technology
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Weekly Geekery
Our intimate lives feed the meat grinder of big data. The first casualty of climate change: this adorable rodent. Racial bias in healthcare research, and why it’s dangerous. An exoplanet could soon go the way of Alderaan. The next great…
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
One of the missing Hong Kong booksellers has been returned, and gave a speech warning about the power of China’s central government and the waning independence of Hong Kong. Tiny, the cat that lives in Brooklyn’s Community Bookstore, had a…
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Digital Ash
Over at the New York Review of Books, Edward Mendelson writes apocalyptically about the way our lives are changing for the worse with the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and “the cloud,” infecting every facet of our increasingly public lives. So,…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: 69 Love Songs
Everywhere people are shoving things into the ground—time capsules not to be opened until the year 2100, the more optimistic postmarked for 3000—letters to the future in the language of the now.
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Tour of Today
We follow Heffernan through the Smithsonian Natural Museum of Internet History, as she annotates the exhibits: the Kindle, with its lithe design and endless supply of books, usurper of the printed word; the MP3, compressing the rapture and idiosyncrasies of…
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The Rumpus Interview with Rebecca Schiff
Rebecca Schiff discusses her debut collection The Bed That Moved, choosing narrators who share similarities with each other and with herself, and whether feminism and fiction-writing conflict.
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From Pen to Pentium
For many writers, after all, a word processor was as much an appliance as it was a deeply individualized instrument—more fax machine than fountain pen. … Still, the plastic, glass, and silicon devices had stories to tell, just as did…
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I’m Sorry, Hal
Robotics have come a long way in the last century, but even Siri can’t lay claim to impeccable British manners. The British Science Museum is crowdfunding a replica of the UK’s original talking robot, Eric.
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When Computers Choose Which Novels to Publish
We’re used to Amazon producing recommendations alongside books we buy, but are we prepared for a world where computerized data also picks what gets published? Inkitt, an electronic publishing platform, has announced that they will be utilizing algorithms to pick…
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Weekly Geekery
The government has always been spying on you. Updating the search for immortality. People could judge you for giving bad email. Facebook is not social networking.
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This Week in Indie Bookstores
Independent bookstores are thriving because many are adapting technology and learning how to better serve their local community. A stunning new bookstore has opened in eastern China with dazzling displays and whimsical architecture. Bookstores in Barcelona are adapting as Spain…
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The Lives of Cyborgs
An automaton symbolizes the creepy resemblance between us and the clockwork mechanisms we’ve invented… and to explore the awe and apprehension of mechanical existence. Michael Peck writes for Lit Hub on the literary history of cyborgs and robots through the…