Futurism

Remember how we used to say that when the machines start reproducing, we'll know we're in trouble"? Well maybe it's time for a gut-check on that one. Video after the jump.

In an age of ever-more fantastic gadgets, it's becoming received wisdom that we're all cyborgs now. But as implant hacker Lepht Anonym reminds us, the original vision of the term was dangerous and feral. Videos after the jump.

The bicycle rider always wants a car, Kevin Kelly reminds us in What Technology Wants. But the car won't make him happier�and if what technology wants is autonomy, it may be advised against the pursuit of happiness.

Reviewing Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal's manifesto of gaming for a better world, Ian Bogost realizes that he likes the messy, repellent, stunning reality we've got.

French-Canadian kids doing anthropology in the midst of our broken future, contending with the vague stirrings of paleotechnology. Video after the jump.

A justly celebrated viral video celebrates Carl Sagan's hopes for the future of humankind�a good bet, but by no means a sure one. Video after the jump.

This space-saving bicycle parking system proves that the future is not only unevenly distributed, but elsewhere.

"Imagination... must not be underestimated as a valuable means to advance knowledge towards new frontiers," say the authors of a new study on the possible consequences of the discovery of extraterrestrial life; we couldn't agree more.

A documentary that helps us glimpse one of modernity's unlikeliest and most enticing of possible ends: the open-source cracking-open of industrial society.

In the age of the ebook, a ruminative turn to the inner work of building palaces of memory.