Noema Magazine

24/12/2025

“All our scientific stories — & the technologies we build from them — must always include us & our place within the tapestries of life.”

—Adam Frank

To understand life, we must stop treating organisms like machines and minds like code.

23/12/2025

“In a surprisingly literal sense, we are indeed all made of light, as is everything we perceive or understand.”

—Swami Sarvapriyananda, Blaise Agüera y Arcas & Carlo Rovelli

Central concepts in three different domains — Hindu tradition, computer science and quantum physics — find analogies and reflect one another.

22/12/2025

"Green technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines & EVs have major thermodynamic advantages over fossil fuels, the drilling, extraction, refining & transportation of which result in expensive energy losses at every distribution & conversion point."

—Bentley Allan

The only path forward for tackling the climate crisis hinges on cooperative industrial strategies to coordinate clean energy investment and infrastructure development.

22/12/2025

May this season find you surrounded by light 🕎

18/12/2025

Check out our favorite artwork from the past year, created by artists from all around the world 🗺️

Here’s our favorite artwork from the past year.

17/12/2025

“These are the last days of social media, not because we lack content, but because the attention economy has neared its outer limit — we have exhausted the capacity to care. There is more to watch, read, click & react to than ever before — an endless buffet of stimulation.”

—James O’Sullivan

Social media promised connection, but it has delivered exhaustion.

16/12/2025

Check out our best longform journalism & essays of the year, with stories covering everything from the last days of social media to the unseen fury of solar storms.

Our best longform journalism and essays from 2025.

15/12/2025

“Vietnam’s third stack is more than a hedge against platform dependence: it is a rehearsal for a future in which AI agents — trained locally, governed modularly — enact a worldview not defined by Silicon Valley or Beijing.”

—Dang Nguyen

What if the future of AI isn’t defined by Washington or Beijing, but by improvisation elsewhere?

14/12/2025

“If spires & arches & ancient cavern churches no longer give shape to our worship, what does? Can we still build a temple worthy of God?”

—John Last

In the age of the algorithm, the West has lost its philosophy of spiritual architecture, and with it the language of holy enchantment.

13/12/2025

“We [must] figure out how our contemporary communication system can strengthen democracy, rather than myopically focus on correcting falsehoods.”

—Zeve Sanderson & Scott Babwah Brennen

Defending democracy in the digital age will require moving beyond the focus of fighting online misinformation.

12/12/2025

“Like others who think differently & come from outside the insider establishment, Frank Gehry rebelled against the custodians of proper & hallowed ways.”

—Nathan Gardels

“I’m not a theorist, but a vacuum cleaner.”

11/12/2025

“If we misunderstand what science is, mistaking automation of method for the human project of collectively constructing, debating & refining the symbolic representations through which we make sense of reality, AI may foretell the death of science.”

—Sara Imari Walker

Will AI kill science, or will it foster a scientific revolution? The answer depends on something no one knows: What is science?