This electric car was cutting edge in 1908. What’s it like to drive it?

This electric car was cutting edge in 1908. What’s it like to drive it?

Post Views: 308 Electric vehicles are a much more long-standing tradition of car culture than we often give them credit for. Ask someone the first EV that pops to mind, and the usual responses will be from the past couple of decades—the original Tesla Roadster, perhaps the late 1990s GM EV1, maybe in rare cases…

Deepfakes could help us relive history—or rewrite it

Deepfakes could help us relive history—or rewrite it

Post Views: 310 They produced a video in which young singers clad in period uniforms and carrying period weapons sang “Hareut,” an iconic song commemorating soldiers killed in combat. As they sing, the musicians stare at faded black-and-white photographs they hold. The young soldiers in the old pictures blink and smile back at them, thanks…

These young cities are solving age-old problems

These young cities are solving age-old problems

Post Views: 264 From Rome’s vast Trajan’s Forum to Angkor Wat’s stone temples, cities have been magnets for trade, art, and culture since ancient times. Urban living as we know it first emerged around 3500 B.C.E. along the Nile Valley and Sumerian coast. Unlike the semipermanent villages that came before them, these social and political…

Ancient robots were objects of fantasy and fun

Ancient robots were objects of fantasy and fun

Post Views: 233 E. R. Truitt teaches in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art (University of Pennsylvania Press), which explores the rich history of artificial people and animals between 800 and 1450. This story is excerpted…

AI turned a Rembrandt masterpiece into 5.6 terabytes of data

AI turned a Rembrandt masterpiece into 5.6 terabytes of data

Post Views: 265 As the story goes, in the 1600s Rembrandt was commissioned by the Amsterdam civic guard to create a sweeping oil painting for their headquarters. The Dutch portraitist constructed a scene with the city’s mayor and his lieutenant—plus 32 other characters, including a dressed-up young lass. The piece is thought to have been…