Beyond humans, what other kinds of minds might be out there?
From algorithms to aliens, could humans ever understand minds that are radically unlike our own?
How the Soviets invented the internet and why it didn't work.
Soviet scientists tried for decades to network their nation. What stalemated them is now fracturing the global internet.
What the news media can learn from librarians.
Journalism has had the luxury of not having to ask itself the existential question of why anyone should pay any attention to us at all.
A firsthand look inside America's resurgent paramilitary movement.
You won’t believe what number 1 is…
9 tech skills that pay over $120,000 and are in demand.
Chemotherapy Is Brutal. Can This MIT Engineer Fix It?
The device allows patients to monitor white blood cell levels from home, simply by shining a tiny microscope over a fingernail.
The scientists who make apps addictive.
Tech companies use the insights of behaviour design to keep us returning to their products. But some of the psychologists who developed the science of persuasion are worried about how it is being used.
What Happened to Eastern Airlines Flight 980?
On New Year's Day in 1985, Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 was carrying 29 passengers and a hell of a lot of contraband when it crashed into the side of a 21,112-foot mountain in Bolivia. For decades conspiracy theories abounded as the wreckage remained inaccessible, the bodies unrecovered, the black box missing. Then two friends from Boston organized an expedition that would blow the case wide open.
The Weird Economics Of Ikea.
Now it’s time to prepare for the Machinocene.
One way or another, then, we are going to be sharing the planet with a lot of non-biological intelligence. Whatever it brings, we humans face this future together. We have an obvious common interest in getting it right. And we need to nail it the first time round. Barring some calamity that ends our technological civilisation without entirely finishing us off, we’re not going to be coming this way again.