| | By Made by History / Produced by Olivia B. Waxman | Talk of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly become omnipresent. Many workplaces seem to have internalized the message that those companies that fail to use AI will be "left behind." This isn't the first time tech companies have sold their products as revolutionary—in the 1990s, tech moguls used utopian language to describe the internet and its impact on the future. As Kate Flach writes in Made by History, the rise of internet use in that decade required a marketing strategy that assured individual consumers of the safety and utility of the new tech—and it worked, with millions of Americans embracing going online. By contrast, today's tech companies have targeted corporations rather than individual users to promote AI—a difference that tells us much about who they think will benefit from the technology. | The Dan David Prize, the largest history prize in the world (and a sponsor of Made by History), annually awards $300,000 each to nine early and mid-career scholars and practitioners in historical disciplines, acknowledging their outstanding achievements to date and to support future work. Anyone can nominate a practitioner in the relevant disciplines, and nominations for the 2026 Prize are open until Sept. 24. For more information visit dandavidprize.org/nominate. | |
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| | | | | | | | | | | | | This week in 1957: Kim Novak |  | The July 29, 1957, cover of TIME |
| TIME |
| "After only six pictures, she is the nation's No. 1 box-office star, an honor bestowed with calculated deliberation by the exhibitors after a close count of the till. Experts have tried to isolate something of the special Novak quality. Says Director Otto (The Man with the Golden Arm) Preminger: 'Novak is the way every American girl would like to look, and every man would like to have a girl like that. She is not too sophisticated. She gives you a feeling of compassion.'...Says Director George (The Eddy Duchin Story) Sidney: 'She has the facade and the equipment of a bitch in the long shot. Yet when you look in Kim's eyes in a closeup, she's like a baby. There is a fire with the sweetness, a bitchery with the virtue, all in one package.'" |
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| | This week in 1986: Aliens |  | The July 28, 1986, cover of TIME |
| Ken Regan |
| "[I]n both The Terminator and Aliens, evil is symbolized by nonhuman characters; it continues with the demonstration, in both pictures, that 'it's more interesting to see a normal person in abnormal circumstances than a highly trained person like Superman or James Bond.' People who try to act like superheroes in Aliens all end up dead because, finally, 'the movie is about finding personal resources: will, courage, whatever.' Or, as Weaver puts it, 'I like to think the real message is love.' Sounds odd, doesn't it? But that is only because the movies have lately forgotten a fact that never used to escape them, which is that love can turn up in the strangest places. And is never more welcome, as a sign of human grace, than when the pressure of deadly events is at its height." |
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| This week in 1995: Bob Dole, GOP presidential candidate ('96) |  | The July 31, 1995, cover of TIME |
| Martin Simon |
| "Bob Dole celebrated his 72nd birthday last Saturday, an occasion of more than passing significance. For it reminded the leaders of his party, the pundits searching for big issues and perhaps even a few real live voters of the thing Dole would most like them to ignore: if he were to win the presidency in 1996, he would be the oldest man ever inaugurated. Even if age doesn't matter, ideas do. At the very moment when voters have installed a generation of laser-guided, soul-driven Republican reformers, he finds himself cast as the embodiment of old-style, gear-grinding politics…There is some comfort in the fact that Bill Clinton has an age problem too…His critics deride the 'yuppie Zen President' who represents a feckless generation that protested wars while their elders fought them and lacks the confidence that comes from sacrifice." |
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