When Sonya Atalay conducted her doctoral research, she studied pottery in Çatalhöyük, a remarkable ancient site in Turkey. It’s one of the world’s earliest known urban settlements, flourishing by at least 7000 B.C.E. Yet even as Atalay was conducting field research and writing her doctoral thesis, she was scrutinizing standard archaeological practices, believing the discipline to […]
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Aiming to transition away from fossil fuels and avert the worst consequences of climate change, world leaders aspire to achieve net zero global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius. But actions to meet such targets and minimize adverse impacts on lives, livelihoods, and infrastructure are not one-size-fits-all; they […]
Read MoreA few weeks ago, Amy Moran-Thomas and 20 students in her class 21A.311 (The Social Lives of Medical Objects) were gathered around a glucose meter, a jar of test strips, and various spare medical parts in the MIT Museum seminar room, talking about how to make them work better. The class had just heard a […]
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Young adults growing up in the attention economy — preparing for adult life, with social media and chatbots competing for their attention — can easily fall into unhealthy relationships with digital platforms. But what if chatbots weren’t mere distractions from real life? Could they be designed humanely, as moral partners whose digital goal is to […]
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