The New Atlantis

Current Issue

No. 74

Fall 2023

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If Scientists Were Angels

Francis Bacon has been charged with robbing science of its innocence. But what if we’ve all been reading him wrong?

Louise Liebeskind

Oiling the Chicken Machine

Queasy about lab-grown meat? Too bad — you’ve pretty much been eating it for decades.

Garth Brown

The Fantasy of Energy Independence

50 years ago, America was shocked by gas lines during the Arab oil embargo. The memory still haunts bad energy policy today.

Peter Z. Grossman

The New Atlantis at 20

2003 – 2023

Three essays from the editors

Who Is The New Atlantis For? • If Scientists Were Angels • Missing the Manhattan Project

In Your Face

Apple’s friction eliminators want to get under your skin.

John Fechtel

Who Is The New Atlantis For?

Why 20 years of throwing cold water on utopianism found an audience

Ari Schulman

Missing the Manhattan Project

What America has forgotten from a moment when we still knew that science could conquer — and sin

Ari Schulman

The Open Sky

How revolutions in space, imaging, and AI could open up satellite surveillance to the masses

Lars Erik Schönander

Wounded Healers

In a new book, an eminent psychologist with an “unquiet mind” explores why it often takes one to treat another.

Algis Valiunas

Warm Planet, Cool Heads

A new book warns against pushing all the world’s problems into the climate bucket.

Nicholas Clairmont

Summer 2023

Why This AI Moment May Be the Real Deal

This time, believe the hype.

Ari Schulman

AI Can’t Beat Stupid

Predictions of AI apocalypse suffer the classic egghead blunder: they overrate the power of raw intelligence.

Adam Elkus

Sam Altman Doesn’t Want To Be Your AI King

...but he might be anyway.

Louise Liebeskind

They’re Here…

The AI moment has arrived.

Symposium

Ari Schulman • Brian J. A. Boyd • Adam Elkus • Robert Mariani • Clayton O’Dell • Tess Doezema • Nina Frahm • Daniel Walden • Louise Liebeskind

An America of Secrets

Democracy dies in darkness.

Jon Askonas

How Congress Was Saved

A report from the year 2039 on how the spirit of efficiency reformed a once-maligned institution

A Lover of Good Government and Philip Wallach

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?

The Editors of The New Atlantis

Resistance in the Arts

Why Substack won’t save us

Alan Jacobs

The Masking Debate We Didn’t Have

The Covid establishment saw masking policies as purely scientific. Now critics are making the same mistake.

M. Anthony Mills

Culture War as Imitation Game

The timeliness of René Girard’s case against idolizing politics

Luke Burgis

Spring 2023

Rational Magic

Why a Silicon Valley culture that was once obsessed with reason is going woo

Tara Isabella Burton

What Was the Fact?

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

Jon Askonas

Out of the Wild

Why we can’t rid nature of us

Samuel Matlack

The Demise of the Garage Inventor

How Hollywood forgot the tinkering dad

Joseph Joyce

Nature, Toothless and Declawed

Martha Nussbaum’s dubious case for animals as liberal subjects

Clare Coffey

Shallowfakes

The danger of exaggerating the AI disinfo threat

James R. Ostrowski

Winter 2023

No Other Options

Newly revealed documents depict a Canadian euthanasia regime that efficiently ushers the vulnerable to a “beautiful” death.

Alexander Raikin

The Joy of Losing Your Phone

App life has freed us from the kindness of strangers. Is it any wonder we feel so alone?

Clare Coffey

Driven Apart

Contrary to the myth of the open road, in real adulthood we go somewhere and get there slow.

Clare Coffey

How to Make Friends

Fighting the system may take a while. Why not go to a bar?

Clare Coffey

The Joy of Losing Your Phone

App life has freed us from the kindness of strangers. Is it any wonder we feel so alone?

Clare Coffey

Driven Apart

Contrary to the myth of the open road, in real adulthood we go somewhere and get there slow.

Clare Coffey

How to Make Friends

Fighting the system may take a while. Why not go to a bar?

Clare Coffey

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Special Series: “Reality: A Post-Mortem”

Our aim is a culture in which science and technology work for, not on, human beings.

About Us Explore Projects

Staying Human

A More Natural Science

On the Modern Project

The Technological Condition

Mind & Human Nature

A More Political Science

Beyond Earth

The Good Earth

The Practice of Science

Featured Collections

Special Series

Recovering the Organism

Symposium | Winter 2022

Debating the “Public Interest” Online

Responses to “How to Fix Social Media” by Nicholas Carr

From the Archives

Fall 2019

After Climate Despair

The hope for a global conversion to austerity has failed to stop climate change. What comes next?

Matt Frost

Winter/Spring 2013

Do Elephants Have Souls?

On the evidence for non-human intelligence, awareness, and emotion

Caitrin Keiper

Summer 2006

Shop Class as Soulcraft

The case for the manual trades

Matthew B. Crawford

Spring 2003

Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls

Biotechnology and the pursuit of perfection

Leon R. Kass

Winter 2004

The Human Explorer

Why sending robots is not enough

Robert Zubrin

Summer 2010

How Can I Possibly Be Free?

Why the neuroscientific case against free will is wrong

Raymond Tallis

The Downer About Uppers

Current Issue

Fall 2023

Three essays from the editors

Summer 2023

Symposium

Spring 2023

Winter 2023

Subscribe today for early access to new articles and subscriber-only content

$34

$24

Special Series: “Reality: A Post-Mortem”

Our aim is a culture in which science and technology work for, not on, human beings.

Featured Collections

From the Archives

20 years of keeping humanity human