Homo Modernus, Tractatus Philosophicus
Koert van MensvoortThis video is a special treat for the tiny portion of our readers who crave for Mcluhan–Wittgenstein cocktails: We recommend you to spend 9 minutes of your valuable time on …
This video is a special treat for the tiny portion of our readers who crave for Mcluhan–Wittgenstein cocktails: We recommend you to spend 9 minutes of your valuable time on …
Waveforms are found in the biosphere and the technosphere alike.
As our lives become more and more controlled by devices, we need ways to control them all. The pultius is the answer.
Nice one. I wonder if that wicked spider crane really exists.
With all the new health management gadgets available becoming more and more widespread and cheap (even in the form of free iPhone apps), your brain, your stomach, your heart, …
Do cars have a face? You would be inclined to say yes immediately. And you would be right as well, because they do. Study has confirmed through a complex statistical analysis that …
A student hopes a blanket will replace her classmate's Facebook addictions.
The smog in Beijing has become so thick that only place to hail a sunrise is on the huge digital commercial television screens across the city.
Humans cannot have intercourse with cars or replicate with them, so why would we find cars sexy anyhow?
The uncomfortable watering can ironically shows us that the size matters in a circular economy.
The eggplant emoji became a political weapon and gain cult status being the forbidden fruit of the web.
The world is developing, climate change is happening and it's time for us to do something. Now. One strategy would be to simply stop eating meat — or at least reduce the amount of …
Nature is not what it used to be. Or at least that is what we may think, when we look at the way humans and their technologies have treated nature. When we speak of "nature", …
It's fascinating how stock traders can get so excited about a few abstract numbers on an electronic display. These numbers represent real money, and every small fluctuation can …
By ALEX WRIGHT, Published in NY Times December 2, 2007 The growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook , MySpace and Second Life has thrust many of us into a new …
Tongue in cheek speculation on what Google's home page may look like in 2084, created by Randy Siegel for NY Times. Frankly, I don't think this is very realistic: We don't have to …
After Magritte; Surrealism in the 21th century. Peculiar image of the week, created by Isabel Lucena.
A proposal to gain 600.000 m 2 of land near the Dutch coast recently came from the CDA (Dutch Christian-Democratic political party). The idea is to create a tulip-shaped island …
Remember the article N is for Nature , describing the Californian company Enologix, which creates software to predict how wine critics will rate a wine, so that it can be produced …
It might just be my old nature mind, but I still find it a daily miracle: being able to walk into the bakery around the corner and trade a piece of paper – called money – for a …
Always dreamed of creating your own clouds? You can now create them... from text. Wordle is a toy for generating 'word clouds' from any text, url or rss stream you provide. The …
Yes. Evelien Lohbeck takes metaphors seriously (but with humor).
So you thought the 'consumption of illusions' was a typical digital world activity of second life residents and gaming addicts? Never underestimate virtuality in everyday life. …
What is that growing on my car dashboard? Is that a tree? Indeed, Ford and Honda's next-generation dashboard instrument clusters feature trees (a vine in Ford's case) that grow …
I think all Nature has a fractal structure, from Planet to Atoms. Website: Fractalary: Fractals from Planet to Atoms
Last year Google invested four million in 23andme , a commercial research center that maps out your DNA for 1000 bucks. Now Google also invested in Navigenics , a company that …
This Tuesday, search giant Google released an experimental tool that tracks the intensity and movement of the influenza virus across the United States by monitoring the number of …
A commercial by an orthopaedic reconstruction company introducing the next generation of joint replacements: " Highly advanced hips and knees. Engineered to meet the needs of your …
Starting next spring, a complete human-genome sequence can be ordered the Californian startup Complete Genomics for just $5,000, Techreview reports. Currently sequencing still …
Economy is ecology . At least, according to the biomimicmarketeers of the US Wachovia Bank who created this weather report like newspaper advertisement. Nowadays most people worry …
No, this isn't the newest picture of some star system or nebula taken by Hubble telescope in deep space. This is a map of the internet. It might not be of much use since it is …
This is the peculiar image of the week, sorry Koert ; ) Excuse my crap quality.
