The World Wired Web

Despite marketing imagery to the contrary, the “cloud” remains very much grounded in physical infrastructure, including unfathomable miles of wires.

Teton Dam Flood

The False Promise of Hydroelectric Dams

In part two of a series on dams, reservoirs and catastrophic failures displace and destroy whole communities and ecosystems.

Hoover Dam

Voyage of the Dammed

Hydroelectric power is often thought of as “green” energy, but dams have devastated river ecology and the creatures it supports—including us.

Ágnes Geréb

Natural Birth: The Long Struggle of Dr. Ágnes Geréb

In the final piece in a series on birth and technology, David Reynolds shares the history of Hungary’s tireless natural childbirth advocate.

C-section

The Apex of Technological Birth

In many places, birth by emergency surgery–the C-section–is increasingly the norm. Part three in a series on technological childbirth.

Epidural

The Death of Natural Childbirth

The second part of a series on childbirth examines how natural birth has been systematically disabled, at the cost of bonding and health.

C-Section

The Attack on Natural Childbirth

Over the past century or so, the most natural and integral part of the human life-cycle—birth—has been systematically medicalized and institutionalized, at the expense of the body’s own wisdom.

Broken watches

The Informed Preference for Permanence (Principles of Technoskepticism, Part Three)

Our technological mindset leads to an “enforced impermanence” as the new is always prioritized over the old. The resultant rootlessness and churn contributes to a sense of disequilibrium while keeping us apart from the steadying forces of tradition and wisdom.

Complexity

The Problems of Prediction, Part 2

Our overconfidence in our predictive abilities can be traced to the simple fact that the universe is infinitely complex.

The Problems of Prediction, Part 1

Our technological mindset makes us more inclined to predict and gather ever-more data in service of prediction. We misunderstand the information we have, can’t know the information we don’t have, and yet we are more confident than ever.