Archive (Page 3) • 5it • Buttondown

Special Mystery Edition: A ''Most Wanted'' Poster

Today, I have a very special and very weird edition of the newsletter for you. Last week, a mystery dropped through my mail slot. It came in the form of a...

"I Am Your Doppelgänger"

1. A new project about a new form of citizenship. "Algorithmic Citizenship is a form of citizenship which is not assigned at birth, or through complex legal...

The Machines Keep Dying

1. Some intriguing history in this piece on Uber's effect on Portland's Ethiopian cab drivers. "Berhan fell in behind Kedir Wako, another Broadway driver who...

A Range of Synthetic Smog Recipes

1. Air pollution meringues. "This afternoon, the Center for Genomic Gastronomy and I will be offering New Yorkers a chance to taste aeroir, with a side-by-...

A Self-Taught Roller Coaster Maker

Hey Everyone, So, it's been a while since you received one of my newsletters. A few weeks ago, I became the editor in chief of Fusion. Since then, I've been...

The Purlicue Apparently

1. This is some next-level biohacking. "For those who can bear the pain, biohacking, where computing devices are injected under the skin, provides a novel...

But That Future Only Went Up to 2001

1. The Apple Watch is a lock-in mechanism, argues Ian Bogost. "So, even if the Apple Watch does evolve into a more self-contained, independently adept...

His Most Famous Creation, Universe 1

1. Stewart Brand argues we're not going through a major extinction event, and that the focus on species going extinct distracts from the real issues with...

A Little More Boredom Would Have Been Welcome

1. You knew the New Yorker takeout on missions to pretend to be on Mars would be fascinating, and it is. "A little more boredom would have been welcome...

A Population of Dolphins Who Programmed a Supercomputer

1. It's National Dolphin Day, which means it's time to revisit this conceptual video of a space station designed for dolphins to inhabit along with a...

Everything Begins With Attention

1. 79 (interesting) theses on technology (and what it means to live in the modern world). Everything begins with attention. It is vital to ask, “What must I...

The First Two of Which Were 1 and 196,883

1. We now know there are tons of planets out in the galaxy, including many like Earth, but when might we actually see one? "In terms of resolving and imaging...

The Community in Which It Is Raised

1. Ethicists are trying to figure out whether (or when and how) doctors should use brain stimulation on children. "Given this, we argue that brain...

When the Troll Arrives

1. Norway auctioned its Cold War-era submarine base for a paltry $5 million. "During the Cold War, Norway built a secret naval base, Olavsvern, that was...

The Tyranny of the Buzz

1. Apple admits in Wired that phones are "ruining your life." Ergo, a watch! "[T]he Apple team landed upon the Watch’s raison d’être. It came down to this:...

Artificial Crowd Noise

1. The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. "occhiolism, n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful...

Our Main Energy, People

1. This is RF bait: James Lovelock, SimEarth, and superintelligent AI all in one essay. "As humanity tackles the idea of the Anthropocene—the proposed name...

Oligarchy or Benevolent Dictatorship Are Probably More Accurate

1. Siva Vaidhyanathan introduces an important new concept to think with: the Cryptopticon. "In Europe, North America, and much of the rest of the world,...

Algorithms From the Outside

1. Cheap access to the world of car hacking is now available. "Tomorrow at the Black Hat Asia security conference in Singapore, 24-year-old Eric Evenchick...

Soft Actuators in Couture

1. Where the people in architectural renderings come from. "So where do these people come from now? For architects, the process of collecting their...

The Only Utopian Demand

1. Actual solar and wind power installations have far outpaced expert predictions about their growth. "Over the past 15 years, a number of predictions – by...

No Longer a Creepy Interaction

1. If you're not following the scientific-ethical debate about CRISPR gene-editing technology, it's time to start. "A group of leading biologists on Thursday...

Must Be Processed, Manipulated, and Interpreted

1. On Hollywood's love for unrealistic, one-dimensional futures. "They’re striking, I think, in how they exemplify the two dominant cinematic trends in...

Without You There Is No Us

I'm here at TED with the crew from Pop Up Magazine, so I'm sharing links to the work of the people I'm performing with today. 1. Dana Goodyear on the limits...

The Laser's Scanning Path

1. A new desktop browser? Meet Vivaldi. "The power user's current solution to the simplification, arguably the infantilization, of the Web browser interface...