Never, 1999. By Nina Saunders Just a random collection of her works: Any day now, 2003 – Woodland trust, 2007 Ever onwards, 2001 Age of Reason, 1995 – Confession, 2005 Sincerely …
Multicultural Gourmet Pack is a new meat package that contains a variety of butchered meat products based on different religions and believes. The pack contains a total of 4 …
After selling his school , entrepreneur Teun Castelein is now selling the Dutch museum of graphic design.
WARNING: Spending too much time behind the computer, may cause the leaking of elements from the digital environment into everyday life. Self control freak Olivier Otten is …
iDail replaces the iPhone keypad with a good old rotary keyboard. For all you nostalgics (and grandparents) out there. See also: Who wants a Stylus? , 8-bit icon watch , Treetrunk …
If you've ever wanted to know just exactly how much DNA you share with your ridiculously tall brother or doppelganger best friend, you'll soon be able to find out. 23andMe , a …
Wool sculptor Stephanie Metz researched the meaning of 'cute' through the morphology of some Teddy bear species. Related posts: PacMan's Scull | Animatus
Videogame players celebrated this week as a hotly anticipated sequel to the popular online video game World of Warcraft hit the shelves. The nine million gamers can now play a …
The recent discussion on boomeranged metaphors reminded me of this 20 pound mouse hand created a some years ago for a Paradise by the laptop light event on Next Nature. The …
By MARCEL VAN DER DRIFT. Ten years from now, a cell phone gently sinks to the bottom of the river. It's one of the latest models. The clever design, trendy colours and nifty …
Tasty realization of the classic Apple rainbow logo, made entirely out of fresh fruit. The clever creation was made by Richard Thomas from sliced kiwis, bananas, oranges, …
LOUIS VUITTON AK-47 GUCCI MP-5 Justin Melnick is an avid photographer, digital artist, and has lived in the Middle East. All of these influences have come together in his latest …
Autimacy [aw-tih-muh-see] - noun, plural - cies. The term was coined by Simona Kicurovska .
Meet A.T.R.E.E.M. (acronym for Automated Tree-Rental for Emission Encaging Machine), a device that compares daily activities, energy and products to the growth of a tree. "From an …
Fish sticks are among the most wondrous modernistic inventions of the previous century. They are easy to eat, efficient in their packaging & transport and the greatest of all: …
Peculiar object of the week. See also Banana Juice box , Modernistic Watermelon , Cubic Fruit , How to grow an Orangina Bottle .
Forget about palmistry! MRI scans for candidates in top jobs such as bank directors could soon become part of the job-application package, says Erasmus University researcher Prof …
Jim Reinders, an experimental artist with a history of using curious media, became so enthralled by the beauty of the famous Stonehenge in England that he had to recreate it. …
To make way for modern tech terms such as BlackBerry, blog, voicemail and broadband, the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary has opted to drop terms pertaining to old …
By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI — China made public on Tuesday regulations aimed at cracking down on the use of virtual currencies amid worries that a huge underground economy was …
So what to think of this? A toilet spray that mimics the smell of clean linen. It is great in the beginning, yet in time your bed will smell like a toilet. Found in the futuristic …
Coca-Cola© succeeds in what most NGO's try to achieve: getting the goods to the poor in the 3rd world Africa. For most people there, a Coke is easier to get and cheaper than a …
Regular readers of this website know we are keen to speculate that our global financial system is best perceived as an ecology, which although originally constructed by man, has …
Reliable data on economic growth is hard to come by in many parts of the world, especially in developing countries. Yet according to scientists, outer space offers a new …
Information decoration on a city scale. Every night from the 22 to the 29 of February 2008, the vapor emissions of he Salmisaari power plant in Helsinki will be illuminated to …
The US Food and Drug Administration is holding up the delivery of an iMac because they seem to think it is an apple, not an Apple. I don’t want to believe that either UPS or the …
Parks are not nature. Parks are culture: man-made simulations of nature, carefully constructed to provide walkers, runners and mountain bikers with a recreational, yet confined – …
Delicious retro-future meat from Japan. Food technology in the overdrive. Japanese researchers successfully cloned what is believed to have been the forefather ox of Gifu …
Japanese design agency To-Genkyo proposes a dynamic freshness label for meat products. The hourglass-shaped label contains special ink that changes color based on the amount of …
Chinese workers slaying monsters to earn gold for western consumers. It sounds surreal, but it is a far from virtual reality for the so-called 'gold farmers', who are working in …
