Few are excited about the Apple Watch—its burdens are too easily imagined. And yet we treat it as an inevitability. How did this happen?
Search results
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Nightmare Dream of a Thinking Machine
The question “Can a machine think?” has shadowed computer science from its beginnings. Alan Turing proposed in 1950 that a machine could be taught like a child; John McCarthy, inventor of the programming language LISP, coined the term “artificial intelligence” in 1955. As AI researchers in the 1960s and 1970s began to use computers to recognize images, translate between languages, and understand instructions in normal language and not just code, the idea that computers would eventually develop the ability to speak and think—and thus to do evil—bubbled into mainstream culture.
Posted inNonfiction
The Dolphin Trainer Who Loved Dolphins Too Much
Dolphin trainer Ashley Guidry loved her job and the animals she worked with—in particular, a dolphin calf named Chopper. But years of seeing how business was done behind the scenes at a small marine park made her come to the painful conclusion that she had to walk away from it all.
Posted inNonfiction, Story
The Dolphin Trainer Who Loved Dolphins Too Much
Dolphin trainer Ashley Guidry loved her job and the animals she worked with—in particular, a dolphin calf named Chopper. But years of seeing how business was done behind the scenes at a small marine park made her come to the painful conclusion that she had to walk away from it all.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews, Story
A Conversation With Writer Colm Tóibín on the ‘Close Imagining’ of Fiction
“A really good idea might come to you at night and seem really wrong in the morning. So you’re always testing things.”
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Giving Visibility to the Invisible: An Interview With Photographer Ruddy Roye
“I want to introduce white America to people who they might never have met, and I want them to fall in love too.”
Posted inNonfiction
‘It’s Yours’: A Short History of the Horde
How Ta-Nehisi Coates built the best comment section on the internet—and why it can’t last.
Posted inNonfiction, Profiles & Interviews
Interview: Former ‘Matilda’ Star Mara Wilson on Leaving Hollywood and Becoming a Writer
“It’s very hard to be a perfectionist growing up in the film world. It reinforces all of your worst fears about perfection and doing things right.”
