UtopianDynamics

Computers could take some tough choices out of our hands, if we let them. Is there still a place for human judgement?

Pads inside the helmet vibrate in the direction of nearby objects; walls; and big, burning things.

Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I have many

What does de-extinction mean for biology and the environment?

These are stimulating times for anyone interested in questions of animal consciousness.

200 years ago, the Luddites tried to stop technological progress. They didn’t succeed.

Today, January 8, is Hawking’s birthday, yet on this day it’s worth examining just who and what we are really celebrating: the man, the mind, or … the machines?

In the debate of what intelligence truly means, columnist Marcelo Cicconet looks at the current state of artificial intelligence.

With billions of mouths to feed, we can't go on producing food in the traditional way. Scientists are coming up with novel ways to cater for future generations. In-vitro burger, anyone?

For the price of a night out, individuals can learn key elements of their genetic composition from new DNA testing kit for booming private genetic testing market.

Laptops, smartphones and even Web-connected fridges are all contributing to a deluge of electronic information.

Eventually, the human world will simply vanish, leaving behind only the affectless emptiness of space, which will continue on, unconsciously, without us. It’s not just that we’ll die, but that our values, and value, will end.

From pickled sharks to compositions in silence, fake ideas and fake emotions have elbowed out truth and beauty

Have you loved R2-D2 and C-3PO since you were a kid? Do you have a soft spot in your in your heart for WALL-E? Did you used to play with Furbies and care for a Tamagotchi digital pet?

From the Darmouth Conferences to Turing's test, prophecies about AI have rarely hit the mark. But there are ways to tell the good from the bad when it comes to futurology

Researchers at the Mind Research Network in New Mexico--a non-profit, partially government-funded neuroscience facility--have discovered a way to predict

Redefined, these reference works quickly adapt to current usage and respond to readers' up-to-the-minute interests.

The gravest danger of offloading work is not a machine uprising but a human downgrading.

BOOM times are back in Silicon Valley. Office parks along Highway 101 are once again adorned with the insignia of hopeful start-ups. Rents are soaring, as is the...

How our modular brains lead us to deny and distort evidence

Alex Renton imagines what two families – one rich, the other hard-up – might be eating in the future

The bestselling anthropologist tells Robin McKie how western culture is failing us

The 15-hour working week predicted by Keynes may soon be within our grasp – but are we ready for freedom from toil?

Quijada, a fifty-four-year-old former employee of the California D.M.V., spent three decades inventing Ithkuil, an artificial language which is both maximally precise and maximally concise.