‘Advertising is the cave art of the 20th century’, Marshall McLuhan said. Advertisings are mythical depictions of hunting and gathering rituals, that don’t take place on some …
In the future, every street will be a Nokia street? Perhaps not, however we may expect some changes in street signage due to the arrival of mobile & gps technology. Once …
For those who feel like the world is heading for economical malaise and financial disaster: cheer up! there's always a worse scenario. End sequence of our 2008 show in LA, by Luke …
DNA evidence has been the most bulletproof evidence for forensic sciences in recent years. Not anymore. A laboratory at Nucleix, a life-sciences company, has demonstrated it is …
Little over a week after the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) became operational it broke down. As the world's largest particle accelerator isn't working, c omputer simulations are the …
Part of the Fallen Princesses series by Dina Goldstein. "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an …
These peculiar illustrations are part of a sixteen-page pamphlet produced to put inside the postage-paid, business-reply envelopes that come with junk mail offers. Every envelope …
Following anorexia nervosa (under eating) and bulimia nervosa (overeating and compensating), orthorexia nervosa (obsessively healthy eating) is the latest eating disorder in the …
Buttons are everywhere: throughout your day you press them on phones, alarm clocks, keyboards, elevators, dishwashers and of course on the computer screen. Although buttons did …
This gigantic rubber duck was created by artist Florentijn Hofman and is currently traveling around the world. Unsure how the over-sized bird is related to our explorations in …
Although this TED video has been all over the web and commented on this website already, it still deserves a separate post: Desigineers Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of the MIT …
You step out of bed. Why? Because your alarm clock tells you it is time. A quick glance at the alarm clock tells you that you are still on schedule. First you take a shower and …
In the classic Milgram Experiment conducted in the 1960s, volunteers were told by an authority figure to deliver electric shocks to another person as punishment for incorrect …
Have you heard the buzz on virtual money in online games? Some years ago the first virtual millionaire was announced, yet there have also been reports on people being practically …
Remember that aggravating 8-bit pixeled watch icon that used to replace your mouse cursor whenever your Apple computer was ‘taking time’ to finish a task? Displaying a wristwatch …
The Bell Isle Zoo is one of the examples of the decay of the once great city of Detroit. Situated on an island in the Fleming Channel, the zoo was shut down years ago because of …
Coughing into your cell phone could soon save you a trip to the doctor's office. Thanks to software currently being developed by Star Analytical Services , people may soon be able …
Alright, we were mistaken. Money isn't virtual after all. A recent TV commercial of a Greek bank shed light on the issue. Your money lives, is anthropomorphic and inhabits an …
When developers launched the globe project just off Dubai's coast in 2003, they hoped that the rich and famous would land there to populate the 300 islands. Within five years …
Imagine we would have an alternative monetary currency for environmental value. Would the rain forest still be destroyed if there existed an ECO–currency to express its value and …
With an optical trick, this German bottle of water is trying to prove its effectiveness for the body. Though drinking water is a necessity for life, the downside of this product …
Bitquid is an installation by Jeroen Holthuis which shows digital information transferring in an analogue way, through the use of fluorescent liquid. Nowadays the use of internet …
Could this 2.0-bird be suffering from Infobesity ? Then it must be the result of excessive infocalorie consumption. Following people and news-sources on microblogservices like …
So you thought augmented reality is something new? Guess you are so attuned to the already existing augmentation of reality that you don't even notice it anymore. The short film …
At TEDGlobal 2010 , author Matt Ridley argues how, throughout history, the engine of human progress has been the meeting and mating of ideas to make new ideas. According to …
"Have you seen my stapler? No, but just look it up on Google home office maps ." CSIRO Researchers have developed miniature sensors that track lab equipment, coffee mugs and …
Now here is something for the NANO Supermarket : Massachusetts-based Draper Laboratories have developed a special injectable ink with nano–particles. This ink eventually could …
Nature conservation organizations – like the WWF and Greenpeace – typically present nature as a commodity that has become increasingly scarce and will be used up altogether if we …
Nature as math, math as nature. A short movie by Cristóbal Villa . Thanks Martijn .
