Society
essay
The future
Prehistory in the atomic age
To understand the terrifying futures unleashed by nuclear weapons, we urgently need to return to the deep past
Maria Stavrinaki
essay
Computing and artificial intelligence
Frontier AI ethics
Generative agents will change our society in weird, wonderful and worrying ways. Can philosophy help us get a grip on them?
Seth Lazar
essay
Metaphysics
What awaits us?
Humanity’s future remains as unthinkable as the still-uncolonised galaxy or the enduring mystery of our own births and deaths
Jennifer Banks
essay
Information and communication
Beware climate populism
The most ardent deniers of anthropogenic climate change today will become the climate conspiracy theorists of tomorrow
Ákos Szegőfi
essay
Space exploration
Capturing the cosmos
When self-replicating craft bring life to the far Universe, a religious cult, not science, is likely to be the driving force
Jay Olson
video
Space exploration
Would children born beyond Earth ever be able to return to humanity’s home planet?
5 minutes
essay
Earth science and climate
Deep warming
Even if we ‘solve’ global warming, we face an older, slower problem. Waste heat could radically alter Earth’s future
Mark Buchanan
video
Space exploration
Burning ice, metal clouds, gemstone rain – tour the strangest known exoplanets
31 minutes
video
The future
What’s the healthiest way to handle a creeping feeling that the world is ending?
15 minutes
video
Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
7 minutes
essay
Animals and humans
Against human exceptionalism
In a tight spot, you’d probably intuit that a human life outweighs an animal’s. There are good arguments why that’s wrong
Jeff Sebo
essay
Thinkers and theories
Against longtermism
It started as a fringe philosophical theory about humanity’s future. It’s now richly funded and increasingly dangerous
Émile P Torres
essay
Neuroscience
Am I my connectome?
Each human brain possesses a unique, intricate pattern of 86 billion neurons. If science can map it, immortality beckons
Phil Jaekl
essay
Complexity
Uncertain times
The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity – seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all
Jessica Flack & Melanie Mitchell
essay
The future
Where did the grandeur go?
Superlative things were done in the past century by marshalling thousands of people in the service of a vision of the future
Martin Parker
essay
Philosophy of science
The good scientist
Science is the one culture that all humans share. What would it mean to create a scientifically literate future together?
Martin Rees
essay
History
Are there laws of history?
Historians believe that the past is irreducibly complex and the future wildly unpredictable. Scientists disagree. Who’s right?
Amanda Rees
essay
The future
At the limits of thought
Science today stands at a crossroads: will its progress be driven by human minds or by the machines that we’ve created?
David C Krakauer
essay
Stories and literature
Supermensch
Superman et al were invented amid feverish eugenic speculation: what does the superhero craze say about our own times?
Iwan Rhys Morus
video
Film and visual culture
Our biological past and our technological future play out on a single human face
1 minute
video
Progress and modernity
Smart homes, bountiful oceans and casual sexism: the future as envisaged from 1967
26 minutes
essay
The future
The end of us
Only since the Enlightenment have we been able to imagine humans going extinct. Is it a sign of our maturity as a species?
Thomas Moynihan
idea
Film and visual culture
Why the power of cute is colonising our world
Simon May
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Civilisation peaked in 1940 and will collapse by 2040: the data-based predictions of 1973
11 minutes