Perhaps the most plausible thing about Samantha Schweblin’s disquieting novel is the cavalier way in which people invite privacy-invading technology into their lives. The setting is not especially futuristic: kentuki are the new must-have gadget sweeping the world; you become…
It is now arguably the dominant perspective to see human history as progressive. This has not always been the case. The Judaeo-Christian view envisions a fall from a primary state of divine favour and perfection; the Greek poet Herodotus saw…
First published in 1986, and updated in 1993, Roszak’s book is now dated in a number of respects – a danger likely to befall any account of contemporary technology. And so, even with the updated edition, this makes some of…
The dream of immortality is an ancient one, but it is only in comparatively recent times that the means of its realisation has shifted from a religious and spiritual concern to a secular and technological ambition. Its current incarnation is…
Quantum physics is deeply unsettling. The thought experiment that gives the book its title, first proposed by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, imagines that there is a cat sealed in a windowless box, inside of which is a phial of poisonous gas…
Your dad is a Luddite, perhaps, or maybe your mum; your gran, almost certainly. Like the sweet old Italian Nonna bewildered and amazed by Google’s home assistant, older generations often show less facility and more reluctance when adopting technology into…