Zeno’s Paradox describes physical change as an illusion. Zeno of Elea, in the 5th Century BCE, postulated that in order to travel any distance, one had to first travel half that distance, and before that half could be traversed, one had to travel half of the first half, and so on. And because space could be infinitely divided, traveling through ...
Photo by CarlosYudica Remember that theme “make the world better” that’s been pitched, promoted, and even believed by many a Silicon Valley innovator? Well, according to Evan Osnos, writing for The New Yorker, a considerable number of tech-industry billionaires, rather than ask themselves what they might do as leaders to effect positive social change, are instead preparing for the day we ...
It’s very common to encounter broad complaints saying things like, “Copyright law should not stop me from fixing or altering my technology.” Often, this generalization is made by people who don’t necessarily know they’re referring to Title I of the DMCA but who have read somewhere that copyright law prevents reverse engineering, maintenance, jail-breaking, and overall tinkering with products ranging ...
I haven’t done a podcast in a while but decided to reach out to technology writer Andrew Orlowski after reading his article Alphabetti Spaghetti: What Wall Street isn’t telling you about Google. Andrew is the executive editor of the IT news and opinion publication The Register, a critic of techno-utopianism, and coiner of the term “Googlewashing” to describe either purposeful or inadvertent ...
The father of modern chemistry Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was beheaded in 1793 in what is now the Place de la Concorde. A victim of France’s post-revolutionary Reign of Terror, he was specifically marked for execution by one vengeful, lesser scientist named Jean-Paul Marat, whose incorrect theory about combustion had been publicly scorned by Lavoisier at the royal academy. It’s rare when revolutions ...
