The desolate rocky landscape belongs to the planet Mars. The vehicle visible in the lower right is the Curiosity rover, NASA’s spacecraft that landed on Mars in August 2012 and …
robot-pope
A small humanoid robot shows a public school in the Iranian city of Varamin, just outside Tehran, that even machines have souls: it prays, encouraging the little students to do …
science as an idea
The following pair of texts, as a fictional juxtaposition of viewpoints, is directly related to two presentations/discussions organized by the game over assembly during the winter and early summer of …
the myth of the machine
The Large Hadron Collider of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is a literally pharaonic research project on behalf of (initially) particle physics. It is an “uncompromising experiment,” uncompromising in …
“genetism”
The double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) has become one of the most powerful representations of what life is: life is its chemistry (when it is not its electronics). The …
“smart” glasses
The “most promising” (so far) electronic device for enhancing everyday life, Google’s glasses (Google Glass), has encountered an unexpected obstacle. While residents of cosmopolitan cities live and move among millions …
the possibilities of post-humanism
In the summer of 1995, I visited the MIT Media Lab and met two graduate students who were working on computers that could be worn (wearable) and advanced human-machine interaction …