No. 74 - Fall 2023 - The New Atlantis

A world of authentic, post-spin journalism: The dream Jon Stewart spent a decade making real is now America’s waking nightmare. What did he get so wrong? — By Jon Askonas

Essays

The Case for a Pandemic Moonshot

Tom Ridge and Asha M. George on why next time we shouldn’t accept the same bad options

Unsustainable Alarmism

Taylor Dotson on why we can’t stay in crisis mode forever

Power Metals

Tristan Abbey asks exactly how bad China’s dominance of rare-earth elements is for America

The Technocrat’s Dilemma

Alexander Stern on how expert rule is destroying itself

Was Fusionism a Fluke?

Howe Whitman III reads Hayek and Lewis on what once unified the Right

Reviews & Reconsiderations

Stuck Between Climate Doom and Denial

Roger Pielke, Jr. on the failure of Unsettled, a popular critique of climate science

Can We Be Human in Meatspace?

Brad East asks if revolution against tech starts at home

The Supergenius at the End of the World

David Polansky on democracy as an obstacle to Muskian great men in Neal Stephenson’s sci-fi

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No. 70Fall 2022

No. 70

Fall 2022

Essays

A Nuclear Renaissance?

Thomas Hochman and Nate Hochman on whether U.S. atomic power is really due for a comeback

The Secret Life of Leftovers

Nat Watkins on how our ancestors gave us cheese and beer, but we’re leaving our children garbage

Bacon Bacon Shakespeare Spy

Sam Kahn on one brilliant madwoman’s quest to show that the Bard’s works were secretly penned by the father of science, at war with his own creation

How to Search for Life on Mars

Robert Zubrin, Steven Benner, and Jan Špaček on why we won’t find anything unless we stop refusing to look

Kitty Eats the Internet

Antón Barba-Kay on why cat memes fill a gaping void in our online lives

Middle Seat to the Moon

Charles T. Rubin on how to keep the thrill alive once billionaires make space travel routine

The Big Whimper

David Kordahl on why cosmology may not end with a bang

Correspondence

Is Morality Therapeutic?

Steven C. Hayes asks whether patients need to hear hard truths or make hard choices

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No. 71Winter 2023

No. 71

Winter 2023

Investigation

No Other Options

Alexander Raikin reveals a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a “beautiful” death

Essays

Arcs of Life

Matthew Loftus on why a just society does not kill suffering people

Who’s Afraid of Cowardice?

Adam Roberts on what we can learn from heroes who run away

Can There Be a Conservative Futurism?

John Ehrett on why the retreat from time is not a winning answer to our tech malaise

The Long Delay Is Nearly Over

Alex Dubin on the return of human travel beyond Earth

Triptych

The Joy of Losing Your Phone

Clare Coffey on why we still need the kindness of strangers

Driven Apart

Clare Coffey on the myth of the open road

How to Make Friends

Clare Coffey on going to a bar when fighting the system gets tough

Exchanges

Is Nuclear Returning Too Fast or Too Slow?

Thomas Hochman and Taylor Dotson discuss whether the industry can overcome its obstacles

Overthinking Heroism

Adam Roberts and Alan Jacobs discuss “Who’s Afraid of Cowardice?”

Reviews & Reconsiderations

A Humanism of the Abyss

Alan Jacobs on Oliver Sacks’s Awakenings and how identity keeps us apart

Still Truckin’

Nicholas Clairmont on the anti-car zeitgeist

When the Machine Opts In to You

Joel Cuthbertson on why the self-help response to oppressive tech makes the problem worse

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No. 72Spring 2023

No. 72

Spring 2023

Feature

Rational Magic

Tara Isabella Burton on why a tech culture obsessed with reason is going woo

Reality: A Post-Mortem, Essay 4

What Was the Fact?

Here lies a beloved friend of social harmony (ca. 1500–2000). It was nice while it lasted. — By Jon Askonas

Essays

Out of the Wild

Samuel Matlack on why we can’t rid nature of us

What Does “Scientific Progress” Mean, Anyway?

M. Anthony Mills on the three rival visions of how to fix science

The Demise of the Garage Inventor

Joseph Joyce on how Hollywood forgot the tinkering dad

Selling the Drama

Katherine Dee eulogizes “humdog,” who led a tech backlash in the days of dial-up

Shallowfakes

James R. Ostrowski warns against exaggerating the AI disinfo threat

Why Were They Dropped?

