books
What would you write to the future?
The Future Library Project is collecting books that won’t be published in our lifetime.
How do we talk about impending doom so that people will listen?
Books like ‘The Ministry for the Future’ offer a useful vocabulary for hashing out solutions to our overheating world.
Eco-friendly transportation? The good, the bad, and the pipe dreams
The saying about putting a fox in charge of the hen house grossly underestimates human ingenuity. We are not foxes, and so we have the ability to be much cleverer custodians of institutions we’re still destroying.
How to spare billionaires from terrorist attack
A radical eco-activist group arises in India after a terrible heat wave kills tens of thousands. The Children of Kali are firm in their declaration to the world: Change with us now, or suffer the wrath of Kali.
Internet Archive loses to publishers, mediocre tech futures continue
Reading Time: 6 minutes It is the easiest thing in the world to copy and paste digital content. This is why elaborate systems needed to be invented, to push back on the native capabilities of technology. Digital Rights Management (DRM) most often refers to advanced technology that locks in document
‘The Peripheral’ plays it safe with William Gibson’s future thinking
Reading Time: 6 minutes In some ways, the opening scene of The Terminator (1984) had to have come as a relief to its first audiences. Gritty, darkly lit, with text grimly informing us that this was the city of Los Angeles in 2029, it showed us tank treads crushing human skulls beneath a machine-domi
Entropy, time, and the arrow of adolescence
Is there an inherent link between entropy and the momentum of time?
10 eye-opening secular books for a new perspective
Reading Time: 5 minutes Our world, and our minds, are always changing. Secular people often claim to be freethinkers, which is great. But part of being a freethinker is keeping your mind open to new ideas, new stories, and new perspectives. The good part is that the solution is remarkably simple: re
Christian nationalism in 2022: An interview with Katherine Stewart
Reading Time: 9 minutes Religious freedom advocate Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, has been writing about politics, policy, education, and church-state relations for over a decade. The Power Worshippers won first place in the Ex