’t blame Millennials – look to Japan in the 1990s
Matt Alt
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Computing and artificial intelligence
The people of the cloud
Hot, strenuous and unsung. There is nothing soft and fluffy about the caretaking work that enables our digital lives
Steven Gonzalez Monserrate
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Human evolution
Out of the forest
We have thought of humans for a century or more as creatures of the savannah, shaped in every way by grassland life. Not so
Patrick Roberts
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Philosophy of religion
A God beyond logic
The history of natural theology shows that Intelligent Design and New Atheism both got it wrong, in strangely similar ways
Adam R Shapiro
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Animals and humans
Freefall into darkness
Scientists study animals to illuminate human psychology. So why are we blind to the mental lives of our caged subjects?
Garet Lahvis