Science & Technology

"The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not." — Gertrude Stein

Comment for Comment: On Michael Tedder’s “Top Eight”
Grant Sharples reviews Michael Tedder’s “Top Eight: How MySpace Changed Music.”
Grant SharplesAug 20, 2023
- Music
- Science & Technology
Withering Green Rush: California Cannabis Breeding at a Crossroads
In a preview of LARB Quarterly no. 38: Earth, Ali Bektaş examines one of the state’s most contentious and consequential industries.
Ali BektaşAug 5, 2023
- LARB Lit
- Science & Technology
Nothing “Proto” About It: More on MIT Press’s New Radium Age Series
The pleasures of reading the titles from MIT Press’s new Radium Age series, writes historian of science Michael Gordin, lies in the science fiction genre not yet having congealed.
Michael D. GordinJul 27, 2023
Red and Green Make … Degrowth: On Kohei Saito’s “Marx in the Anthropocene”
Andrew Ahern reviews Kohei Saito’s “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism.”
Andrew AhernJul 23, 2023
- Politics
- Science & Technology
From Robots to iBots: The Iconology of Artificial Intelligence
W. J. T. Mitchell asks, What kind of intelligence does AI actually represent?
W. J. T. MitchellJul 22, 2023
- Philosophy & Religion
- Science & Technology
Machine Voice: Programmer Fiction
Many decades before generative AI, the writer J. M. Coetzee actively engaged with machine voices, says Andrew Dean, and also grappled with the perils of “automatism,” as he called it, the tendency of language to reproduce itself.
Andrew DeanJul 19, 2023
- Fiction
- Science & Technology
L.A. and the Birth of Car Culture: On Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee’s “Driving Force”
Gary Cross reviews Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee’s “Driving Force: Automobiles and the New American City, 1900–1930.”
Gary CrossJul 15, 2023
- History
- Science & Technology
Territorial Taxonomy: On Melissa L. Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River”
Mary L. Holden considers Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.”
Mary L. HoldenJun 25, 2023
- History
- Science & Technology
On Other Intelligences: A Conversation with Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
Nora N. Khan interviews writer and artist Mashinka Firunts Hakopian about her new book, “The Institute for Other Intelligences.”
Nora N. KhanJun 19, 2023
- Art & Architecture
- Science & Technology
Romantic Myths of American Environmentalism: On Scott Chaskey’s “Soil and Spirit”
Jenny Liou reviews Scott Chaskey’s “Soil and Spirit: Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life.”
Jenny LiouJun 18, 2023
- Nonfiction
- Science & Technology
Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America: On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters”
Ellen Wayland-Smith is haunted by Audrey Clare Farley’s exposé, in “Girls and Their Monsters: The Genain Quadruplets and the Making of Madness in America,” of white American mid-century pathologies.
Ellen Wayland-SmithJun 13, 2023
Foundational Anxieties, Modern Mathematics, and the Political Imagination
Massimo Mazzotti uses a forgotten episode in revolutionary Naples to demonstrate the entanglement of mathematics and politics.
Massimo MazzottiJun 2, 2023