They are fouling our information spaces with false facts, deepfake videos, ersatz art, invented sources, and bot imposters—the fake increasingly difficult to distinguish from the real.
What if the future is as real as the past? Physicists have been suggesting as much since Einstein. It’s all just the space-time continuum. “So in the future, the sister of the past,” thinks young Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses, “I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.” Twisty! What if you received knowledge of your own tragic future—as a gift, or perhaps a curse?
A neuroscientist and geneticist sets out to rescue the beleaguered concept from its many deniers—including some famous physicists.
“We make decisions, we choose, we act. These are the fundamental truths of our existence and absolutely the most basic phenomenology of our lives. If science seems to be suggesting otherwise, the correct response is not to throw our hands up …"
Is he right?
With the entity formerly known as Twitter vanishing in the rearview mirror, here are two articles from the early days, when we wondered what it was and what it might become. A global conversation? A mosaic of communities and interests? Perhaps you remember.
Stephen Hawking surrounded himself with a cloud of myth, made himself into a commercial product and an international brand. The celebrity eclipsed the scientist. There’s a scientific story to tell, and most of Hawking’s later life served to conceal it.
First it was a heavenly body—a beacon, or a world, a place where no one could possibly go. Then, from 1969 to 1972, twelve people landed there in spaceships. On behalf of all humanity, they said. Is it time to go back?
Your favorite time traveler may be missing from my chronicle, Time Travel: A History. I'm sorry about that. Some readers are already pointing out the omissions.
Consider the case of Alley Oop.
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Find me in the open social web (fediverse; Mastodon): @gleick@mas.to