In the last few decades there have been numerous films that take the struggle between mankind and its increasingly intelligent and autonomous technology as a leitmotif. Ranging …
Viktor Navorski is an Eastern European traveler – portrayed by Tom Hanks, who in the movie ‘Cast Away’ already played a man stranded on an uninhabited island – that finds himself …
In 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, two unmanned interplanetary space probes that were sent out to explore the outer space. Aboard each was a record which intended to …
Unsure whether this video by Patrick Jean should be interpreted as an allegorical vision of the utterly transmuting effect the digital has on the physical , or that it is just an …
The human body is increasingly recognized as a biometric source of information for a wide spectrum of issues, including security, psychopathology, personality and health. Earlier …
Once upon a time humans told stories by painting on cave walls, showing plays in an amphitheater, pressing text on paper and shining light trough pieces of film. Today we tell our …
Corporate logos constantly have to adapt in order to survive. In the case of the Shell oil company this results in an image that ironically resembles the ones we know from the …
Our regular readers know that whenever we write about money in these quarters, we always feel obliged to write the words 'virtual' and 'real' between brackets, as money is by …
Image consumption has never been as cool as in this brand new clip by Studio Smack , which was created for the upcoming Graphic Design Festival . The ‘Transparency Suit' …
Did you know that about 20 percent of your body isn't really yours? It has been patented by some corporation you probably never heard of. You can't patent gold, you can't patent …
Indulge in the paintings by Alex Gross . There is 'something' next nature about them... If happen to have more information on what that 'something' is, feel free to enlighten us …
When techno–optimist and fellow at the Hybrid Reality Institute , Jason Silva, meets with Richard Doyle, author of Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants and the Evolution of the …
Researchers are working on a language and a device that will help humans and dolphins talk with each other. Denise Herzing , a researcher and founder of the Wild Dolphin Project …
Traditionally, technology is seen as a force that diminishes our instincts and puts us at a distance of nature. Increasingly however, we realize technology can also energize and …
On June 10, the digital currency Bitcoin lost 30% of its value in a few hours, dropping from US $28.92 to $20.01 per coin. Bitcoins are a largely untraceable form of money, …
Thinking about Next Nature can sometimes result in a feeling of vertigo. Normal standards are eroded and slowly replaced by next natural ones. A bewildering example can be found …
Fakeness is traditionally associated with inferiority; cheap Rolexes that break in two weeks, plastic Christmas trees, leaking silicone breasts, imitation caviar... However, in a …
This world map is drawn using Facebook connections only. It was created by Paul Butler using connections between 10 million Facebook friends. The result is a remarkably good …
No, the peculiar image above was not created by an in vitro fertilized child from the combined DNA of Escher, Mondrian and Pollock, but rather by 21th century designer Remco van …
Sexuality and sensuality are phenomena which have been a nature for us as long as we humans exist. Not only humans experience these phenomena; also animals experience sexuality …
I reckoned Amsterdam did not have any sky scrapers, but I guess I wasn't looking through the right lenses. This sms-traffic Amsterdam skyline – made on new years eve 2007 – was …
Peculiar image of the week, by Arnoud van den Heuvel . Related: Children's dictionary dumps 'nature' words , Crackberry addicts are suing their employers , handset gets taken to …
The All Streets map visualizes of all the 240 million individual road segments in the United States. Although no other features — outlines, cities, or types of terrain — are …
