This suffix, applied to nuclear physics, modern biology, and early AI—and even a certain carnival ride—was “a totem of high modernism, the intellectual and cultural mode that decreed no process or phenomenon was too complex to be grasped, managed and optimised…displaying to all our mastery over matter, life and information.”
That’s right, folks. It’s “A Tale of ‘Trons’: The Suffix that Tells the Story of Modern Science”—though I’m a little disappointed that there’s no mention of my favorite tron of all.