Man and Robot, Intimately
Algorithms are replacing us in more and more tasks. Meanwhile, the internet has changed human relationships forever, love and sex included. Isn't the point where the two meet drawing near? What does the future look like when artificial intelligence and robotics step in between two lovers? 42 percent of people say they would have sex with a robot today. 39 percent would have a romantic relationship with a humanoid. Would you?
422The Past in the Future: The Legacy of Todor Slavchev
The whole Bulgarian 20th century is there. Tsar Boris III, Georgi Dimitrov and Todor Zhivkov appear; the Bulgarian authorities are welcomed in Macedonia in the early 1940s, and soon after our soldiers storm the German lines; the People's Court and the first rallies of the 1990s are caught on film. The photographic archive of Todor Slavchev is a bottomless treasure trove that reaches us thanks to his granddaughter, Yana Uzunova. Enjoy these extraordinary pictures and read their remarkable story…
423“Let’s Stop Whining Already!”
Petar Neftelimov is 26, and strength, zest for life and fighting spirit pour out of him. He recently published his first book, Uspehat v balgarskia gen (Success in the Bulgarian Gene), with the stories and words of 49 successful Bulgarians. He keeps piling up degrees and fights for his ventures as an entrepreneur. He has traveled the length of the Danube on a tricycle and run several marathons. For eight years he has been writing a blog on entrepreneurship, marketing and personal growth. We sat down to talk about success in the Bulgarian gene. About the strength to keep running life’s marathon, which is hard for everyone. And about the flowers of the new age, flowers in a test tube, delicate and meaningful.
424“As Long as There Are People, Books Will Be With Us”
With Books Under the Covers is a digital venture about love. Love of books, and love in general. Temz Arabadzhieva is the PR at the publishing house Ciela, and Anton Birov is editor-in-chief of Webcafé. Together they make a vlog about good old books in the digital world.
425The Bauhaus: When Technology Met Art
These days we have almost grown used to seeing technology and art as rivals, yet this story reminds us that when the two come together, the results can be astonishing. The Bauhaus was a school where both paths converged; it lasted only a handful of years at the start of the last century, but it left behind an entire movement in architecture and art. Its story comes to us from the past to teach us about the roads of the future…
426Six Forgotten Treasures of Bulgarian Technology
What set the old Bulgarian ancestors of the computer mouse apart? What exactly is punched tape? What did the first electronic chess set made in Bulgaria look like? And how did the world's largest floppy disks come to be… Bulgarian? Anton Orush is the living archive of Bulgarian technology, and the creator of “Sandacite” shows us six of his remarkable finds.
427People of Sofia Against the Grayness and the Limbo
“Sofia today is a boring city to photograph,” says… Vihren Georgiev, the creator of the People of Sofia project. You may never have heard his name, but it would be strange if his remarkable photographs had never moved you. He is a wonderful photographer of the new, digital age, and his shots are at once art and a chronicle of the day. They win attention without running from the laws of art or chasing easy beauty. They simply show the people of Sofia as they are. Let me, in turn, try to present to you, as he is, the man who for almost a decade has been catching them in their true light.
428The Living Museum of Bulgarian Technology
“These are the last years in which something serious can still be done to save the vanishing history of Bulgarian technology. Now is the time for concrete deeds,” says Anton Orush. And his deeds are astonishing. Over 12 years of enormous effort, he has assembled the most complete collection of Bulgarian technology in existence, along with a whole sea of information about its past and present. At just 30, he is a living encyclopedia, and his home is a remarkable library of stories. Let us set off on an unforgettable technological visit.
429Alone Among Facebook Friends
We surround ourselves with “friends” on more and more social networks. And, all too often, we stay alone. When does the supposedly so social online world make us feel lonely? Are we really raising generations that will lose normal human contact? When does loneliness become a problem?
430“The Hunger for IT Specialists Will Keep Growing for a Long Time”
Ivaylo Hristov is the creator of dev.bg, the venture that lets software specialists keep their watches in sync and easily find work where they feel at home. He knows very well how much that matters: he walked away from a dream job at Microsoft to start his own venture, which became a serious success. Which Bulgarian software companies are poised for a breakthrough, where are we strong and where do we lag behind, and how did programming go from an exotic pastime to the most sought-after career in just 20 years?
