Guest Thinkers — December 14, 2009

A Stimulating History

Rarely has so much buzz surrounded a Big Think guest. It was our pleasure today to have historian of technology Dr. Rachel Maines in to discuss her bestselling 1999 volume, “The Technology of Orgasm: ‘Hysteria,’ Vibrators and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction,” as well as her participation in a recent New York Psychoanalytic Institute roundtable on “Love and Pleasure in the Age of Electricity.”

Upbeat and good-humored, Dr. Maines also discussed her new book on “Hedonizing Technologies”—that is, the technologies that have turned formerly productive tasks like hunting and gardening into leisure activities. Her interview will be posted in January.

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13.8

New JWST results show we’re on a path to finding alien life

Within the next few decades, we may well have hard evidence for the existence of alien life on worlds light-years distant from Earth.

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