Research

Explore over 500 articles on prevailing megatrends in tech, politics and society.

11

min

Digital facts and objectivity in the 'TrustTech Stack' and network ontology

How can the Stack and Bruno Latour's network ontology help to give a more positive conception of the construction of digital facts and objectivity?

16

min

The quitters of open societies

What happens when we no longer play a common game

10

min

Is science to blame for post-truth politics?

How the left contributed to the deconstruction of truth

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

The narratives struggling to define the impact of AI on the labor market

High expectations, disillusionment, and realism—the usual players in AI predictions are all present

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

9

min

Genuine writing in the digital age

An inconvenient effort worth pursuing

14

min

The AI chips race (part II)

Chips are at the heart of the generative AI Stack

5

min

Magic in metamodern times

To be(lieve) or not to be(lieve), that is the question

5

min

The European elections and the next five years

What themes will drive European political discourse?

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

19

min

Why we should embrace the void

The psychoanalysis of 'Love, Death & Robots'

8

min

The AI chips race (part I)

How AI chips will determine future geopolitical events

9

min

The internet is in need of a transition

What the internet can learn from ongoing transitions in energy, mobility and food

12

min

Is Open Source AI a sham?

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

11

min

Post-growth: the dawn of a new era

What will the upcoming paradigm shift entail?

4

min

The weather is changing

What home insurance tells us about climate change

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

12

min

When images matter more than reality

A reflection on Vilém Flusser's philosophy of photography in the age of social media

13

min

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

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

5

min

Knit’s Island and the future of the metaverse

An immersive and fascinating documentary about life in a virtual world

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

5

min

Short-sighted AI regulations miss the big picture

How can we ensure that AI is not only safe but also resonates with our broader norms and values?

14

min

Philosophical prompt engineering in an AI-driven world

Why philosophical questioning and the art of posing the right questions becomes more important because of generative AI

Are we heading towards post-human intelligence?

Rethinking being human in a more-than-human world

Beyond planetary boundaries: towards Earth systems justice

Linking new developments in Earth systems research to the Deep Transitions Framework

The future of inflation and interest rates

A long-term view on the drivers of inflation and monetary policy

FreedomLab Selects: Rinus van de Velde — The Armchair Voyager

Vivian Elion analyses the surrealistic exhibition of Rinus van de Velde through the lens of metamodernism.

Has AI become indistinguishable from life itself?

Developments in AI lead to new speculations about the role of technologies in the evolution of life.

Romantic robots: a new love paradigm

Will our society's progressive values lead us to embrace a new romantic paradigm?

Health is the luxury to fall sick and recover

Towards an enriched concept of the normal and the pathological

ChatGPT and the place of the human being in an automated society

An unconventional reflection on Hannah Arendt’s philosophy

Urban greening should focus on equity, not nature

The external valuation of nature in city planning could withhold green areas from becoming accessible to all

Learning to waste

All manufacturing produces waste, even the clean energy industry. Critical clean energy technologies – EV batteries, solar panels, wind turbine blades – lead to a massive problem with waste management