philosophy

Why Google wants us all to be Larry Nerd

Can we agree that humanity is pickled?

Our politics are an embarrassment. Our economies stink far more pungently than a full trash can in 100-degree humidity. And our inter-personal relations are so lifeless that they are enacted without bothering to meet face-to-face.

So along comes Google, looks at the state of the world today and says: "What a sorry, irrational mess. We just can't let these sorts of humans dominate our culture. It just looks bad in the third-eyes of our alien friends."

Unlike so many corporate beings who bury their heads in the sand and simply … Read more

Reporters' Roundtable: E3 preview and the future of games (podcast)

E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is coming up next week, and CNET News is sending Josh Lowensohn and Daniel Terdiman to the show to report on it. We've got them both in the house today to tell us what to expect. We're going to cover the future of platforms, why Farmville is such a success, why PC games lag consoles, what happens when you give a Rock Band guitar to a real musician, and more.

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Reporters' Roundtable: What is artificial life? (podcast)

This week, artificial life! Last month, of course, Craig Venter announced that he had modified a living organism by replacing its DNA with a synthetically-created genome. The J. Craig Venter Institute project took Mycoplasma capricolum bacteria and completely rewrote its genetic code of more than 1 million base pairs of DNA.

It's another step on the way to the creation of designed organisms. It's important science and it raises fascinating technological and ethical questions, some of which we'll be discussing today.

We have two great guests for this show. First, in the studio with us, Dr. Kiki Sanford from podcasts This Week in Science and Dr. Kiki's Science Hour.

And from the philosophy department of my alma mater, Reed College, Dr. Mark Bedau. Mark is also editor of the MIT journal Artificial Life.

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Show notes and talking points… Read more