The Best of Noema Magazine

A growing chorus of architects argue we have to build differently with concrete — which contributes to global warming and environmental destruction on a scale that’s hard to fathom — or perhaps…

China’s leaders are building a new economy oriented to state-driven technological solutions to the climate crisis. In the process, they aim to construct an entirely different world order that at last…

Despite their great-power rivalry, America and China are more similar than most people think. Both are living through a Gilded Age and struggling to end excesses of capitalism.

Digital connectivity’s democratizing impact on the production, circulation and consumption of culture has been greatly exaggerated.

An artificial intelligence system trained on words and sentences alone will never approximate human understanding.

Bengali was the language of home and of intimacy. Yet somewhere along those years, with a sigh drowned out by babel, the language left me.

For millennia, scientists and technologists have been scouring the natural world for clues on how to live longer. But is anyone any closer to finally defeating aging?

Users flocking to the platform will need to shift their expectations for social media and become engaged democratic citizens in the life of their networks.

«the anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing calls “scalability.” This doesn’t just mean large scale. It means, according to Tsing, “the ability to expand — and expand and expand — without rethinking basic elements.”»

In Mexico, people who are “tocado” — “touched” — reveal that geological time can emerge through fissures in the land to alter the way we relate to our homes, cities and even ourselves.

A new field of psychology has begun to quantify an age-old intuition: Feeling awe is good for us.

«Francis Bacon, described wonder as “broken knowledge” — a facet of the human condition, in other words, that defied his scientific method»

Our democracies are already gamified. Our goal should be to do it better.

After the up and down it will go sideways.

«the same electorate that gave Five Star its chance turned to a coalition anchored by the far-right Brothers of Italy, a party with neo-fascist roots led by Giorgia Meloni.»

The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political: It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us.

«Clock time is not what most people think it is. It was created, and it is frequently altered and adjusted to fit social and political purposes.»

Embracing electric cars and the batteries that power them inflates the need for mining. Is this an environmental paradox? Or are there more important questions to ask?

«Environmentalists, the very same who have championed a clean, just future for the U.S., haven’t really considered that their beloved world-saving technologies will need to begin as rocks in the ground somewhere, and likely not in an area with the same level of wealth as they have.»

The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate…

For decades, America gave China a vision of future prosperity. But today, America has mostly ceased to offer a model for China or anywhere else, leaving China’s leaders without a guide as they chart a…

A growing body of research suggests human behavior on social media is strikingly similar to collective behavior in nature.

Artificial intelligence has mostly been focusing on a technique called deep learning. It might be time to reconsider.

«n symbols in themselves do not inherently preclude some sort of role for differentiation. And t»