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Brian Christian on ‘The Most Human Human’
Photograph by Michael Langan. Brian Christian, who studied computer science, philosophy, and poetry, has just published his first book, The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us...
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Immune System
Living in fear of 1999’s Melissa virus. My father died when I was six, and though I didn’t, couldn’t, step into his shoes, I did inherit his role as my family’s IT guy. When I was around eight, I...
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Warhol via Floppy Disk, and Other News
Andy Warhol, Andy2, 1985, ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., courtesy of The Andy Warhol Museum Shakespeare: playwright, poet, armchair astronomer. “Peter Usher has a very elaborate...
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Bad Connection
Living with the Turing test. Researchers from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) using an IBM type 704 electronic data processing machine in 1957. Photo: Wikimedia Commons As of...
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The Crack-Up
Image via Markscheider/Wikimedia Commons For longer than I care to admit, I have been unable to scroll down on my computer. This is only the latest in a series of laptop-related inconveniences, but,...
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The World Just Wasn’t Ready, and Other News
Rest in peace, WebVan. Photo: Mark Coggins, via Flickr Tim Parks was dismayed to find that his students were so enthralled by “the printed word and an aura of literariness” that they’d miss obvious...
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Amazing Robot Brain Translates Russian
The general layout of the IBM 701. Photo via Computer History Sixty-one years ago, on January 7, 1954, a massive, terrifying, IBM artificial intelligence—referred to in the press as a “giant brain,” a...
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HAL, Mother, and Father
Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien. From 2001: A Space Odyssey It was April 1968 and my father was sitting in a theater in Times Square watching 2001: A Space Odyssey, certain...
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Perfect Paul
Our ongoing quest to personify the weather. Arthur Rackham, 1912. As I write this, the ominously named Winter Storm Thor is bringing his hammer down on the tristate area. Thor is pelting. Thor is...
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Thanks, Sounds Good, I Love You
How Smart Reply attempts to mimic the way we talk.Google’s inbox logo—now with an enviable, elusive sense of satisfaction.Last month, researchers at Google unveiled Smart Reply, a piece of artificial...
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HAL, Mother, and Father
We’re away until January 4, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year!From 2001: A Space OdysseyWatching the sixties and seventies through 2001...
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How to Travel with a Salmon
From the cover of How to Travel with a Salmon.Umberto Eco’s essay “How to Travel with a Salmon” first appeared in our Summer 1994 issue; it was later the title piece in a collection of Eco’s essays....
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The Glories of Word Processing, and Other News
From an ad for the Xerox 860.Our Southern editor, John Jeremiah Sullivan, on David Foster Wallace’s tennis writing: “David Foster Wallace wrote about tennis because life gave it to him … He wrote about...
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A Battery of Tests for You, and Other News
“The Make a Picture Story Test,” a psychological study from 1942. Image courtesy Redstone Press, via The New Yorker.Today in nomenclature: having lived for years in total ignorance of the Transatlantic...
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The Sharpened Pencil: An Interview with Nicholson Baker
Photo: Jerry BauerSpeaking to The Paris Review in 2011, Nicholson Baker remembered one of the small joys of his childhood. “The pencil sharpener was probably the best thing about school,” he said. “A...
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It’s Your New Moving House, and Other News
Just relax and take a nap while your house moves. So you’re moving. That’s nice. I bet you’re packing up all your stuff and stowing it in some U-Haul. I bet you’re tissue wrapping your glassware and...
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The President Is a Computer, and Other News
President Donald J. Trump, right, with boyhood friend. Does the president pass the Turing test? I’m afraid not. When I listen to his answers to basic questions and compare those answers to a real...
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Salvation Mode
The forgotten joys of the screen saver. When I first encountered Jorge Luis Borges’s “The House of Asterion,” a short story whose narrator runs with madness through an endless labyrinth, a remote...
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Thanks, Sounds Good, I Love You
How Smart Reply attempts to mimic the way we talk. Google’s inbox logo—now with an enviable, elusive sense of satisfaction. Last month, researchers at Google unveiled Smart Reply, a piece of artificial...
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HAL, Mother, and Father
We’re away until January 4, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2015. Please enjoy, and have a happy New Year! From 2001: A Space Odyssey Watching the sixties and seventies through...
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