As computers increasingly come to take on the qualities we once understood as distinctly human, we keep moving the bar to maintain our sense of distinction.

Mirrors, photographs, recordings—these technologies promise to show us the self that others see. But how many of us can bear the evidence?

Science lifted us out of nature. It tamed the wilderness, and it shot us to the moon. Now it has produced a hamburger made entirely of vegetables that bleeds like real beef.

Somewhere in the desert of western Texas, a clock is being built that will last for 10,000 years.

Drones satisfy our desire for transcendence. They tempt us to believe that we can rise above the particulars of our historic situation and perhaps even abandon the limits of subjective consciousness.

This is why it’s the ultimate utopia: a planet where no real future is imaginable is a planet where any future is imaginable.

No matter how miraculous a reflection may seem, it is always a harbinger of death.

Science lifted us out of nature. It tamed the wilderness and it shot us to the moon. Now it has produced a hamburger made entirely of vegetables that bleeds like real beef.

I’ve never encountered anything like the caveat lectors surrounding Marguerite Young’s ‘Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.’

  Like the holy books, long novels are more often maligned than read. Critics complain that they’re exasperating or impossible or not worth the time. But in the history of my reading life, I’ve encountered nothing like the caveat lectors s…