Essays and videos on how humans construct a sense of self with and against technology, from analogue tools to advances in AI.

But it obscures what we share with the machines: language itself When did stories become so centred on good battling evil?

Rendered in 3D animation and created without the use of AI, this video from the YouTube channel City 3D Timelapse chronicles ...

A century ago, the Pan-American road promised a new era of fraternity between the two continents. Did it succeed?

A ball suspended in mid-air meets an athlete’s determination: in the traditional Inuit one-foot high kick, competitors must defy gravity ...

She was among the first to argue that prosperity, equality and the protection of nature are inseparable planetary goals ...

Sixteenth-century Venice wanted to expel its Jews but couldn’t do without them. Its compromise was the world’s first ghetto ...

For the philosopher Bruno Latour, seeing anything ‘natural’ as good and the ‘artificial’ as bad is perversely human-centric ...

What happened when people in Bhutan, the last country on Earth without television, were allowed to watch it in 1999?

AI isn’t merely bad at writing. It does not and cannot write What would it mean if we were able to ‘speak’ with whales? Do ...

If intelligence is merely optimisation then machines will outrun us. Kant tells us how human reason is so much more ...

Essays and videos on the history of ideas, tracing how philosophical, political and sociological concepts emerged, evolved ...