Sidney Perkowitz, Author at JSTOR Daily

Do We Have Moral Obligations to Robots?

The recent film Blade Runner 2049 engages with questions raised by Karel Čapek and Isaac Asimov: What do we owe our creations (and what do they owe us)?

Health

How to Understand the Resurgence of Eugenics

The extreme right wing has brought the discredited idea of eugenics back into the national conversation. Brave New World and Gattaca offer perspective.

Science & Technology

The Internet Before the Internet: Paul Otlet’s Mundaneum

Belgian information activist Paul Otlet envisioned some of the possibilities of today’s Web more than a century before its existence.

Smart home automation: remote controlling house temperature

Science & Technology

The Internet of Things: Totally New and A Hundred Years Old

The modern Internet of Things and E.M. Forster's short story, "The Machine Stops"

Editors' Picks

Education & Society

Teaching Happiness

According to one scholar, we're inundated with ways to pursue pleasure, which we conflate with happiness, to our own detriment.

Politics & History

Grave Robbing, Black Cemeteries, and the American Medical School

In the 19th century, students at American medical schools stole the corpses of recently-buried African Americans to be used for dissection.

Politics & History

Why Yemen Suffers in Silence

Yemen is suffering a major humanitarian crisis. How did the country get to such a precarious state, and why aren't Americans paying more attention?

Arts & Culture

When Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Eliot Were Penpals

These 19th-century novelists might seem to have little in common. But for 11 years they wrote each other letters, forging an unusual literary friendship.

Education & Society

The Activist Students of 1960s East Los Angeles

Over a week and a half starting on March 1st, 1968, more than 10,000 students in mostly Chicano schools took part in what became known as the East Los Angeles School Blowouts.