They’re Not Going to Make You an Immortal Internet God
Uploading your brain isn't eternal life. At best, it's death—and at worst, everlasting exploitation. by Norbert Daniels Jr. // Illustration by Carly A-F What does it mean to put your brain in a computer? When viewed in a criminally oversimplified way,
Strange Days In Cupertino
Memory, imagery, and truth in today's consumerized digital unreal by Christine Gerardi // Illustration by Carly A-F I 'll never forget the launch of the first-generation iPod Nano. Live on stage in 2005, Steve Jobs pulled a tiny white rectangle from the
(Cyber)Punk is Dead
by Molly Noise "The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed." William Gibson, The Economist, December 4, 2003 The above is untrue. Search online and you’ll certainly find plenty of citations on extracted-from-context-quotes-from-generally-regarded-as-clever-people sites, but there is no issue of The
Interoperability Won’t Save Us. But It Might Help.
Cory Doctorow's pro-interoperability treatise is a welcome salvo in the battle for the internet, but its reach exceeds its grasp by Kurt Schiller The Internet Con: How To Seize The Means Of Computation is a short, sharp strike from the
The “Banned” Film Coming Soon To a Theater Near You
Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker, one year later. by Lindsay Lee Wallace “The movie was never banned,” director, writer, editor, and actor Vera Drew explains patiently, emphatically, and for what seems like the hundredth time. “We were able to have our world
An AI Couldn’t Write This: A Late-Cyberpunk Manifesto
In 2016, the Dallas Police Department killed Micah Xavier Johnson using a bomb disposal robot and a block of C-4. He was the first—but almost certainly not the last—person to be killed by a police r
Barbie’s Capitalist Critique Will Make BlackRock Millions
Dress up. Have fun. But let's be realistic about what the film actually represents. by Lindsay Lee Wallace The hype for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is truly heartening. It’s been years (read: at least a couple
An A.I. Utopia Is No Place For Humans
The A.I. future we’re being offered has little use for human labor—or human beings at all by Christopher Pearce Over the last year, an unlikely path to automated utopia has come into view. Built on an endless amount of stolen artistic labor,
The Scent of Knowledge
AI isn’t the end of knowledge. It’s the birth of meta-knowledge. by Kurt Schiller // Illustration by Vin Tanner Technology has always had an uneasy relationship with the truth. The birth of the printing press was accompanied not only by an upswing in
No Excuses for AI Art
There's no room for compromise between working artists and those who seek to innovate them out of existence by Hazel Zorn When Jason Allen’s AI-generated artwork won first place in the Colorado State Fair’s digital arts competition, he told the Washington Post