August 21, 2020
Sci-Fi Pets Roundup
In Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin includes dogs in his list of essentials for a good life. “There are,” he writes, “three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.” In many science fiction scenarios, spouses and money…
July 21, 2020
Are We In A Videogame, Or Something Else?
A prominent theme in both science fiction and advanced physics is the possibility that our lives are not truly our lives, that everything we thought was true was an elaborate lie—that this reality is not what we think it is. The most popular…
July 18, 2020
Furry, Feathered or Otherwise Non-Human Electoral Candidates in Fact and Fiction
Humans have been imagining non-human animals as human for at least 40,000 years and probably longer. The “Lion-Human” of Hohlenstein-Stadel cave in Germany is 32,000 years old. We have invented non-human beings who stand for human traits, and…
July 1, 2020
Robots May Gain The Right to Vote, But Can They Electioneer?
This is not about the potential of Android phones to facilitate voting. It’s about whether the other kind of android—the artificially intelligent robot type—would not only have the abstract right to vote, but would have the potential to be a full…
May 11, 2020
“All You Need Is Love” and the Comm Tech Marvel of 1967
At a time when political activists and campaigns can host Zoom conferences with over a thousand attendees, and when astronauts can make outer space Skype calls, it’s easy to feel numbed to the sense of wonder that may come from contemplating our…
May 10, 2020
The Colonization of the Moon Is Already Underway
Cyberpunk lit pioneer William Gibson once said “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” There’s no doubting the second part—new technology will replicate the inequality of old technology. But for the next few paragraphs,…
April 28, 2020
A Black Hole’s Gravity is Like a Spirograph
Space and time are not fixed–or more accurately, seemingly fixed or regular movement across spacetime is actually “warped.” That warping causes the trajectory of motion to manifest as dynamic rather than nondynamic. A straight line is never really…
April 21, 2020
Truly Toxic Speech: When It Comes to Pandemics, We Really Talk Too Much
This was already in the news last December, and not in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic. A UC-Davis study had found that “the louder people talk, the more airborne particles they emit, making loudness a potential factor in spreading…
March 22, 2020
How Women in AI are Changing the Face of Tech and Campaigns
“Life doesn’t always give us what we deserve, but rather, what we demand. And so you must continue to push harder than any other person in the room.” Those words from Wadi Ben-Hirki, a young feminist activist from Nigeria, are a good reminder that…
March 10, 2020
Big Data Can Track Students. Can It Improve Education?
From the EdSurge news page, we learn that colleges and universities are discovering the benefits of big data. It’s no secret that colleges and universities have to do a lot more with less these days—or face closure. Whether because of high…