As we enter our last days here at Djerassi, I think it’s safe to say that a shift has occurred in all of us, even as the omnipresent marine layer of the first couple of weeks moves out to hot blue days and breathtaking views of the water itself. 

We have owls—both at the house at the Artist’s Barn down the hill. Nights, we watch as they begin their hunt. As they disappear into the gathering dusk, they become the stump they stalk from until, just as we think we have lost them for good, a rush of flight and the white of the underside of their wings swooshing above us.

As a result of more than 50 years of publishing work on the cutting edge, Leonardo has become the leading international peer-reviewed journal on the use of contemporary science and technology in the arts and music and, increasingly, the application and influence of the arts, design and humanities on science and technology.

Deep fake

Fake news has been on the news a lot these days. How easy is it to make one yourself? It turns out to be really easy, as easy as how people generated gossip in the past. You can even have computer write those news for you. How easy to spread the fake news? Well, the modern social media makes this task unprecendently easy and efficient. Better yet, if you have resource and be strategical, you can hire a team of people, create an army of bots, to do the job. It can be spread really fast and appears very convincing.