It’s an otherwise ordinary Friday when the daily operations of public and private services around the world are suddenly disrupted. The UK’s National Health Service advises patients not to visit …
Think.
«The program’s goal is to develop a brain-inspired bio-chip that will mimic the function, size, power and energy consumption of a biological cerebral cortex. If successful, the program will lay …
precision medicine: the personalization of medicine
The term “precision medicine” is relatively new and was mainly highlighted after 2011 thanks to a report by the U.S. national research council, which focused on the need for a …
The culture of honesty:
This is the declared goal of the Chinese state in a plan that formalizes what capitalist enterprises are already doing, only placing it under official state control by unifying it …
the great panoptic is (now) also esoptic
“Every time someone uses Google’s services, they participate in at least a dozen experiments.” This statement was made in 2012 by Google’s chief economist during a conference organized by the …
Remember, or not
Why does the way we remember (like all living beings, after all) draw so much attention from scientists? If you ask them and they bother to answer, you’ll get a …
from online to onlife: engineering everything
History and Machines Can we perceive the ongoing parade of modern technological applications and wonders as something beyond a mere sum of “good and bad human inventions”? Can we perceive …
3D printers
The generations that grew up in the 20th century were trained to use specific symbolic representations in encoding the world. Among these, the images of “construction” and “building” had a …
Orphans – and golden
Pharmaceutical companies chase “rare diseases”: they make crazy profits from the drugs for these cases. When a disease affects up to 5 people per 100,000, it is considered rare. In …
Web footprints
Those who believe that cyberspace is the great opportunity to “disappear” (hiding their identity) are sorely mistaken. The conscription of providers (i.e., the data of their customers) is a well-known …
Job stealing
How many clicks does it take to place an order on Amazon? Very few! With zero effort, online, a product from anywhere on the planet arrives right at the buyer’s …
Risky jobs
We can make fun of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, but its bosses are ahead. Way ahead. Their latest feat was legislation granting extraction rights for raw materials from extraterrestrial …