Recently, a video clip has been circulating the web that purportedly shows a rabbit born earless due to the radiation at Fukushima. BoingBoing has a convincing take-down of the …
Sometimes new technology has to bio-mimic old nature to be accepted. In the late 1960s and early 70s, Uniroyal Engineered Products invented the 'nauga' a beast that gives its name …
I've noticed DNA spray notices springing up around Amsterdam. I assumed it was a fairly standard anti-theft device: A crime is committed, a little nozzle is activated by the …
Named after the story of a city girl that washes her hair with pine-needle shampoo and one day walks in the woods with her daddy says "Daddy! The Woods Smell of Shampoo", this …
More real than you think. Peculiar image of the week. Via . Thanks Ton .
The economic system and profit motive has been a driving force that steers and even dictates social change. Investors and stockbrokers have been a major influence to these social …
Food technology in the overdrive: Pork molded in the shape of a piglet.
This uncanny comical combination of traffic signs was spotted in the great city of Lisbon, Portugal. Notice the ignorant by-passers. I fear we might have a new genre here. …
As the second most hardest working people on this planet, Koreans obviously dread their weekly shopping for groceries. It is therefore that Home Plus (Tesco in Europe) plastered …
Associate professor Anne Trubek argues that handwriting will soon be history , because writing words by hand is a technology that's just too slow for our times, and our minds. A …
After being denied permission to reproduce the famed Little Mermaid statue from Copenhagen, the authorities of Vancouver decided to go for something more realistic.
A study, in Language and Cognition has shown that time does not exist as a separate concept for the Brazilian Amondawa – an Amazon tribe first contacted by the outside world in …
Now who's gonna scare who? Our peculiar image of the week was sent in by Béla Zsigmond .
Polish artist Dominik Lejman has created this nine minute video manual
Slowly but steadily the digital environment is becoming the primary living space where we interact and define ourselves. According to Gordan Savicic however, some things are still …
The Happy Meat project combines the basic principles of the meat-industry and the toy-industry in an uncanny hybrid.
Dutch designer Boris Rijksen experiences a culture shock when he enters the real world after a day of screen work. Before, the ‘digital immigrant’ struggled to understand digital …
Philosopher and professor Jos de Mu l and media artist Geert Mul set out to visualize the Gods Browser in a unique art-science collaboration. The result is a conceptual poem of …
Apparently the marketeers of Bacardi expect the combination of bats, berries and dragons should help to successfully promote the alcoholic sugar drink in the shops.
So you thought your live was already pretty much media-saturated? Indulge in the design fiction film Sight and you'll realize you ain't seen nothing yet.
Imagine what you could do if you had one million Twitter followers. You would be so rich! Now seriously: Are followers becoming an alternative currency? Perhaps, although we are …
Loosely regulated and largely untested in clinical trials, herbal medicines nonetheless do big business based on their image of being wholesome, natural, and backed by millennia …
Artist Bartholomäus Traubeck created a hyper-nostalgic record player that, rather than making music from vintage vinyl records, uses slices of woods to generate sound.
The boundary between humans and machines is slowly but steadily blurring. The Immortal is a machine which exists out of several life-support machines connected with wires and electric cords.
A 23-year-old in China was recently puzzled why his online avatars were being killed off at disproportionate rates. After asking around, the young man eventually discovered that …
Tikker, the watch that counts down your life, shows the amount of time you are estimated to have left.
Should digital technology imitate that which exists, or could it also surpass it?
