My doctoral dissertation addressed what I called the “Frankenstein Complex.” So guess why this story bothers me. Today, a scientific journal published a study that some people thought might never be made public at all. The paper describes experiments that suggest just a few genetic changes could potentially make a bird flu virus capable of becoming contagious in humans, and
Read moreHorror of the “gothic” variety that occupied so much of the conversation between Byron and the Shelleys (these would be the conversations that ultimately gave rise to Frankenstein) has traditionally traded in some easily recognizable tropes. Among the most common are your haunted places. Swamps and moors are always a little scary. Graveyards and crypts, of course. Transylvania. And then
Read moreYou’re honey child to a swarm of bees Gonna blow right through you like a breeze Give me one last dance Well slide down the surface of things You’re the real thing Yeah the real thing You’re the real thing Even better than the real thing – U2 Fantasy stories, myths, legends, tall tales, fairy tales, horror, all these have
Read moreVerily, we have arrived at the end of all culture. Perhaps predictably, the culprit is technology. Or, to be a bit more specific, the culprit is Microsoft, which has now infused the art of songwriting with the same kind of magic and warmth you’ve come to expect from Excel. Microsoft is pitching software designed for you, no musical training required.
Read moreErrrmmm, we can do that? The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals. In fact, Wade points out, there are good reasons
Read morePart five in a series. LIFE’s portrayal of the space race represented, in most respects, a logical extension of its war coverage. Many of the space program’s early goals were military in nature, and as in World War II, technology was once again both demon and messiah, depending on whether it was theirs or ours. . . .Sputnik proved that
Read moreI used to work with a HAL 9000. Back when I was at US West in the late ’90s we had a voice system into which we would record the day’s company news so that employees without Internet access could dial in and keep up with the latest events. As with any such system there was a dial-in sequence, buttons
Read morePart three in a series. In an age and a culture dominated by scientism, the word “sample†tends to invoke the adjectival “representative,†and I cannot begin to imagine culling a meaningful representative sample from LIFE’s 400-plus issues. Still, it seems important to devote a few pages to what happened with LIFE and technology between the Fort Peck Dam and
Read morePart one in a series. During its 36-year run, LIFE Magazine traversed a period of technological innovation and peril unsurpassed in the recorded history of humanity. As the first issue was released in November of 1936, a resurgent Germany was constructing the most awesome war machine the world had yet seen, a development that literally threatened the very future of
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lullaby pit 