Sometimes, late at night, when the city finally remembers that it is allowed to be quiet, I catch myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about the strange future we are building with our own hands. Not just faster phones, not just more clever recommendation engines that push us more cat videos and more outrage, but something else. Something like the Minds from Iain Banks’ Culture novels: artificial intelligences so … Read the rest
Work, in the long view, is a moving target. For most of our species’ history we did not “have jobs”; we had tasks that followed daylight, seasons, and stomachs. Hunter-gatherer life combined bursts of high effort with long stretches of social time—mending, storytelling, tool care, childcare. Ethnographic estimates vary, but the pattern is consistent: subsistence came in pulses, not in 8-hour rectangles. The body we still carry—ultradian focus cycles, circadian … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ In all things human, when we try to get to the nitty-gritty of who we have been, who we are, and who or what we will become, the chicken before the egg debate can be counted on to enter the conversation at some point. For instance, no matter how far science can take us back or forward, religion always counters by asking “And … Read the rest