431And Yet… Life Is Stronger
“Life is stronger!” Stronger than everything that piles up on us every day, than the coronavirus, than the measures against it, than the battles against the measures… than everything. Because while we wander between the extremes of a confused present, while we work ourselves up and turn bitter against one another… life simply goes on. That is exactly what the icon painter Dian Kostov wants to remind us of. Drawing on his rare art, he and like-minded friends created a project by that name, and thanks to it more than 150 children, born in these last years that have been so hard on all of us, smile down at us from tall silos in the middle of the grayness.
432The Programmer Who Sent Humans to the Moon
The woman in the photo is Dr. Margaret Hamilton, head of the team that built the software that carried Apollo 11 to our night luminary, the mission that took the first humans to the Moon in 1969. And that stack of binders? It's the software Margaret and her team wrote. What were the biggest challenges back when the profession of software engineer didn't even exist yet?
433“Stories of Value Will Find Their Way”
Can journalism still change lives today? Where does the beauty of slow journalism lie? How can meaningful projects be built in our unappealing media landscape? We meet Alexander Nikolov and Dimitar Panayotov, the authors of The Last Gift of Man, to talk about the present and future of journalism.
4342022, Seen from Sixty Years Ago: What Did the Science Fiction Writers Get Right?
In the 1960s Isaac Asimov wrote a remarkable essay containing some astonishingly perceptive predictions. Around the same time, the first issue of the magazine Kosmos ran a similar piece collecting the ideas of Soviet science fiction writers on the subject. What did the writers get right, and where did their expectations fall flat?
435“I Have the Feeling the Internet Is Erasing Our Memories”
Theater lovers know her from “Nice to Meet You, Iva!”. Iva Todorova’s singular debut one-woman show became an undisputed hit, and now “Iva Is Online” at Theatre 199, a story that is, of course, digital. Is there freedom online, are our Facebook friends really friends, and what jokes will AI tell us? Iva answers in her trademark dizzying style.
436The Last Gift and the Magi
On the eve of the holidays, we instinctively want to steer clear of uncomfortable subjects. Sometimes, though, the holidays are exactly the right moment to face them. The Last Gift of Man is a stunning multimedia project by two exceptionally talented young journalists: a deep, personal and professionally told story worth hearing, reading and feeling right now…
437Five Technologies We Expect Big Things From in 2022
Here it comes, just days away! We expect so much from 2022! Not only for it to finally rid us of the pandemic, but also to bring back normal. And we also expect some purely technological solutions from it, each of which certainly has the power to change the life of every single one of us. Still: which are the technological fields where we hope the coming 2022 will be especially hot?
438“People Don’t Trust Politicians. And Nothing Good Comes of That…”
What place do social networks have in today’s politics? When do they help the process, and when do they turn toxic? Does artificial intelligence help or harm politics? What kind of people should take up this calling? And why… do you need to start renovating your home so you don’t lose all hope in politics? Ivo Bozhkov is the man who brought social networks into Bulgarian politics. Here is what he has to tell us after several years in a field that matters enormously to all our lives.
439The Digital Prophet Who Came to Hate the Internet
“You are not the customer of the internet giants, you are their product.” “Social media is worse than cigarettes. Cigarettes don’t make you degrade. They kill you, but you still remain yourself.” You will hardly believe that these words belong to one of the pioneers of today’s digital world. Jaron Lanier popularized the term “virtual reality” and created the concept of avatars. His path crossed those of Richard Feynman, Marshall McLuhan and Andy Warhol. For a long time he was at the height of fame, on first-name terms with Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates. In a single afternoon he personally showed his pioneering virtual reality goggles to the Dalai Lama, Leonard Bernstein and Terry Gilliam. And today he is a preacher of sorts, speaking out against the flaws of the digital world.
440The Algorithms That Sealed Us Inside the Bubble
Recommendation algorithms are the reason we end up in the “filter bubble.” They already know everything about us, so it matters that we learn more about them, too. Machine learning algorithms are neither good nor bad. How much power we give them is up to us alone…
