A Generational Question: Digital Leaders and the Cult of Personality
Who have been the most striking figures in public life over the past few decades? The ones we would least expect, if we believe the stereotypes—the people of technology. From Bill Gates, whom the whole of conspiracy-minded humanity turned into the chief culprit behind the pandemic, to Elon Musk, who, while “saving” our freedom of speech, is our last real hope of rising to the stars as a civilization… Yes, the cult of personality is going through a rather strange apogee in the digital age. Politicians long ago lost their magic as interesting personalities, artists tend to stay focused on their particular audiences… while the celebrities of technological progress have become the powerful figures of the new era. Is it because technology is today’s magic? Incomprehensible to many, transformative, alluring… Are the powerful figures of the digital age supermen? Do the innovators get the fame they deserve, or do the idea thieves thrive? What do the representatives of different generations share, and what sets them apart? We meet some very different digital stories…
02Look Up at the Cosmos! What Comes Next?
For the first time in 54 years, humans reached the Moon and even flew around it, yet the news slipped past in a feed full of daily worries, when it deserves to be center stage. Molecular biologist Svetoslav Aleksandrov has spent 20 years explaining the exploration of the Universe on his site KOSMOS BG, one of the most important corners of the Bulgarian web. We board the rocket to talk about the future of people, technology and space, and about humanity's next great goal out there.
03“Without Science, We Are Lost!”
Will science soon let us live much longer? Is immortality possible? Could computers be the next step in evolution? And how do we win back trust in science? Assoc. Prof. Milena Georgieva is a molecular biologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She is not only a proven expert in her field but also something far rarer and more precious: a scientist who can present scientific subjects vividly, engagingly, accessibly and, at the same time, competently.
04What's in Apple's Name? The Stories Behind the Web's Biggest Brands
Are Java and JavaScript cousins, and if they have nothing in common… why do they have such similar names? Why did Apple pick something as overused as the apple for its name and symbol? What on earth is… Adobe? Or Google? Does Lenovo have anything to do with Lenin? “That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” says Juliet, as quoted by Shakespeare. And would what we call Apple or Amazon smell as sweet under another name? We can only guess. But behind the names of the online world's biggest players there are sometimes funny stories. In the lines that follow, we'll run quickly through some of the most instructive and unexpected ones.
05The Internet Connects Us, the Internet Divides Us
Conceived and built as the apotheosis of the free human spirit, the internet is turning into a veritable factory of inequality—by many different measures and in completely unexpected directions. Some rifts are quietly becoming chasms capable of causing enormous problems for all of humanity. Is it too late to “turn” the machine around?
06What If One Day We Defeat Death?
Do you think machines and artificial intelligence could make us… immortal? What price might we end up paying? What awaits us afterward? Where is the line between the possible, even the near future, and fantasy? Each of you has your own answers. And yet there are plenty of projects and ideas on the subject that give us reason to think about it more seriously.
07What Do the World's Tech Titans Read?
Do the world's tech leaders read books? What are the favorite reads recommended by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg? Will you find some overlap with your own literary taste, or is there no such topic at all? In Bulgaria it isn't fashionable to talk in the media about what we read. Journalist and translator Daniel Penev got me thinking about this during his visit. Yes, you'll probably remember the notorious Winnetou as someone's favorite book and… that's it. It isn't like that everywhere. In both West and East, the people who end up in the spotlight love to talk about books, about their favorite authors, about the literature that helps us keep going. Well, it's time we started doing it here too!
08Five 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?
09News or Blame? The Robot in the Newsroom
Every day we already read articles written by a robot. Today the most valuable resource isn’t oil, or money. It isn’t gold, it isn’t even power. At the epicenter of the computer revolution, everything is information. Zdravko wants to be a journalist; Zhelyazko is an artificial intelligence. Who does the future belong to?
