The Story Behind the Screen
Every device has a history.
Every invention has a story.
isHistory traces the ideas, people, and moments that built the technology you use every day — serialized, in-depth, and built for readers who want more than a Wikipedia summary.
Featured
Read the series →The Ancient Dream of Artificial Life
From Talos and the Golem to Mary Shelley — how humans dreamed of artificial life thousands of years before the computer. The deep roots of AI in myth, philosophy, and the craftsman's obsession with creating minds.
Minds & Machines · A15The Rise of the Thinking Machine: Deep Learning Takes Over
The story of the deep learning revolution from AlexNet through the Transformer, told as a narrative of rapid, cascading discovery. The fastest scientific revolution in the history of AI — and what it means that machines can now do what only humans could do before.
Series
All series →Minds & Machines
A 78-article deep-dive into the full history of Artificial Intelligence — from the ancient myths of mechanical life to the reasoning models reshaping the world today. Three parallel tracks (Articles, Profiles, Events) across five acts, plus a three-article coda. Series complete.
Series · OngoingWired
A 116-episode narrative history of the internet — from ARPANET's first message in 1969 to the AI web of 2025. Five parallel tracks (Chronicle, Pioneers, Episodes, Consequences, Life & Culture) across seven chronological eras tell the story of how a military communications experiment became the nervous system of civilization.
Latest articles
AI's Energy Bill: Data Centres, Water, and Carbon
Data-centre water use, training-run carbon footprints, the Microsoft–Three Mile Island restart — why AI energy use is now a national infrastructure issue.
Beyond the SeriesThe AI Chip Wars: Compute as the New Oil
TSMC, ASML, NVIDIA, US export controls, and the CHIPS Act — how the semiconductor supply chain became the geopolitical battlefield of the AI age.
Beyond the SeriesPrompt Engineering and the New Art of Talking to Machines
Chain-of-thought, few-shot, ReAct, structured prompts — the rise and partial fall of prompt engineering as a profession.
Explore
Beyond the Series
Standalone essays extending isHistory's series — the topics, profiles, and events the main series couldn't fully treat. Each piece is designed to be read on its own.
Primary-Source ReferenceDocs Catalog
Verified documents, papers, reports, and legislation with canonical source URLs — the primary sources behind the series, each explained in plain English.
Standalone WritingBlog
Essays and field notes on the history of technology — the people, the moments, and the machines. Written when there's something to say, not on a schedule.
Never miss a story.
Get new articles delivered to your inbox. No spam, no ads — just the story behind the screen.