Relative Paragons of Economy

1. The first people to walk on a new volcanic island are tourism entrepreneurs seeking to sell the experience of visiting a new volcanic island. "The island,...

Sourced from a Bankrupt Factory

Today's edition is guest-edited by subscriber Dorothy R. Santos, a writer, editor, and curator focused on new media and digital art, the internet of things,...

A Multivortex Character

1. What happened to the guy who wrote the Anarchist's Cookbook? "Powell is now a sixty-five-year-old grandfather. He still speaks with a slight English...

Well, That’s What I Haven’t Found, Barlow

1. In praise of the shitphone, by John Hermann, who is on a writing tear. "If shitphones were ready for everyone, they wouldn’t be shitphones. As devices,...

The Harriet Tubman-Sarah Connor Brigade

1. Maybe we should take Venus not Mars. "Mars One. The Mars Rover. Bruno Mars. Mars Bars. It's pretty clear we're OBSESSED with the idea of Mars, especially...

rf: disaffected

1. How Y2K really went down. "If Y2K has been remembered as a 'non-event,' a hysteria and a farce, is that because it was an overblown threat? Or is it...

1. The future of eyewitness testimony, which is often garbage. "[I]n fact, it’s 'the number one cause of wrongful convictions,' says Daniel Medwed. Medwed is...

People have asked me: why does your newsletter show up at all different times of the day? Some have asked whether it is an engagement strategy or some kind...

RF, special edition: perception

February 27, 2015

1. Is it a rabbit or a duck? "An ambiguous figure in which the brain switches between seeing a rabbit and a duck. The duck-rabbit was 'originally noted' by...

February 26, 2015

1. How the American Sign Language community works out how to sign new words like "selfie" and "photobomb." "As a collective, we see various signs until one...

RF: differentia

February 25, 2015

1. The brutal beginning of the sulfur supply chain is in an Indonesian volcano. "Ijen spits out striking blue flames that are only visible at night, which is...

February 24, 2015

1. Dating bots make me ... uncomfortable. Do coders really need one more special advantage? "I realized that when I stormed out of the lab, I’d accidentally...

February 23, 2015

1. Phone battery life should be longer. Battery innovation is hard, though, so maybe phones should be thicker. "Take the latest iPhone. Let’s do a thought...

February 19, 2015

1. The codes that reveal the presence of network infrastructure all over New York City. "Sometimes you'll see a manhole cover that is surrounded with...

February 18, 2015

1. These are all the sounds discarded when Suzanne Vega's 'Tom's Diner' was compressed to MP3. "Right now, you’re probably listening to music on your...

February 17, 2015

1. A contact lens with zoom built in. "Developed by a team led by Eric Tremblay at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, the rigid contact...

February 13, 2015

1. David Carr, a media columnist who was the north star for many journalists (myself included) died yesterday in the tower of news. "David’s public...

February 11, 2015

1. Beautiful art from Casey Reas of the UCLA Arts Software Studio. "I work with statements, variables, loops, conditionals, functions, objects, and arrays....

RF: desperation (w. bonus reader feedback)

February 10, 2015

1. The megabad climate change scenario. Earth, 2200 AD. "There are only about 500 million of us left, after the convulsive transformations caused by climate...

Real Future, 0.5: desolated

February 9, 2015

1. Shimmering data is one of the most useful, evocative phrases I've run into in a long time. "The climate knowledge infrastructure is constantly opening...

Real Future, 0.4: desire

February 6, 2015

1. Life inside a Chinese bitcoin mine. "Strangely, the mine’s workers actually live inside the facility itself, returning home just four or five days a...

RF, 0.3: desideratum

February 5, 2015

1. After Google denied his request to photograph an Oklahoma server farm, an Irish artist flew a helicopter over it to get a better view. "The joy of the...

Real Future, 0.2: derring-do

February 4, 2015

1. Navy SEALS, DELTA Force, Green Berets, and CIA operatives recently met to discuss... bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. "In particular, the Islamic...

Real Future, 0.1: depositary

February 3, 2015

(Hey, why has the name changed?! Read this.) 1. The resurgence of psychedelics as psychological treatments gets the big New Yorker treatment. "'I don’t want...

Welcome to Real Future (née 5IT)

February 3, 2015

Standby for a real, actual (tiny)letter! I have some good news. When I left The Atlantic to go to Fusion last year, I said that I wanted a place to explore...