(est. 2021) explores the intersections of technology, culture, and human experience. From urban phenomena and digital spirituality to the evolving landscapes of creativity, we investigate how modern life reshapes perception, identity, and society.
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#21 — VIOL: the ‘anti-violence’ drug that is spreading through Lisbon by Mark Ellison
#20 — Signal Ghosts: The Cities Where Wi-Fi Never Dies
#19 — Digital Detox Retreats: Escaping the Algorithm by Cassandra Myrren
#18 — The Urban Sleep Crisis by Eleanor Voss
#17 — Cryptic Art: NFTs and the Revaluation of Creativity by Marcus Ellwood
#16 — Virtual Pilgrimages: Religious Experience Online by Mark Ellison
#15 — The Dark Side of Wellness: When Self-Optimization Becomes Obsession by Eleanor Voss
#14 — AI Companions and the Loneliness Epidemic by Isolde Maren
#13 — The Rise of Microdosing in Corporate Culture by Cassandra Myrren
#12 — Sonic Immunity: Healing Through Frequencies by Cassandra Myrren
#11 — The Ethics of Immortality by Adrien Veyra
#10 — Algorithmic Faith: When Machines Preach by Mark Ellison
#09 — Post-Human Erotics: Desire Beyond the Flesh by Elin Vårnes
#08 — Synthetic Memory: The Future of Personal Archives by Caio Navarro
#07 — Neurosprawl: Mapping the Brain as a City by Eleanor Voss
#06 — The Archive Will Outlive You by Liang Wei
#05 — Eternal Scroll: The Infinite Feed as a Prison by Isolde Maren
#04 — Terraforming the Mind by Alessio Romano
#03 — Digital Necromancy by Mark Ellison
#02 — Speculative Hunger: Future Diets in a Synthetic World by Cassandra Myrren
#01 — The Ecology of Glitches by Alessio Romano
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The pursuit of immortality is often imagined as the final frontier of human mastery — a technical conquest over the inevitable. Yet such framing obscures the deeper ontological and ethical paradoxes that arise once the temporal horizon of human existence is artificially expanded. Immortality is not merely an extension of life; it is a transformation of life itself into a new materiality, a new temporality, and a new moral landscape. To consider living forever is to confront the architecture of being, the structure of value, and the psychology of desire in ways that exceed mere speculation.
Historically, the desire to transcend death has always been entwined with notions of power and divinity. From Sumerian kings negotiating eternal reign through mythic contracts with gods, to alchemical quests for elixirs of life, immortality has been a space where metaphysics and praxis intersect. The difference today lies in the secularization and instrumentalization of this pursuit: immortality is no longer petitioned from a divine authority, but engineered through biotechnology, nanoscience, and algorithmic governance of the human organism. Cryogenic vaults, genetic interventions, and mind-uploading initiatives represent not mere hope, but a methodological audacity: the ambition to reorder the laws of temporal finitude.
Yet, the moral implications are profound. Mortality is the crucible of meaning. Simone Weil’s reflections on gravity and grace illuminate why the inevitability of death structures our ethical and existential choices: it is the weight that shapes ascent, the absence of which risks rendering experience inert. Immortality, by contrast, threatens an existential stasis, a suspension of transformation that is not liberation but sedimentation. Identity, traditionally dynamic and responsive, risks ossification under the unrelenting pressure of endless temporal continuity. Life without end may cultivate neither creativity nor courage, but a form of habitual stasis, a chronic incapacity to release the self into the unknown.
The social consequences are equally profound. If immortality is distributed asymmetrically — accessible only to a privileged few — humanity could bifurcate into two species: the immortal elite and the transient majority. This division would extend far beyond material inequality, reshaping power, empathy, and social imagination. The mortal may perceive the immortal as alien, both envied and resented; the immortal may experience the mortal as ephemeral and inconsequential, a reminder of their own fragile past. Beyond the individual, immortality threatens the coherence of society itself, the ethical calibration that relies on shared finitude.
Ecological considerations further complicate the picture. Humanity already imposes a disproportionate burden on planetary systems; multiplying temporal lifespans exponentially increases the demand on finite resources. The ethics of immortality thus intersects inseparably with the ethics of habitation: to extend human life indefinitely may require a recalibration of our relationship with the biosphere and with non-human forms of being. Immortality is not merely a personal project, but a planetary intervention, a radical reconfiguration of life’s temporal economy.
Philosophically, the pursuit of immortality confronts a paradox: it is a quest to escape the horizon of death, yet death itself is the final editor of existence. It delineates narrative coherence, defines limits, and legitimizes the significance of choice. Without mortality, life risks becoming an endless sequence of undifferentiated events, a temporality without punctuation, a story without closure. The human psyche, constructed over millennia to navigate finitude, may falter under such unbounded temporality. Cognition, desire, and affect are all calibrated to mortality; remove the temporal anchor, and the ethical and existential frameworks that structure life may dissolve.
Finally, there is the intimate question of desire itself. When we speak of wanting to live forever, do we truly desire eternity, or merely delay the confrontation with finitude? Immortality promises mastery over time, yet it may ultimately confront us with a different terror: the confrontation with ourselves as perpetual, unchanging beings, bound to the same consciousness, the same internal rhythms, indefinitely. Death, painful though it may be, is a release, a punctuation, a completion. The immortal may inherit nothing but the inexhaustible accumulation of unfinished selves.
References
- Bauman, Z. (1992). Mortality, Immortality and Other Life Strategies. Polity Press.
- Brockman, J. (Ed.). (2002). The Next Fifty Years: Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century. Vintage.
- de Grey, A. (2007). Ending Aging. St. Martin’s Press.
- Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harper.
- Rose, M. R. (1991). Evolutionary Biology of Aging. Oxford University Press.
- Sloterdijk, P. (2016). Spheres III: Foam. Semiotext(e).
- Weil, S. (2002). Gravity and Grace (original work published 1947). Routledge.