Did you know Daimler and Benz, whose names would combine to form one of the longest-standing car manufacturing partnerships in history, not only never met but were competitive rivals? … Continue readingThe Harnessing of Power

It’s written with a lot of personality and is often laugh out loud funny, but the uniquely lovely message at it’s heart is that we’ve endured aeons of poor design, agony and death only to rise above it and make our world according to our vision, while a perfect organism would sit quietly and achieve little. … Continue readingHuman Errors

Like cancer, it’s not even a single disease. The bizarre Posterior Cortical Atrophy, also known as ‘visual Alzheimer’s’, leaves the person’s memory and sense of self mostly intact, instead causing hallucinations, the sudden loss of the ability to read, recognise faces and familiar environments. One sufferer even saw everything compltely upside down. … Continue readingIn Pursuit of Memory

Like Digital vs Human, the recent book by futurist Richard Watson, war studies professor Thomas Rid’s Rise of the Machines takes a similar look at our relationship to technology. But

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If the size and influence of the diet industry and the battles many people wage – often over decades – to control their weight seems nonsensical to you, Why Diets

Continue readingWhy Diets Make Us Fat

According to Digital vs Human, we need to start talking about the way robotics, AI, automation and the web are going to further affect us – but we aren’t. Instead,

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A book of both history and science, this couldn’t have a better title – it’s quite simply the comprehensive story of the discovery, disentanglement and manipulation of the gene. From

Continue readingThe Gene: An Intimate History