So in the last couple of decades we’ve discovered that many plants rely on networks of soil fungi to bring them critical trace nutrients. This is a symbiotic relationship: the fungal network can access these nutrients much better than plants can, and in return the plants provide the fungus with other stuff — particularly energy, […]
Science
“You’re always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I’m here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you’ll have finally managed the real thing.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s ‘you’ in the collective. Your species.” — William Gibson, Neuromancer Sometime in […]
Here’s a metaphor. There’s an elderly person you’ve known for years. Not a close relative, no, but someone whose career you’ve followed. You feel tremendous respect for them, maybe some affection. They’re getting old and frail, but they’ve kept active. Now and then you might see an article or something, and you’ll think, huh: still […]
The appalling mistreatment of ME/CFS patients continues, based on the myth that it’s all in the mind. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12th March 2024 It’s the greatest medical scandal of the 21st century. For decades, patients with ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) have been told they can make themselves better by changing […]
An open invitation to the Fremantle launch ...
A talk to the Economic Society of Australia: Monsters in the Machine, Technology, Growth & Human Flourishing An Author Talk with Goldfields Libraries An appearance on the Breaking the Spell podcast
A month or so out from Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated biopic Oppenheimer, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community is having its own Oppenheimer moment. Like the director of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos Laboratory, who famously came to regret his part in the development of the atomic bomb, the Big Tech Titans are falling over each […]
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2018), the British writer Aaron Bastani puts a leftist spin on the Promethean view of technological development. While noting the revolutionary potential of recent genetic innovations, he insists that the latter are no different in kind from the selective breeding practices of the past: they are simply another great leap […]
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