When William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1984 in the book Neuromancer, he described it as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation.” Decades later, Gibson declared that cyberspace was everting. Which is to say, entering the next phase of its evolution by creeping out of the virtual […]
The late 1990s spawned a particular kind of candy-coated teen movie–for example, Can’t Hardly Wait and 10 Things I Hate About You–in which every character is so obliviously affluent it feels almost a little bit embarrassing to watch it now. Children driving Range Rovers, high schools that look like castles, and no one ever feels […]
I don’t know where you’re sitting right now, but do me a favor: zoom out to a space shuttle’s eye-view of your spot on the blue marble. Now spin the globe until you’re looking at exactly the opposite side. If you were here with me in London, our antipodal opposite would be (approximately) New Zealand. […]
Before I left for England, a surprising number of people pulled me aside for a frank talk about The Accent. You know the one. It’s that slightly off, trans-Atlantic dialect acquired by expats; the one whose distracting inauthenticity annoys you during otherwise decent period dramas. Fortunately for me, I was never in any real danger: […]
A few weeks ago, the Human Brain Project announced that it had been selected as a finalist in a competition whose winners will get €1 billion worth of funding from the EU. The Human Brain Project (HBP) plans to use the prize money to build a simulation of the human brain on a supercomputer. HBP […]
It’s not every day that a flight is delayed because there are too few people on board. But, blame Will and Kate, Brits just weren’t flying out of London last Friday. As a result, the Virgin Atlantic A340-600 called Ladybird was carrying only 112 of her usual 380 passengers. So before we could take off, […]
I was teetering along the concrete track at about 5 miles per hour, a pathetic speed that nonetheless significantly exceeded my comfort zone. “Baseball slide,” barked a blonde pixie in a tiny pink skirt and massive black TSG kneepads over leopard-print tights. I tensed my core, gingerly lowered my left knee, and on impact, slipped […]
On 24 September, 1987, six year old Leide Ferreira threw up ten minutes after eating her egg sandwich. The next day her parents started throwing up too. Vomiting and diarrhea were followed by strange aches and burns. When Leide’s mother Maria went to the public health clinic in Goiás, the doctor ascribed her symptoms to […]