It’s no secret that the U.S. is way behind the rest of the world in scaling its infrastructure. Now, recent news from China seems to have relegated the U.S. even further back. The South China Morning Post reported last month that “China’s unprecedented railway spending boom,” which has been going on for several years, will […]
It has inspired innovations in sociology and psychology. It has sparked the imagination of liberals like Paul Krugman and conservatives like Newt Gingrich. It even shares credit (or blame) for some of Elon Musk’s innovations. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is, arguably, one of the most influential literary creations in history. And now, it’s finally going […]
Communication is an essential part of humanity, and, presumably, we need to be honest in most of our communicative acts in order for society to function. Yet, dishonest communication has often been a driver of history, and systemic communicative dishonesty — like encryption and cryptography — has been around for millennia. In fact, the development […]
In Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin includes dogs in his list of essentials for a good life. “There are,” he writes, “three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” In many science fiction scenarios, spouses and money are in short supply, but pets — either of a traditional earthling or exotic […]
A prominent theme in both science fiction and advanced physics is the possibility that our lives are not truly our lives, that everything we thought was true was an elaborate lie—that this reality is not what we think it is. The most popular articulation of that theme is that we are part of a scientific […]
Humans have been imagining non-human animals as human for at least 40,000 years and probably longer. The “Lion-Human” of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany is 32,000 years old. We have invented non-human beings who stand for human traits, and anthropomorphized imaginary animals. We have even integrated non-human animals into human activities (think of all the driving […]
This is not about the potential of Android phones to facilitate voting. It’s about whether the other kind of android—the artificially intelligent robot type—would not only have the abstract right to vote, but would have the potential to be a full participant in the electoral process. To “electioneer” means to actively participate in campaigning (or […]
At a time when political activists and campaigns can host Zoom conferences with over a thousand attendees, and when astronauts can make outer space Skype calls, it’s easy to feel numbed to the sense of wonder that may come from contemplating our remarkable advances in communications technology. But June 25th is approaching, and if you’re […]
Cyberpunk lit pioneer William Gibson once said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” There’s no doubting the second part—new technology will replicate the inequality of old technology. But for the next few paragraphs, let’s think about the first part. The future is already here. For example, we’re just going […]
Space and time are not fixed–or more accurately, seemingly fixed or regular movement across spacetime is actually “warped.” That warping causes the trajectory of motion to manifest as dynamic rather than nondynamic. A straight line is never really a straight line, and a regular orbit is never really a regular orbit. Before Albert Einstein developed […]