JC

If alien intelligence has evolved similarly, we’d be most unlikely to catch it in the brief sliver of time when it was still embodied in the organic form. Particularly, were we to detect ET, it would be far more likely to be electronic, where the dominant creatures aren’t flesh and blood—and maybe aren’t even located on planets, but on stations in... See more

for nearly fourteen years afterwards, I stared at a smartphone every single day. Five thousand days, all in all. I can’t think of anything else I’ve done with the same level of commitment. There have been days where I’ve had nothing to eat or drink and there have been nights when I didn’t sleep. But until very recently, I never once went... See more

Fermi expressing his surprise over the absence of any signs for the existence of other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way. Because a simple estimate showed that an advanced civilization could have reached every corner of the galaxy within a time much shorter than the galaxy’s age, the question arose: Why don’t we see them?

The tendency to put off, push away, or otherwise delay is strong. No. Act and move on. And act again if you have to — most decisions are temporary, anyway.

As late as 2011, journalists and technologists were praising social media’s emancipatory power in light of the role of Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring revolts. But, as has been noted many times, after the U.S. presidential election in 2016, such optimism increasingly appeared naïve and misguided. Now Facebook and Twitter are seen as... See more