Explore how technical and social structures co-evolved over five centuries in this large-scale research visualization.
Capitalism Tech Stack Map — A Cross-Civilization Infographic (D3 Force)
Empire: World History
History Podcast · Updated twice weekly · The rise and fall of empires and the events that shaped world history. William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the intricate stories of revolutions, imperial wars, and the people who built and lost…
Empire: World History
AI’s Imperial Agenda
“Empire of AI” author Karen Hao on how Silicon Valley’s young AI companies parallel colonial empires of old.
Agent Economies | Interactive AI Network Visualization
Explore the future of AI agent economies through an interactive network visualization representing autonomous systems that collaborate and evolve.
Why your Steppe Empire can not exist
Cosmograph: Beautiful Visualization and Analytics | Cosmograph
Beautiful Visualization and Analytics
Technology is Society Made Durable
Is it possible to devise a set of concepts that could replace the technology/society divide? This set of new concepts - association and substitution - might help to rephrase some of the traditional questions of social order and especially that of the durability of domination of power. However, instead of using different tools to analyse power and weakness, it is argued that power and domination are simply different values of variables that should be studied in their whole range. By reconstructing networks it is argued that a full description of power and domination may be obtained.
We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age
The transition from small hunter-gatherer societies into complex civilizations gave rise to the first Axial Age. Today, the planetary polycrisis of climate chaos, mass migration, increasing warfare and transformative AI represents a rupture of comparable magnitude.
Illustration of Harvard Mark III | Mastering the Game | Computer History Museum
Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires
Despite their historical importance, empires have received scant attention from social scientists. Now, Alexander J. Motyl examines the structure, dynamics, and continuing relevance of empire—and asks, "Why do empires decline? Why do some empires collapse? And why do some collapsed empires revive?"Rejecting choice-centered theories of imperial decline, Motyl maintains that the very structure of empires promotes decay and that decay in turn facilitates the progressive loss of territory. Although most major empires have in fact declined in this manner, some, such as the Soviet Union, have collapsed suddenly and comprehensively. Motyl explains how and why collapse occurs, why such an outcome is hard to foresee, and why some collapsed empires revive. While broad-ranging historically and empirically, Imperial Ends focuses on five modern empires: the Soviet, Romanov, Ottoman, Habsburg, and Wilhelmine.Examining the possibility of a revival of the Soviet empire, Motyl points out that the expansion of NATO and the European Union, along with increasing globalization, will isolate Russia and its neighbors, promoting their dependence upon one another and perhaps facilitating the rise of the former core. With boldly stated conclusions and concise analytical interpretations, Imperial Ends cohesively illustrates to policymakers and social scientists alike the importance of possible imperial revivals and the rise of future empires.
On power, aesthetics, materiality and change in data visualization
Notes from the Information+ Conference at MIT/Northeastern University, Boston.
Humans Create Empires For The Same Reason They Create Egos
Reading by Tim Foley:
The great myth of empire collapse | Aeon Essays
Societal downfalls loom large in history and popular culture but, for the 99 per cent, collapse often had its upsides
LotusNotes
I tend to focus on the origin of the computer within the military. Particularly in the early days of digital computing, the military was a key customer, and fundamental concepts of modern computing arose in universities and laboratories serving military contracts. Of course, the war would not last forever, and computing had applications in so many other fields—fields that, nonetheless, started out as beneficiaries of military largesse.
