Technology
So this is 90 seconds to midnight
Reading Time: 4 minutes On January 24, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists officially moved the hands on the Doomsday Clock, which for three quarters of a century has been used to depict humanity’s risk of global disaster from nuclear war. When the clock was first
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
NASA’s Artemis: A big step in sending humans to Mars
Reading Time: 5 minutes When NASA’s ambitious Artemis I project rocket—the agency’s most powerful launch vehicle ever—blasted into space from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on November 16, scarcely more than a century ago automobiles and airplanes were still in their cradles. In a historical blink o
As clean transportation tech moves forward, is the human side ready?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Over the next five years, US public agencies will spend billions to clean up the transportation sector. A large share of that money is earmarked for training blue-collar workers in disadvantaged communities on the specific tasks of sustaining a zero-emission economy. While th
The longtermism that works—and the kind that doesn’t
Reading Time: 10 minutes In 2004, a tsunami and earthquake killed almost 230,000 people in 14 Indian Ocean countries. Many forms of relief then mouldered on the beaches—used clothes, high heel shoes, expired medicines—because “in-kind” donations are well known not to be effective forms of aid on a g
Anonymity, privacy, transparency, integrity: Do we even know the future we want?
Reading Time: 8 minutes In the late 2000s, research blossomed around our use of online avatars. Did our videogame icons and social media profiles represent our actual selves, our ideal selves, or something else entirely? And did they have a reciprocal impact, a “Proteus effect” that transformed self
Are AI art programs ripping off human artists?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Artists erupted in protest when they learned that AI art engines like Stable Diffusion were trained on their copyrighted works. This revelation has ignited a debate about the meaning of fair use.
Is AI art causing future shock, or age-old economic anxiety?
Reading Time: 8 minutes At the turn of the twentieth century, Canadians were notorious pirates. Oh yes. You wouldn’t know it to look at us (well, minus all the stealing we’d done from Indigenous communities), but we were lean, mean, thieving machines… when it came to sheet music. Remember, this was
AI is getting scarily good
Reading Time: 7 minutes Technological advances have made it possible for computers to hold conversations, perform surgery, create art, and more. What room is left for humans?
Why degrowth is (still) wrong
Reading Time: 6 minutes Earlier this month, I wrote an essay against degrowth, the position that drastic reductions to the modern lifestyle are our only hope of saving the planet. I argued that, to the contrary, renewable energy promises a future of greater abundance even as we tread more lightly on
Heat pumps will bring secular victory
Reading Time: 3 minutes Fossil fuels pay for Vladimir Putin’s war. The oil and gas that Europe buys from Russia become the bombs and missiles falling on Ukraine. If we had a way to break this dependence, if Europeans no longer relied on Russian gas to heat their homes, we could choke off Putin’s rev
Why degrowth is wrong
Reading Time: 4 minutes Americans are obsessed with bigness. We build bigger and bigger houses. We drive bigger and bigger cars. We even eat bigger portions and consume more calories than anyone else, including more meat, the most resource-intensive of foods. In short, we idolize excess. We’re the r