New Price for Product X: $999.99

Today's Technology News

Globalism vs. the scientific revolution

How did science get started? A few years back, we looked at one answer to that question in the form of a book called The Invention of Science. In it, British historian David Wootton places the origin within a few centuries of European history in which the features of modern science—experiments, models and laws, peer review—were gradually aggregated into a formal process of organized discovery.

But that answer is exquisitely sensitive to how science is defined. A huge range of cultures engaged in organized observations of the natural world and tried to identify patterns in what they saw. In a recent book called Horizons, James Poskett places these efforts firmly within the realm of science and arrives at his subtitle: "The global origins of modern science." He de-emphasizes the role of Europe and directly dismisses Wootton's book via footnote in the process.

Whether you find Poskett's broad definition of science compelling will go a long way to explain how you feel about the first third of the book. The remaining two-thirds, however, are a welcome reminder that, wherever it may have started, science quickly grew into an international effort and matured in conversation with international cultural trends like colonialism, nationalism, and Cold War ideologies.

OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, Is Ousted

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research lab, has ousted its CEO, Sam Altman. Mira Murati, the former Chief Technology Officer, has been named interim chief executive. This unexpected change came shortly after Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, learned about the decision just a minute before it was announced to the public. Altman's removal raises questions about the future direction of OpenAI and its collaboration with Microsoft.

Sources: The New York Times, Axios

SpaceX's Starship Flight Test Ends in an Explosion

SpaceX's second Starship flight test ended abruptly with an explosion. While the upper stage of the Starship successfully reached an altitude of 90 miles, putting it in space, the Super Heavy booster experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly after the separation. SpaceX confirmed the booster's failure but did not provide further details on what caused the explosion. This setback highlights the challenges of developing and testing advanced space technologies.

Sources: The Verge, The New York Times

Sources: Ars Technica, The New York Times, The Verge, Techmeme