Kalyani Tupkary

The Computer Pays Its Debt  tells the missing stories of women’s creative contributions to early computing while scrutinizing how corporations leveraged metaphors of craftwork and domesticity for commercial gain.

You make it (somewhat) arbitrary. Divide the world into 24 time zones, and  slowly force people  — often through colonial might — to abide by one, standard time for an entire wedge. Do it in the name of commerce, of travel, of ease of communication, of  ease . Fast-forward a century and a half, and this rational/irrational time is just the way

From the Near Future Laboratory, the definitive book describing in accessible and vivid detail the origins, evolution, and practice of design fiction: “ the practice of creating tangible and evocative prototypes from possible near futures, to help discover and represent the consequences of decision making.”

Like so many botanical concepts, the flower clock originated with the Swedish ur-taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, in his 1751 treatise “Philosophia Botanica.” Based on field observations, he divided flowers into three categories. The meteorici open and close with the weather. The tropici follow the changing hours of daylight. And the aequinoctales,

a tension of intellect and intuition.