Science & Technology Archives - Page 2 of 9

Writing Was Always Magical

On Literary Theory for Robots and divining the text of the future

June 12, 2025 • by Tsering Dolka Gurung and Dennis Yi Tenen

Rather than focus on techno-utopian fantasies or doomsday predictions in which technology replaces humans, scholar Dennis Yi Tenen inspects writing itself as a human technology. In his new book, Literary Theory for Robots (W. W. Norton, 2024), the English professor and former Microsoft engineer asks: How will AI change the ...

Artificial Intelligence

The Monster Became My Companion

A conversation on Cyborg Fever, the cold stream of data, and why entropy wins out

June 11, 2025 • by Matthew Kosinski and Laurie Sheck

Any book worth reading will refuse to be paraphrased. So it goes with Laurie Sheck’s new hybrid novel, Cyborg Fever (Tupelo Press, 2025). Even the truncated plot summary, rich as it is—a young orphan falls into a coma when his beloved nun suddenly stops speaking to him, and in the ...

Artificial Intelligence

Great Engineers, Terrible Philosophers

A conversation on the rapid evolution of AI technology, the nature of intelligence, and the importance of the European project

June 9, 2025 • by Luciano Floridi, Giannis Perperidis and Alexandros Schismenos

Sam Altman has claimed that by the end of this year, OpenAI will be capable of “truly astonishing cognitive tasks.” But what exactly does “cognition” mean in the context of artificial intelligence? As the sophistication of such technologies, our dependence on them, and the rhetoric used to sell them escalates, ...

Artificial Intelligence

Who Does My Algorithm Think I Am?

A portrait of the author according to her apps

March 11, 2025 • by Marisol Aveline Delarosa

My phone thinks I might have a dopamine addiction. While scrolling social media recently, I paused on a video advertisement depicting a woman scrolling on her phone, lounging on the couch, and slamming down her laptop in frustration. It may as well have been security footage from my own apartment, except ...

Sex & Gender

After David

Why not get together for coffee?

January 23, 2025 • by Catherine Texier

Logging on the site is like stepping into a candy store. Or walking into a party and waiting for someone to talk to you, some swaggering dude with a joint in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. Except he is the only one you’re waiting for. All ...

Interviews

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

An interview about After David

January 23, 2025 • by Hannah McIntyre and Catherine Texier

An older woman and a younger man—a trope that operates on elements of fantasy and plays with conventional expectations. The dynamic between an older woman and a younger man is complex; it's looked down upon, and it never gets tiresome. In After David (ITNA Press, 2024), Catherine Texier explores these themes ...

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

Media

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Why are my friends talking like incels?

October 7, 2024 • by Jake Neuffer

“Been gymmaxxing lately,” my friend quipped as he made a protein shake. “Proteinpilled too,” I said. My generation is speaking a new slang—new to us, anyway. Not quite ubiquitous, but familiar to that contingent of chronically online youth (and is that phrase not becoming a tautology?). These are phrases borrowed from incels, ...

From the Sewer of the Internet, a Slang Surfaces

Finance

Platforms, Payments, and Ponzi Schemes

A review of Rachel O’Dwyer’s Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform

May 1, 2024 • by Paulo L. dos Santos

Electronic platforms can also be thought of as a distinctive type of “terrain” that, like land, can define specific types of revenue and power for those who control them. ...

Artificial Intelligence

Who’s Afraid of the Large Language Model?

Declining creativity in generative AI

March 27, 2024 • by Chris Holdaway

Whether as a tool for human poets or as a poetic agenda of its own, language models might embody to the truest extent the collision of computer revolution and ancient poiesis....

Who’s Afraid of the Large Language Model?

Artificial Intelligence

The Rise of AI Ethics

The focus on far-off consequences distracts from existing threats to human rights, fairness, justice, equality, and safety

February 21, 2024 • by Peter M. Asaro

AI ethics is not really a distinct field or coherent discourse, but more of an amalgamation of different perspectives considering the potential implications of automated systems and algorithms making decisions with consequential impacts on human lives. ...

History

Why the Study of History Belongs to the Public

How social media makes possible a more democratic republic of letters

January 17, 2024 • by Rose Botaish

For many museums and archives, social media has already become a space to share more widely images and information from their collections....

Why the Study of History Belongs to the Public

Sex & Gender

Walk Like a Loaded Man

An excerpt from The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men

June 5, 2023 • by Manuel Betancourt

Unlike the more straightforward concept of horniness (whose own mythic visual iconography is rife for analysis), thirst is more visceral, a physiological need....