Odd Bedfellows
Germany is Israel’s ride-or-die.
19086 Articles by: Alex Press
Economic Ennui
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the world’s 10 wealthiest countries by per capita income. As of 2021, it’s 86th. What happened?
Where Are All the Robots, Anyway?
Automation is booming in rural China, the strongholds of the US auto industry, and the world’s oldest countries.
Hollywood Welcomes Its Silicon Valley Overlords
Hollywood AI boosters claim that “democratized” movies based on personal choice await us, if only we can get rid of those pesky human beings.
Conversations With Friends
When chatbots take over the world, might they do it as members of a vanguard party?
Detroit Techno’s Dance with Death
As automation ravaged Detroit, black musicians created a new sound that merged human and machine. With it came a vision for working-class self-organization in the Motor City.
Cautionary Tales
The English science-fiction writer J. G. Ballard claimed to believe in nothing. Yet his prophetic dystopias reveal a deep awareness of the brutality of class rule and imperialism.
Two Intellectuals Trapped in the Matrix
If you want a picture of the future, imagine Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek talking to each other — forever.
High-Tech Desert Hellscape
Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has a dream: a futuristic desert city stretching to the clouds. But down in the sand, it’s a cyberpunk dystopia.
Issue 52: Dossier
How to speak machine overlord.
Artificial Intelligence Solves Problems We Don’t Have
AI might take some administrative jobs and cheapen cultural production. What it won’t do is help us care for each other in an age of demographic change and institutionalized neglect.
Issue 52: Letters
Two takes on our rapidly aging “Aging” issue.
Issue 52: The Internet Speaks
At the next Jacobin party, we’ll all dance on Henry Kissinger’s grave.
Cyberpunk Politics
Keeping hope alive at New York Comic Con — kind of.
Can Humanity Survive AI?
With the development of artificial intelligence racing forward at warp speed, some of the richest men in the world may be deciding the fate of humanity right now.
Automation: Roll Out!
At the heart of the US-Japanese franchise Transformers is a tension between visions of robotics as liberation and as enslavement.
Automated Intimacy
This isn’t capitalism’s first loneliness epidemic. But in the 21st century, relationship simulators like Replika are here with the solution: your very own AI lover.
The Misadventures of Cybersyn
Chile’s Project Cybersyn should be remembered as a masterful branding effort — not a road to socialism.
Henry in the Gulf
On the “cynical operation” of Kissinger’s Kurdish affair.
Can AI Be Regulated? Europe Is About to Find Out
Legislation full of carve-outs is no replacement for a political movement to democratize AI.