Great vision over the streets, like autumn leavesthe cries were scattered.The city had been lost beneath the lights, the flags, theshouting. We were celebrating the victory. But at the same …
History of the messenger
What is the biotechnology of messenger RNA? Is it a simple technical breakthrough, as its followers claim, that will only lead to good for humankind? Or is it the first …
Introduction to biosecurity
After the attacks on the Twin Towers, on September 11, 2001, the world entered a “new normality”. On the occasion of these attacks, new practices and technologies of surveillance and repression were installed throughout the spectrum of public and private space, which nullified the civil liberties granted until then. The “war on terror” imposed emergency mobilization for the purposes of managing the “Islamic threat”, which (emergency mobilization / urgent need) was then made permanent. Always in the name of “freedom”…
Naked death: dancing to the rhythms of the state Danse Macabre
Death in the twentieth century has become a taboo…it has replaced sex as the quintessential forbidden subject. Philippe Ariès The image of death seems to be omnipresent in contemporary Western …
Forty years ago.
Wall Street, 1979. A documentary filmmaker, David Hoffman, roams the streets of New York collecting opinions, impressions, and associations about the new normality that was then underway. About the “information …
many, very many, and healthy: health big data is yet another gold mine
Health of Data Big data have changed the way we manage, analyze and leverage data in every industry. One of the most promising areas where they can be applied to …
The unknown ancestor
It is certain that all humankind originated in Africa. It is also certain that our most recent genes are the result of interbreeding between the three versions of the original …
Education at the threshold of the 4th industrial revolution
The education system as we know it is only about 200 years old. Before that, formal education was mostly reserved for the elite. But as industrialization changed the way we …
Cold Fusion
For some, it represents the ultimate energy solution: a cheap energy source without environmental implications. The final (and, above all, practical) form of such a nuclear process does not appear …
reality in decline (and in sales)
In every historical era, there is a core set of ideas through which a society understands itself and which outline its worldview. Ideas that in other times would seem bizarre …
the racist origins of the American high-tech industry
How the tools built for the U.S. census fueled the Nazi genocide, concentration camps, and state racism—and helped launch the digital age. On a frozen December day in 1896, an …
What did you say?
Does language have socio-political dimensions? Even when we are dealing with technical terms of a science? From the perspective of contemporary linguistics of structuralist inspiration, such questions seem non-sensical. What …