From avid embrace to dreams of evasion, in literature, art, science and beyond. View in web browser

The Ledger: April 2018 It can be easy to forget, amid frantic proclamations of tech-world innovation, that some of the most beautiful, delightful and profound technology we’ll see is nearly invisible for being already in our midst, part of our everyday lives. The ‘wheels’ we don’t think to reinvent—the fountain pen, for instance, and the mechanical wristwatch. A basic coffee mug. Rubber bands. Elasticised socks. Red lipstick. Sourdough. Bound printed text. Sure, electric toothbrushes are finally becoming more discreet, and engineers are always finding ways to more smoothly sync the Cloud, but it’s the tried and true we tend to take for granted. ‘Amara’s Law warns us of the long-established hype cycle of emerging technologies: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”’

DISCOVER Cataloguing the corporeal at a cellular level One of the more ambitious scientific projects to capture recent attention and imagination (Large Hadron Collider notwithstanding), the Human Cell Atlas is aimed at documenting approximately 37.2 trillion human cells. Continue reading READ A dystopian Japan conjured in pithy, playful strokes Yoko Tawada’s new novel, The Emissary, imagines a world in which technology has utterly failed us and our youngest ‘early-adopters’ are frail grey-whiskered creatures cared for by the far hardier elderly. Continue reading

PEOPLE From cowherd to nanotechnologist: an indefatigable thirst for learning ‘Do you think you have what it takes to be a scientist?’ wrote the South African scientist Tebello Nyokong in a letter addressed to herself at the age of eighteen. The evidence is in, along with a host of awards. Continue reading LISTEN Words and music that render entropy entrancing Seven Catastrophes in Four Movements, by the American poet Paul Kane and the Irish sound artist Katie O’Looney, is a beautifully mastered album of compositions inspired by Catastrophe Theory. Continue reading

ATTEND Works of purity and depth, generated from modest media One critic describes the works in ‘Black Mapping’, a new show by the Korean artist Lee Bae, as ‘a bottomless black well, in which we each find the depth we are willing to see…’ If in Paris, take the plunge. Continue reading STAY A stunning North African sanctuary, ideal for analogue-lovers Some hundred miles east of Marrakech you’ll find Morocco’s dazzling Ouzoud Falls and, nearby, Riad Cascades d'Ouzoud, a rustic, rammed-earth refuge from almost everything electronic. Continue reading

ARCHITECTURE A hospitable, innovative haven for senior citizens Lisbon’s Alcabideche Social Complex is a contemporary medina-like cluster of freestanding apartments for the elderly that defies almost every negative connotation of the so-called old-age home. Continue reading HEAR A New York verse, a song of Southern comfort and two tall tales This Paris Review Podcast has David Sedaris reading a Frank O’Hara poem, John Jeremiah Sullivan singing a Robert Johnson song, and two excellent short stories. Take a comfy seat—or a leisurely walk—and tune in. Continue reading

Illustrations by Jeffrey Cheung ‘Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus…’ Thomas Carlyle