Public order above all

At the beginning of last December, the Australian parliament passed a law requiring telecommunications companies to provide the security apparatus (police, intelligence services, etc.) with access to encrypted information; in …

Minibrains

A favorite theme of science fiction (the entire The Matrix franchise is based on it) as well as discussions among “philosophers of mind”: what would happen if a brain could …

Step on it!

All right, we’ve grasped the plan: the future belongs to flying cars that will shatter every norm of urban planning, sever all ties with the glorious asphalt boulevards and urgently …

Homo Sapiens in the age of insignificance…

Human: a subspecies of Homo sapiens. It belongs to the genus Homo, of the family Hominidae, of the superfamily Hominoidea, in the order Primates. It is related to apes (especially …

The digitization of begging

What prospect does a beggar have in a society that makes extensive use of digital communication media? It is a question you would never ask yourself; yet it crossed the …

Dragonfly

In Greek, this harmless (but impressive) insect is called a dragonfly. In English, it’s called a dragonfly. This name was given by Google engineers to a search engine (on Android) …

quantum computers: the empire of computations

when the cat left the box… The Aristotelian (hence philosophical) dichotomy of either exists / does not exist, and its variation true / false, was mathematized during the 19th century …

Social irresponsibility

Her name is Fan Bingbing. She is one of the biggest stars of Chinese entertainment, an actress and singer. A state investigation found evidence of tax evasion against her (of …

Automatic justice

The fact that big data management applications (what will look and be called “artificial intelligence”) will replace high-prestige intellectual work has not only been announced, but has already begun. Robotic …