How technology disrupted the truth

The Long Read: All of our efforts to be more productive backfire – and only make us feel even busier and more stressed

Exclusive: Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns

Novelists including Johny Pitts, Monica Ali and Nina Stibbe – plus Observer critics – on their essential holiday books

124,000 documents expose inner workings behind US tech firm’s rise as a global empire responsible for 19m journeys a day

If you’re not a professional programmer but you’ve ever used a computer, this article is for you – seriously. You will learn what code is, what software is, how apps get written, and what different programming languages do and why they matter. Plus you’ll get details about other technical issues. Along the way, Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Paul Ford explains the culture and some of the psychology of programming. This delightfully animated article is essential for anyone not in the programming field who uses computers. getAbstract recommends it to everyone interested in learning more about programming, its culture and its principles.

It’s not just the Cambridge Analytica debacle. Ethics don’t scale.

Large data sets provide intriguing—and dismaying—insights into who we're drawn to and how much that matters for our romantic happiness.

Nineteenth-century critiques of technology show how longstanding many current concerns are

Since the Industrial Revolution, technology has greatly enhanced humanity’s capacity to shape the world through manufacturing and finance. However, these technological developments also have the…

«Francis Bacon had described the scientific method’s application to the natural world in his Novum Organum Scientiarum (1620) as restoring humans’ ‘rights over nature’ as they use all their ‘efforts to make the course of art outstrip nature’.»