Research

Explore our collection of articles on the leading megatrends in technology, politics, and society.

Filter: Sebastiaan Crul

16

min

The quitters of open societies

What happens when we no longer play a common game

5

min

Perspectives on the post-truth era

The 'enshittification' of society

9

min

FreedomLab commemorates its 500th article with a retrospective of its publication history

11

min

Forget about the (human) parents

Meet the cyborgs

12

min

The enhanced human: stronger, better, happier

Why we might all become centaurs according to transhumanists

10

min

The deficient animal: artificial by nature

And why the idea of helpful AI agents might be a misleading, anthropocentric notion

11

min

We need to think about the constitution of the EU (part I)

And Luuk van Middelaar’s study of European discourses helps us structure the debate

12

min

We need to think about the constitution of the EU (part II)

And Luuk van Middelaar’s study of European spheres helps us structure the debate

12

min

Is Open Source AI a sham?

Why leading AI companies are currently engaging in both 'openwashing' and 'closedwashing' practices

12

min

The artisan versus the engineer: masters of the universe

What kind of skills should we (not) cultivate for generative AI?

8

min

We are the products of technological mediation

What the metaphor of the 'medium' can teach us about AI

13

min

The day the artificial became intelligent (is yet to come)

When we started to call intelligence a machine and the machine intelligent

10

min

The robots among us

About today’s master-slave dynamics with humanoids and chatbots

10

min

The age of the machine: emancipation or alienation of the human?

Understanding the role of machines in society

6

min

The enduring tool metaphor in AI discourse

About technology as a mere instrument to achieve human goals

15

min

Apple’s enduring quest for the disappearing computer

The next step into the era of spatial computing

12

min

Another piece on Barbenheimer

On the cultural significance of summer blockbusters Barbie and Oppenheimer

15

min

Health is the luxury to fall sick and recover

Towards an enriched concept of the normal and the pathological

11

min

Pills, pills, pills

Sebastiaan Crul discusses the inevitability of techno-fixes in a world haunted by crises

2

min

The short-lived revival of Keynes; welcome back, Hayek!

Has neoliberalism really left? Or was “COVID-Keynesianism” nothing more than a short-term crisis management tactic?

1

min

A new dawn for nationalist parties?

For many, the brutal geopolitical awakening caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China threatening to invade Taiwan means freedom is back on the political agenda...

11

min

Vibegeist: rave until the grave

The revival of rave and rage in the roaring twenties.

16

min

To cyberspace and beyond

How the cyborg movies of the ‘90s made us fantasize about mind uploading, sentient AI and immortality.

1

min

How will the metaverse and web3 influence social media?

Brace yourself, the 2D newsfeeds gracing our screens might soon be part of internet history.

1

min

The fragmentation of social media

When Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian are starting to revolt, you know Instagram is getting into trouble...

16

min

The early days of cyberpunk

As man becomes machine and machine becomes man.

2

min

From labor to exploitation: the dark side of blockchain games

What does it take to create a flourishing virtual economy?

2

min

Resurrecting the dead in the digital era

Will deepfake videos, the latest and most versatile medium to eternalize the dead, impel us to regulate digital immortality?

2

min

Politics should focus more on the Good Life

How can we reinstate the concept of the Good without downplaying the systemic risks threatening our global society?

11

min

An introduction to the Stack

Learn more about our framework that helps us understand the anatomy of digital systems.

Interactive elements in movies and series

Everybody is a self-tracker

Central banks rethink their purpose

Smart home care for our second adulthood

Will hiding the like button help Facebook?

Visual search tools are building a bridge

The dominance of movie franchises

The ambiguity of self-tracking for health

Libra’s next hurdle: financial regulators and governments

The end of the pay-per-download era