Despite being often denounced and considered impractical, space research plays an important role in building our future. Going to Mars is beyond human capability, at least when it comes to humans themselves. So far, our remotely controlled, sophisticated robots are discovering peculiarities of this red boulder flying through space on our behalf and this status…

Cyborgization means human co-development with machines: new technological entities arise in response to human and social needs, and at the same time humans and social behaviors adapt to conditions and possibilities (the so-called affordances) offered by machines. Donna Haraway is one of the most important figures in the contemporary humanities. Her ticket to a remarkable…

We are no longer sure if we are following the path of humanizing technology, or rather moving towards adapting humans to technologies. Nowadays, with the advent of the Internet of Things and ubiquitous computing, the upcoming trend is rather to detect and recognize emotional information with passive sensors which capture data about the user’s physical…

The quest, goal, or dream is obvious. Some long time ago, from a savage wolf, we bred the first domesticated animal ever, the dog. What if we attempt to do the same with the human? History of modern eugenics goes back to perhaps the 19th century and to The Origin of Species. Not only did…

Let’s think about this: what happens when sometime in the future the whole generation of Chinese kids have higher IQs than their American peers, because they’re technologically hardwired for that? Will this be a national security issue? This is a global security issue—says Zoltan Istvan in an interview with Jakub Dymek. JAKUB DYMEK: You are…

Law and Justice (PiS) has worked hard to earn the title of the most anti-German among today’s ruling parties in the European Union. So it may seem surprising that in the new foreign policy guidelines presented by the new Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz, Germany is PiS’s last hope for saving Poland from marginalization in the…

Dear Readers, Could the limits of human capabilities be expanded through technology and genetic editing? Does it sound too bold and presumptuous? Is it beyond imagination to improve not only human “software” via education and training but also human “hardware” via genetics and technology? What has been science fiction for some time now seems to…

Young Slovaks often do not identify Marian Kotleba with the fascist system which we once had in our history. They do not believe me when I say that it can all happen again – says Slovak historian Stanislav Mičev interviewed by Łukasz Grzesiczak. Łukasz Grzesiczak: You withdrew from the elections for the governor of Banská…

Serhiy Zhadan has emerged as a leading literary figure in contemporary war-torn Ukraine. His writing reflects struggles with identity including ethnicity, language, and political allegiance that are faced by the citizens of a nation under attack. Serhiy Zhadan’s books feature characters affected by the war in Donbas, the region of Ukraine where he grew up.…

The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World Maya Jasanoff (Harper Collins 2017)   There is ample evidence that great art is often produced by highly awed people. Picasso was a womanizer. Writer Jean Genet was a thief and a criminal. Norman Mailer once stabbed his wife. Comedian Bill Cosby is alleged to have drugged…

Mężczyźni objaśniają mi świat Rebecca Solnit (Karakter, Kraków 2017) Wszyscy powinniśmy być feministami Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Zysk i S-ka 2017) Kiedy będziemy wolne. Moja walka o prawa człowieka Szirin Ebadi (Znak 2017) When she was at a party, she met a man. “As I heard, you wrote a few books.” “A few, indeed,” she answered. When…

Poland’s Minister for Entrepreneurship and Technology Jadwiga Emilewicz articulated a problem that the economies of Central Europe continue to grapple with even in this period of historically unique growth. When I talked to her in late November about what Poland is lacking despite excellent macroeconomic figures, she responded with a single word: investment. “It’s not…

A large family in Poland now receives an additional income comparable to an average salary. The result is a reduction in the scale of poverty but also dozens of thousands of people, mainly women, leaving work. The government of Law and Justice (PiS), formed in the autumn of 2015 after Jarosław Kaczyński’s party won the…

Poland and Hungary are moving fast towards a new state-led model of development that could heighten tensions with foreign investors and the European Commission. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania were never closer to fullling economic criteria for the adoption of euro, however, most of them have never been farther from making this commitment.…

Poland and Hungary are moving fast towards a new state-led model of development that could heighten tensions with foreign investors and the European Commission. Central Europe has fallen out of love with foreign investment, on which the region has based its transformation for the past two decades. Foreign investors are now routinely blamed for everything…

The Hungarian Parliament on the Danube was built in the late nineteenth century, in a Neo-Gothic style inspired by the British Parliament at Westminster, as the architectural embodiment of Hungary’s legislative autonomy within the Habsburg dualist state of Austria-Hungary. After the abolition of the Habsburg empire in 1918, the parliament’s legislative significance was tempered by…

The Croatian foreign policy path turns from the Brussels-Berlin-Belgrade line to the Three Seas Initiative and position in the Central Europe. In July this year, Croatia will celebrate its ve years as a full member of the European Union. And while this is a cause for celebration and overeager boosting of the politicians’ ratings, Croatia…

Making trusted news is very expensive. Creating fake news in your bedroom, with a laptop and a camera, is inexpensive. You should not be able to profit from that in the same way as a genuine and quality news organization—says Liz Corbin, the Head of News at BBC World News, in an interview with Konrad…