Science
Mapping Capital
Urban disinvestment on the small screen
Vince Staples’ music video “FUN!” opens on a digital rendering of the planet Earth. The camera zooms in rapidly—as many of …
Current Location
Mapping in perspective
One cloudy Friday evening in October, I’m on a bus from Providence to New York, looking out as the endless gray …
Reality Check
Psychedelics, mysticism, and the American scientific establishment
In 1956, psychiatrist Humphry Osmond wrote to his friend and correspondent, author and philosopher Aldous Huxley: “To fall in Hell or …
God in the Dataset
Opening the black box of machine learning
There will be no edges, but curves. -Tracy K. Smith The black box is a metaphor for a device whose inner …
Game Change
A narrative of Gamergate through the lens of games
In 2014, a break-up on social media exploded into an online battleground. Here, on the planes of Facebook, Twitter, 4chan, and …
Mosquito Trap
Everything you (wish you didn’t) need to know about Triple E
Consider this hypothetical scenario: mosquitoes carrying an infection with a 30-percent mortality rate have taken over, and you are the only …
Making Cyber Space
Antitrust and Big Tech
Before he was the face of billionaire philanthropy, Bill Gates sat in the deposition chair of the United States District Court …
A Common Cold War
The political history of phage therapy
Mount Sinai Hospital in Brooklyn has a fungus problem. In May of 2018, a patient was admitted for abdominal surgery. He …
Seeing Through Supplements
How the vitamin industry sells health
Whenever I have a problem, my parents believe vitamins are the solution: “Feeling tired from classwork? “There must be an iron …
The Need For Speed
5G and the next chapter of the digital divide
5G coverage in Rhode Island Scattered around the streets of Providence, clusters of gray boxes sit perched atop telephone poles and …
Beyond Rubbers
A short history of male birth control
When patients come to Dr. Kelly Brogan MD, a Manhattan-based holistic women’s health psychiatrist, with complaints of low libido, insomnia, unstable …
As Seen From Above
Digital archaeology in Afghanistan
In a dusty, treeless valley south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the ancient walls of Mes Aynak almost blend into the surrounding earth. …
Rendering Deep Time
“Consider the Earth’s history as the old measure of the English yard, the distance from the king’s nose to the tip …
Dogs Affixed
Pet taxidermy, cloning, and mourning
At a business meeting, a woman walks my mom into an office and introduces her dog, Chelsea, a black-haired Chihuahua with …
Intestines, and How We Were Never Born
I’m five years old, waiting alone in my mom's office at the Zen Buddhist practice center she helps run. I don’t …
Power Plants
Scrutinizing the US' biofuel future
In the depths of a swamp forest, the ferns are dying. Fanned bodies bowed together, these giant leaf-like forms topple and …
Modern Mind Control
Our era of addictive products
Mind control in its various forms—hypnosis, possession, brainwashing—has captured our imaginations for centuries in literature and in film. George Orwell’s 1984 …
Beyond Screens
In conversation with Khiara Bridges and Virginia Eubanks
content warning: maternal death "I’m literally dying,” Lashonda Hazard posted on Facebook early last month. The otherwise-healthy, pregnant 27-year-old had visited …
Tourist Trap
Geosure tries to build a safer world—but for whom?
I open Geosure and the map populates with nearby scores. There’s a lot of green, implying “low risk.” One of the …
How Libraries Adapt
American public libraries and the aura of collective interface
In its 2018 and 2019 budget proposals, the Trump administration attempted to cut government funding for the Institute for Museum and …
The Ex-Machina Fallacy
How randomness separates us from AI
The screen lights up with a new text message from Scott, a professor at the University of Texas: How many legs …
Genetically Pleasing
He Jiankui, CRISPR, and the politics of the human genome
At the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held in Hong Kong on November 27-29, 2018, the room is buzzing …
Simulated Bodies
How virtual physicalities are changing the landscape of medical education
Medicine is intimate. Beginning from our very first breath, most likely taken inside a hospital room under the watchful eye of …
My Finest Jacket
Reimagining the placenta’s place in our birth narrative
Though addressing the experience of all placenta-bearing folks, I refer to mothers in this piece using she/her pronouns for the sake …
A Black Mirror
Cognitive bias in machine learning
“These systems are simply mirrors for a biased society,” says Dr. Jerry Kaplan, a professor at Stanford University, speaking about deep …
LEARNING FACES
The uncanny horror of deepfake videos
“Will ‘Deepfakes’ Disrupt the Midterm Election?” reads a recent headline from Wired. Two weeks ago, the New York Times published an …
Data Democracy
Big Data and the pitfalls of targeted campaigning
At a typical phone banking meeting, volunteers cluster around a table or two. They all go to the website that hosts …
Thinking In Big History
Nick Bostrom, transhumanist visions, and the rise of macrostrategy
now everything is happening faster than you can think at the speed of genius at the speed of a thousand geniuses …
Follow Me on Spotify
How music informs individual and social interactions
Scrolling through the sidebar of my Spotify, I find myself intrigued by what my friends are listening to in real time. …
Weed It and Weep
Monsanto, herbicides, and the corporatization of US agriculture
“We’ve got to turn back 50, 60 years of the way we’re doing agriculture. But it can be done, and I …
A Recruit Reads the Fine Print
What does it mean to “change the world” in tech?
content warning: ICE, policing Job recruiting season at universities is a special circle of hell. Each fall, tech, finance, and consulting …
War Of Performance
Spectatorship and combat in Fortnite: Battle Royale
This summer, in Kazan, Russia, France’s veteran striker Antoine Griezmann stepped up to the penalty spot to score the first goal …
Forest for the Trees
"Tree mortality” and fire management in the Sierra Nevada
In March of 2017, the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a workshop in Washington D.C. titled “A Century …
Crypto Contra Central Control
Silk Road and the failed 'revolution'
Within the last week, the apocalyptically-named “Crypto Crash of 2018” has reached new lows. “Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than …
The Urban Landscape Re-imagined in Wood
A humble building material soars to new heights
It is a rare and special occasion when a truly novel building material is made widely available for commercial use. The …
Urban Birding
Do e-scooters herald an electrified micro-mobility revolution?
On March 27, 2018, Travis VanderZanden, founder and CEO of Bird Rides Inc., released an open letter to the CEOs of …
The Human Gaze
Photography, objectivity, and the National Geographic Twins
This April, National Geographic published an issue dedicated entirely to the subject of race. On the cover was a photograph of …
Social Fabrics
Connecting and crafting online
One long string of yarn, when arranged correctly, can become any number of shapes a person could want to wear on …
In the Mind of the Mall
Consumer mazes, online and off
I got lost trying to go see what it’s like to get lost in an American mall—the hallmark of teen movies, …
A Threatening Isolation
An evolution of attitudes toward bacteria in research and medicine
Alone in an agar dish, an E. coli bacterium lives just as it would in the bowels of a dog or …