Algis Valiunas on revisionist accounts of the fateful decision of 1945

Fusion and the Holy Grail

Tristan Abbey suggests choosing wisely

Reviews & Reconsiderations

Nature, Toothless and Declawed

Clare Coffey on Martha Nussbaum’s dubious case for animals as liberal subjects

Digital Appeasement

Bonnie Kristian on “meganets,” a TED-brain excuse for surrender without a fight

Human Resources

David Polansky on why Soylent Green was more prophetic than it seems

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No. 73Summer 2023

No. 73

Summer 2023

They’re Here

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

Ari Schulman on why this time, we should believe the hype

B.S. Jobs and the Coming Crisis of Meaning

Brian J. A. Boyd asks whether destroying pointless jobs is really worth celebrating

AI Can’t Beat Stupid

Adam Elkus on why predictions of AI apocalypse overrate the power of raw intelligence

The Dead Internet to Come

Robert Mariani on why our chatbot future is a lonely place right out of a paranoid delusion

Why I Fired My AI Agent

Clayton O’Dell opts out of assimilation

How the State Built This AI Moment

Tess Doezema and Nina Frahm on why the law isn’t lagging behind AI, it’s leading it

The Speech of the Dead

Daniel Walden writes against AI necromancy

Sam Altman Doesn’t Want To Be Your AI King

Louise Liebeskind on why he might be anyway

Reality: A Post-Mortem, Essay 5

An America of Secrets

Jon Askonas on why democracy dies in darkness

Editorial

Take No for an Answer on Genetic Engineering

Good news: The agonizing moral quandary of “designer babies” has been resolved. But will scientists accept democracy’s verdict?

Essays

Culture War as Imitation Game

Luke Burgis on the timeliness of René Girard’s case against idolizing politics

How Congress Was Saved

A Lover of Good Government reports from the year 2039 on how the spirit of efficiency reformed a once-maligned institution

The Masking Debate We Didn’t Have

M. Anthony Mills on why critics are repeating their opponents’ mistake

Resistance in the Arts

Alan Jacobs on why Substack won’t save us

Reviews & Reconsiderations

Clicks of Desire

Tara Isabella Burton on how the Internet obeys you

Humanity Does Not Strike Back

Charles T. Rubin on why the end of the human species would be bad, actually

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No. 74Fall 2023

No. 74

Fall 2023

Essays

Oiling the Chicken Machine

Garth Brown on how you’re already eating lab-made meat

The Downer About Uppers

Charles Fain Lehman on whether Adderall is feeding America’s drug crisis

The Fantasy of Energy Independence

Peter Z. Grossman on how U.S. energy policy got stuck at the gas station in 1973

In Your Face

John Fechtel on Vision Pro and Apple’s friction eliminators

The Open Sky

Lars Erik Schönander: cheap satellites + AI chatbots = “queryable Earth”

The New Atlantis at 20

Who Is The New Atlantis For?

Ari Schulman on why throwing cold water on utopianism found an audience

If Scientists Were Angels

Louise Liebeskind on how we’re misreading the original New Atlantis

Missing the Manhattan Project

Ari Schulman on a moment when we still knew that science could conquer — and sin

Reviews & Reconsiderations

Warm Planet, Cool Heads

Nicholas Clairmont on a new book that warns against making the climate bucket too big

Wounded Healers

Algis Valiunas on why it often takes one “unquiet mind” to treat another

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No. 75Winter 2024

No. 75

Winter 2024

Did Exxon Make It Rain Today?

Ted Nordhaus on how the story of climate change and extreme weather is being oversold — and why building, not fear, is the answer

Space and the Wild

Bears in the Villa

John Last on whether Italians are ready for the return of wilderness

What Is Space For?

William Boyce on why we gaze and why we should go

We Used to Build Things

Tech Strikes Back

Nadia Asparouhova on why “accelerationism” is an overdue corrective to years of doom and gloom in Silicon Valley

Accelerating to Where?

