As tens of thousands return to the streets for the first national Palestine march of 2026, this movement refuses to be sidelined or silenced, says PETER LEARY
Latest editorial
Hard problems for soft robots
Machines have changed how we think about data. Will they make us think differently about matter, ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
SOFT TOUCH: A Shadow Dexterous Robot Hand holding a lightbulb
[Richard Greenhill and Hugo Elias/Creative Commons]
If the government really wanted to address public finances, improve living standards and begin economic recovery, it would increase its borrowing for investment, argues MICHAEL BURKE
MATT KERR takes a winter journey through poetry, labour and memory, from Glasgow to Newcastle, arguing that our radical past isn’t something to revere from a distance, but a tool still meant to be used
One of Canada’s most revered politicians is a native of Falkirk but is relatively unknown in his original homeland. KENNY MacASKILL tells his story
Labour prospects in May elections may be irrevocably damaged by Birmingham Council’s costly refusal to settle the year-long dispute, warns STEVE WRIGHT
HENRY FOWLER and ROB POOLE explain the significance of today’s Megapicket
ROBOTS are here. They run our lives, they do our jobs, they find our soulmates, they persuade us what to listen to, how to spend our time and money, they teach us, they connect us to other people.
Your phone is a robot, your checkout is a robot, your smart speaker is a robot, your computer is a robot, your electronics are robots, using the internet means using robots to use other robots.
Perhaps calling all of these technologies “robots” is unnecessarily simplifying. It’s not how we imagined the future of machinery when the first automatons of the industrial revolution tumbled clanking and steaming into factories, or how robots were imagined in most visions of the future in sci-fi comics and films. And yet this is what we have made.
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