Essays

Culture	Remembering My Friend Jean-Louis Cohen Thomas Weaver, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Art and Architecture at the MIT Press, reflects on the life and legacy of Jean-Louis Cohen, a hugely influential French architectural historian, curator, writer, and teacher, who died in August. Thomas Weaver \| Dec 2
Science & Tech	Will AI Render Programming Obsolete? It's exhilarating to think that, with the help of generative AI, anyone who can write can also write programs. It’s not so simple. Michael L. Littman \| Nov 20
Culture	Bruno Latour on Anna Tsing’s ‘The Mushroom at the End of the World’ "It would be a euphemism to say this book is not anthropocentric — it places humanity on another orbit." Bruno Latour \| Nov 9
Culture	Stanisław Lem's Prescient Vision of Artificial Life As with the best science fiction, Lem’s novel “The Invincible” has as much to teach us about our present situations as any futures we may face. N. Katherine Hayles \| Nov 2
Science & Tech	“Hallucinating” AIs Sound Creative, but Let’s Not Celebrate Being Wrong The term “hallucination,” which has been widely adopted to describe large language models outputting false information, is misleading. Its application to creativity risks compounding that. Oliver Bown \| Oct 13
Media	An Apocalyptic Meditation on Doomscrolling The next time you catch yourself doomscrolling, take it as an invitation to own your own horror. Erik Davis \| Oct 1
Science & Tech	A Tale About the Frontal Lobes as Told by a Neurologist Mark D'Esposito draws on a half-century of research, as well as insights gained in his lab, to break down our current understanding of frontal lobe function and working memory. Mark D'Esposito \| Sep 14
Culture	Why Immigrants Enlist in the U.S. Military I asked immigrants from 28 countries why they're serving in the U.S. military — and it's not primarily to gain citizenship. Sofya Aptekar \| Jul 27
Environment	The Devastating Effects of Fireworks on Pets and Wildlife Harm should be prevented not cheered. Kendra Coulter \| Jul 3
Culture	What if Wargames Could Be Something Else? Alternate wargames express the different ways we might begin to see contemporary global challenges. Mary Flanagan \| Jun 6