Robert Bellafiore on the anti-politics of the new jet pack lament

Things Used to Work in This Country

Clare Coffey on how your kitchen radio became a bureaucracy

Essays

Surveilling Alone

Christine Rosen on home security cameras in an era of rising crime and declining trust

A President’s Council on Artificial Intelligence

M. Anthony Mills on why the White House’s bland solution doesn’t match the problem

Barbie vs. Botox

Rachel Altman: transhumanism is so over, wrinkles are so back

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No. 76Spring 2024

No. 76

Spring 2024

Feature

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Joseph Lawler on Austin’s interstate expansion as a test case for “induced demand” and the culture war over faster traffic vs. denser cities

IVF and the Alabama Ruling

Embryos as Schrödinger’s Persons

Leah Libresco Sargeant on peculiar entities that are neither people nor property until we need them to be

Laboring in the Dark

Charlotte Collingwood on how IVF might sound like an act of taking control, but felt like an act of surrender

Golden Eggs

Abigail Anthony on shopping for good stock at the Ivy Leagues

Taming IVF’s Wild West

Emma Waters on why consumer protection is not enough

Essays

AI Is a Hall of Mirrors

Meghan Houser on how LLMs are giving us a billion ripoffs of what we already are at a moment when we yearn for something new

Narcissistic Depressive Technoscience

Thomas Fuchs on why modern man longs to be replaced, fantasizes about being the one to do it, and how we can stay human instead

Reviews & Reconsiderations

Turn on, Tune in, Write Code

Geoff Shullenberger on how psychedelics went from counterculture to grind culture

There Is a Planet B

Rand Simberg on how to live on Mars

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No. 77Summer 2024

No. 77

Summer 2024

Feature

Why We Need Amistics for AI

Brian J. A. Boyd on why today’s tech ethics isn’t up to the task of deciding what world we want to build with the breakthrough technology

Essays

The Era of Predictive AI Is Almost Over

Dean W. Ball on the new paradigm that’s proving “it’s just autocomplete” critics wrong

Who Wants to Believe in UFOs?

Clare Coffey on strange things in the skies of a clockwork universe

The Refs Are Working Us

M. Anthony Mills on what went wrong with fact-checking

Open Wallets, Empty Hearts

Ari Schulman on how effective altruism preached selflessness but offered self-help

Cities and Cars

Downtowns Don’t Matter Anymore

Joel Kotkin on why exurbanism is the new urbanism

Keep Austin Houston?

A Q&A with Joseph Lawler about “induced demand” and the future of the Texas capital city

Reviews & Reconsiderations

How Sad Do You Feel Right Now?

Leah Libresco Sargeant on how the boom in amateur therapists is hurting our children

Virtual Reality Reboots History

Charles T. Rubin on taking the idea of the “American dream” and really going for it

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No. 78Fall 2024

No. 78

Fall 2024

The Builder Issue

The Editors

Why We Don’t Build

Mass. Exodus

Joseph Lawler on why the state stopped building enough to house its own middle class

Will Anyone Vote for Abundance?

Thomas Hochman on why liberals and conservatives each want only half of the “time to build” agenda

If We Can Do It In Baltimore…

Aidan Mackenzie on why it takes a disaster to build fast

We Don’t Need This Much Permitting

Michael Catanzaro on why the permitting process must be rebuilt from scratch

What Permitting Reform Can’t Fix

Tristan Abbey on why it’s not enough to remove roadblocks

What Calls to Build Miss

For Whom Shall We Build?

Yuval Levin on why new tech is no good without new people

Dinner with Dinosaurs

Lauren Spohn on why the right’s new love of technological progress is a bad answer to the left’s progressive ideology

Ethics Won’t Save Us From AI

R. J. Snell on why rationalists can’t answer the doomers or the boomers

Why the Progress Debate Goes Nowhere

Samuel Matlack on why neither a jetpack future nor a cabin in the woods is the way forward

What We Should Build

Giant nets to clean garbage from the ocean

Santi Ruiz

Homes where old people and disabled people can help each other out

Sara Hendren

Chains of geothermal power stations to keep the Yellowstone supervolcano from destroying modern civilization (and get a lot of clean power too)

Brian Potter

A landscape we have to navigate together

Leah Libresco Sargeant

Nuclear reactors that won’t melt down

Kirk Sorensen

Houses, a chip factory, anything really in place of Portland’s Hillsboro Airport

Andrew T. Barker

A whole-of-patient approach to medicine

Jade Toth

Towns, cities, architecture, transit, and street plans the way we used to build

Addison Del Mastro

Schools for building portfolios, not credentials

Dan Hopkins

A tech stack for “deep work”

Brian J. A. Boyd

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No. 79Winter 2025

No. 79

Winter 2025

How the System Works

No. 80Spring 2025

No. 80

Spring 2025

Policy sea changes under Trump 2

No. 1Spring 2003

No. 1

Spring 2003

Editorial