MachineMachine /stream

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"The everyday experience of liberal capitalism rests upon the violent defence of the boundaries against the other that the system itself produces. That banal and pacifying phrase ‘social exclusion’ allows…

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We need to understand what philosophers in the Middle Ages, from Italy to India to China, already understood perfectly well: Money is not a thing, and is certainly not a…

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"Watson is a computer that uncovers meaning in our language, and pinpoints the right answer, instantly. It uses deep analytics to answer questions computers never could before, even the ones…

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But what happens the rest of the time? Away from the world of freak glitches, what fate befalls the writer as his or her magnum opus enters the publishing production…

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Download the bbc.closing.sites.archive.torrent file On Monday 24th January 2011 the BBC announced that it would be restructuring its online department - with 360 job losses and the deletion of 200…

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So far, the WikiLeaks story has been represented as a struggle between WikiLeaks and the US empire: is the publishing of confidential US state documents an act in support of…

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Radio receives little critical attention. Of the various methods for communicating ideas and emotions—books, newspapers, visual art, music, film, television, the Web—radio may be the least discussed, debated, understood. This…

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Philip Dodd goes to one of Britain's largest second hand bookshops and is joined by a panel of publishers, authors and an audience of readers for a public debate that…

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Look, I wouldn’t trade the 21st century for any other. We have toilet paper and vitamin-fortified milk and a measles vaccine. We can buy avocados in Fairbanks in January. But…

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Two summers ago, the Atlantic published an essay by Nicholas Carr, one of the blogosphere's most prominent (and thoughtful) contrarians, under the headline "Is Google Making Us Stupid?". "Over the…

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Physicists struggling to reconcile gravity with quantum mechanics have hailed a theory – inspired by pencil lead – that could make it all very simple IT WAS a speech that…

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It may sound like the plot of a Dan Brown novel, but an academic at the University of Manchester claims to have cracked a mathematical and musical code in the…

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In the latest exploration into the universe of organisms inhabiting our bodies, microbiologists have discovered new viral genes in faeces. They find that the composition of virus populations inhabiting the…

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While the flesh-and-blood version of Mr. Brin sat miles away at a computer capable of remotely steering a robot, the gizmo rolling around here consisted of a printer-size base with…

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Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers…

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A recent study provides intriguing information about the neural dynamics underlying behavioral changes associated with the development of new problem solving strategies. The research... supports the idea of "a-ha" moments…

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One of the most beautiful aspects of the genetic code is its simplicity: three letters of DNA combine in 64 different ways, easily spelled out in a handy table, to…

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It is misleading — and dangerous — to think that religions are different paths to the same wisdom. At least since the first petals of the counterculture bloomed across Europe…

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As ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano continued to keep European airspace shut down over the weekend, affecting millions of travelers around the world, some government agencies and airlines clashed over…

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Aged 17, I set about writing a song for a girl I was obsessed with. When she heard it, she called the police. Have a listen – you'll understand why.…

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The new species of hominid, the evolutionary branch of primates that includes humans, is to be revealed when the two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled this week. Scientists believe…

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For much of the past five million to seven million years over which humans have been evolving, multiple species of our forebears co-existed. But eventually the other lineages went extinct,…