Noema Magazine

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“While the very real concerns which animate popular emotions at the polls cannot & should not be dismissed or diminished, the dissonant role of philosophy is to go against the grain of political immediacy to insist on inconvenient truths.” —Nathan Gardels #geopolitics #nationalism #climatechange

For my latest piece in Noema Magazine (and first as a contributing writer!), I write about how viruses have helped make us human, providing some of the raw material for everything from our big brains to our placentas. https://lnkd.in/eF9T_tia

“Our immune systems, our synapses, even our placentas & embryos are all driven by viruses.” —Carrie Arnold #virus #health #biology

Recent research on lucid dreams suggests that consciousness exists along a spectrum between sleep & waking, between hallucination & revelation, between dreams & reality, Claire Evans writes. #dreams #luciddreaming #consciousness

This is the story of lithium, a powerful, promising & somehow still mysterious element on which we humans have pinned our hopes for survival on a planet warmed by our excesses, Jacob Baynham writes. https://lnkd.in/gXgRwV2a #lithium #climatechange #greentransition

This essay by Benjamin H. Bratton - author of the book "The Stack" on sovereignty and software - for Noema Magazine - is one of the most thought-provoking pieces I've read about #AI this year. In it, he links our cultural responses to AI to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's work on five stages of #grief, putting forward archetypes for each of Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. He then flips the script, and advocates for a "no grief" stance to AI that, in a very Haraway-esque twist, seeks to blur the boundaries between humanity, life and technology. A must read. "It does mean, however, that human intelligence is not what human intelligence thought it was all this time. It is both something we possess but which possesses us even more. It exists not just in individual brains, but even more so in the durable structures of communication between them, for example, in the form of language." https://lnkd.in/gpjbJ7WK

Tech overlords have turned us all into cloud serfs: the right to a bit of time each day when one is not for sale has all but vanished. It's time for a rebellion, Yanis Varoufakis argues. #bigtech #technofeudalism #capitalism #liberalism https://lnkd.in/gMwNzHU2

We're thrilled to announce that the Noema team took home 6 Los Angeles Press Club awards last night, including a sweep of the Commentary category!  🎉 🥇 “The Seductive Vision Of Green Aviation,” by Henry Wismayer, won first place for best Technology Reporting of the year 🥇 “What AI Teaches Us About Good Writing,” by Laura Hartenberger, won first place for best Commentary of the year 🥈 “AI Is Life”, by Sara Imari Walker, won second place for best Commentary of the year 🥈 “The Unending Quest to Build a Better Chicken,” by Boyce Upholt, won second place for best Consumer News Or Feature of the year 🥈 “Climate Lessons From A Lost Land,” by Jesse Stone, won second place for best Animation/Moving Graphic of the year 🥉 “How To Fix Our Green Infrastructure Problem,” by J.B. Ruhl and Jim Salzman, won third place for best Commentary of the year 

“Advanced machine intelligence does not suggest our extinction. It does mean, however, that human intelligence is not what human intelligence thought it was all this time.” —Benjamin H. Bratton #artificialintelligence #ai #intelligence #technology