The (not) de-extinct dire wolf: Metaphors, myths and magic
April 18, 2025
This post is a collaboration between Brigitte Nerlich and Kate Roach, both retired social scientists with interests in science, culture and society. *** I (Brigitte) first heard about the dire wolf in a post by the science writer Carl Zimmer linking to an article he had written for the New York Times. I had never …
How to do things with prompts: Magic words, speech acts and AI
June 21, 2024
Looking at what’s going on in AI sometimes makes me feel like the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, When he first visited the Trobriand Islands of then British New Guinea about a century ago, he became fascinated by the magic words that the islanders used and the actions they were believed to perform. Visiting the land of …
Science, politics and magic
April 10, 2016
A couple of years ago, prompted by an article by Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, I wrote a blog post about ‘responsible innovation’ as a buzzword. About a year ago, I tried to understand the appeal of another buzzword, namely ‘co-production’. Yesterday, I cleared out some files and happened to come across some thirty-year-old notes on the magical …
The magic of science
March 23, 2012
Guest post by Dr Kate Roach, former member of the Institute for Science and Society, now writer and public engagement researcher (kr@kateroach.net) Defining science A recent invitation on twitter to define science, #scidef, has brought forth quite a number of mysterious or magically inclined interpretations. For @TripOnEgo science is an: “intrigue-inspired investigation, commanded by moral …
MSP bookmarks
- Twitter May 8, 2017
- Social innovations in Europe #RRI November 3, 2015
- Harvey Graff, the undisciplinarian September 20, 2015
- Replacing Pesticides With Genetics August 31, 2015
- Addressing hazardous chemicals in the circular economy August 25, 2015
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