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Google Wants to Make ‘Science Fiction’ a Reality—And That’s Limiting Their...
Self-driving cars, extreme life extension, and global wifi provided by weather balloons: Google makes projects that sound like science fiction into reality at its secretive research lab, Google X. And...
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Why Your Neighbors Will Finance Solar Panels for Your Roof
Here’s another reason to be nice to the neighbors: They might just give you a no-money-down, low-cost loan to put solar panels on your roof, and once you pay off that debt you’ll get essentially free...
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This Is What It's Like to Drive on a Glow-in-the-Dark Highway
In the Dutch city of Oss, 60 miles southeast of Amsterdam, there's a highway named N329. During the day, N329 is a stretch of road like so many others around the world—paved, painted, studded with...
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The Electronic-Medical-Records Email of the Day, No. 1
Background: In last month's issue (subscribe!) I had a brief Q&A with Dr. David Blumenthal, who had kicked off the Obama Administration's effort to encourage use of electronic medical records....
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A Bullseye in the Sky Over Texas
When we see patterns in the atmosphere from space, they tend to be in the clouds of powerful storms. These all have roughly the same form: they look like a spiral galaxy with arms spinning out from the...
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Please Join Us at 6th and I This Evening
This evening James Bennet, the Atlantic's editor-in-chief, will be leading a conversation with Deb Fallows and me about the American Futures travels we've undertaken for the past few months, and for...
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The Future of Streaming Music
1. Beautiful feature on the future of streaming music. "If the recording industry has its way, music ownership will give way to a model completely based on access, but with an important shift. While...
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What Happened to Skywriting?
Skywriting is a rare art now. But less than a century ago, it was considered the future of advertising. The technique was relatively simple. Engine-heated paraffin oil mixed with exhaust to produce...
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CAPTCHAs Are Becoming Security Theater
CAPTCHAs are a time-worn way for humans to tell computers that we are human. They are those little boxes filled with distorted text that we've been told humans can decipher, but computers—the bad guys'...
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Read This Article Again In 2064
For most daydreamers, predicting the future is a business of missing more than you hit. For example, we still haven't eliminated childbirth by inventing designer babies grown in artificial wombs, a...
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The Unbundling of the Phone
For years, sustainability and consumer advocates alike have criticized the electronics industry for the so-called "bundled" nature of our devices: If your phone's speakers start making weird noises,...
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Why Don't Older Americans Want Time Machines?
You want a time machine, don't you? Because one in 10 Americans do—at least that's what they said when Pew Research Center asked what futuristic technology they would like to own. That's a notable...
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Could a Floating Nuclear Power Plant Prevent Another Fukushima?
A group of MIT scientists want to revive the nuclear industry in the post-Fukushima era by moving it offshore. Literally. In a paper to be presented at a conference this week, the MIT researchers argue...
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Our Mars Orbiter Looked Down and Saw Our Mars Rover
Right now, five human spacecrafts study Mars by hanging out near it. Two do it from the Martian surface—the Curiosity rover, which began its mission in 2012, and the more-than-a-decade-old Opportunity...
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The Data-Driven Optimization of the Worker
1. The math of large numbers means that companies with lots of employees are going to try to optimize everything. "Technology means that no matter what kind of job you have — even if you're alone in a...
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This Is Big: Scientists Just Found Earth's First Cousin
Right now, 500 light years away from Earth, there's a planet that looks a lot like our own. It is bathed in dim orangeish light, which at high noon is only as bright as the golden hour before sunset...
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Here's HD Video of the World's Tallest Building—And a Flying Plane—From Space
If a new class of startups find success, we’ll soon see videos like the one above fairly regularly. Right now, though, they’re astonishing. This is high-definition satellite video of the Burj...
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There Really Are So Many More Twins Now
From about 1915, when the statistical record begins, until 1980, about one in every 50 babies born was a twin, a rate of 2 percent. Then, the rate began to increase: by 1995, it was 2.5 percent. The...
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Housekeeping Note: Batteries, and Typos
Our new issue is out. I know that you've already Subscribed! Meanwhile, apart from all the other value between its covers -- and really, a lot of exceptional pieces in this issue -- these housekeeping...
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Want to See Where Earth's First Cousin Is? Look for the Swan in the Sky
From here on Earth, the planet Kepler-186f is a faint spot in the chaotic and twinkling universe. Its star is dim and far, far away. But Kepler-186f is making headlines on Earth because, despite its...
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