Watch your back: the Disney princesses are feeling murderous.
The honor of naming this new monkey was auctioned off to raise funds. The monkey is now know as the Goldenpalace.com Titi.
Emotionally the avatar has a similar position as ones best friend, despite its "virtual" presence and the often longer lasting relationship with ones best friend.
How can we anticipate what happens after the technological singularity?
The gigantic rubber duck created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman floated on Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour, with the island skyline in the background. The XL duck showed up in …
For NSA, spying on you isn't enough, they monitor your avatar too.
From the handshake to the sanitary, gender-neutral fist bump.
The personal touch of pen and ink VERSUS the efficiency and productivity of digital word processors.
Buckle up for some tracking technologies beyond the beyond.Buckle up for some tracking technologies beyond the beyond.
If Mindcraft is our next landscape, should do land art there as well?
Most people nowadays know more logos and brands than bird or tree species. Go test your own knowledge. Take a look at the leaves and logos above and see how many you can identify without looking them up.
At times it seems we serve our technology as much as it serves us. The OFFTIME App wants to save us from our own devices.
Spotted near Las Vegas and Hurghada, Egypt. If you know any cellphone tree antenna masts in your neighborhood. Use the Next Nature spotting app for iPhone to add them.
There seems to be a high demand for the ability to self-diagnose. Consider Scanadu , a company developing a medical device for self-diagnosis, has become the highest funded …
Sexy girls and organ meat was never a good combination to me, but the people from Black Milk Clothing that created this swimsuit seem to think it makes a pretty nice product. Am …
The desire to avoid face recognition algorithms could bring us a whole new set of make up styles,
This Sunday next nature maven Koert van Mensvoort is interviewed in what is arguably the finest show on Dutch television: VPRO Tegenlicht.
Digital bits have lives. They work for us, but we totally ignore them. What do bits really want? Here are the life stories of four different bits.
Indulge in this video simulation that displays the flight path of every commercial flight in the world over a 24-hour period.
Games are typically played to escape our dull or stressful everyday reality, yet they are also made to become increasingly realistic.
A visit to a massive, secretive Bitcoin mine that is said to make 800.000 Euro per month.
The company MyWebwill helped you to manage your digital afterlife. Unfortunately for its subscribers the company itself has now deceased.
Recently 338 sharks in Western Australia subscribed to the microblogging service. They are now tweeting out where they are.
Time Ingot is a solid piece of lead alloy, its mass can slow down time in the immediate vicinity.
The KaraokeBot is an AI system that generates and sings Christmas songs from the visual components of an uploaded image.
How will the future perceive our so-called modern VR technologies?
This art installation turning coke into water raise questions on what, at the end of the day, should be considered 'the real thing'.
In the desert landscape of the Californian Coachella Valley, artist Jennifer Bolande installed a series of billboards that camouflage themselves with the surroundings.
Sanctifying servers with knowledge and power from digital demons.
We fear being replaced by robots. They have the potential to be smarter, stronger and more hardworking than us, but so do horses.
A ‘gold rush’ is haunting New Zealand’s beekeepers, as beehive and honey thefts are continuing to rise.
The Tappy 'smart ring' is a wedding ring connected to your bank account.
If you've been dreaming of disconnecting and ridding your day of digital distractions, there's an island destination that would love to have you this weekend. Tonight, in one of …
It takes years to design a new banknote, having hundreds of people working on every little detail, all done under the watchful eye of governments and professionals. However today, …
In Ancient Greece the people were part of a direct-democracy, this means that they would directly vote for policies and laws. Nowadays, it seems as though this horizontal approach …
With the invention of the radio antenna in the late 19th century, we became a different species: Introducing the human insect. A species, able to communicate across oceans using …
Would you pray to a Robot deity? A group of Japanese buddhists is already doing so. Meet Mindar , the robot divinity shaped after the buddhist Goddess of Mercy, also known as …