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Three Minutes Until Doom
Doomsday has always been at least seven minutes away. That's according to the "Doomsday Clock," a symbolic timepiece that ticks off humanity's proximity to, well, doom. (Doom!) The clock, introduced by...
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Why I Am Not a Maker
Every once in a while, I am asked what I “make.” A hack day might require it, or a conference might ask me to describe “what I make” so it can go on my name tag. I’m always uncomfortable with it. I’m...
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A Little Bot of Galactic Possibility
The Andromeda Galaxy is so close, sometimes we mistake it for our own. Andromeda—or Messier 31, as it's known scientifically—is the nearest galaxy to the Milky Way. It’s also, like the Milky Way, a...
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Genetic Testing and Tribal Identity
The genetic sequencing company 23andMe recently tapped into its vast bank of data to release a study on genetic origins, producing the biggest genetic profile of the United States ever conducted—big,...
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How Much Does the Web Weigh?
I'm going to tell you a number that's too big to imagine: Four hundred and thirty billion. That's how many web pages have been captured and preserved by the weird, wonderful, Wayback Machine since it...
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Twitter Jokes and the Philosophical Origins of Humor
In its nearly nine years of existence, Twitter has grown to encompass an array of communities and subgenres. There’s media Twitter, weird Twitter, black Twitter, dad Twitter, and brand Twitter—each...
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The App Economy Is Now 'Bigger Than Hollywood'
What is the major cultural force in America right now? It might just be apps and the web. While reading a self-laudatory Apple press release, the technology business analyst Horace Deidu found...
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Beware the Drone Laws
Forget fence-jumpers. News that a small drone crashed onto the White House lawn early Monday morning immediately stoked fears about whether the technology that the U.S. government uses to target...
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Introducing the Supertweet
If you use Twitter, you’ve probably encountered the “subtweet,” a technique we defined last year in The Atlantic as “the practice of talking about someone without referencing them explicitly.” Alexis...
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In Defense of Waze, Which Doesn't Put Police in Danger
On the streets of Los Angeles, where everyone is looking for a route that skirts traffic, Waze is our jam. The Google-owned mobile-phone app draws on everyone in its network of users to determine what...
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What I'll Do With My Parents' Facebook After They Die
My parents have always been upfront with me about their wishes for when they die. I can remember talking about cremation, living wills, and Do Not Resuscitate orders way back in middle school. But when...
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How to Build a Tornado
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/384905/how-to-build-a-tornado/
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Life in the Universe May Be Much Older Than We Thought
One of the greatest questions is whether life exists beyond our pale blue dot. The search extends across space and through the universe’s 13.8-billion-year history. Now, scientists have found five...
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An Optimist’s Guide to Political Correctness
One of the first widespread uses of the telegraph, when it emerged in and then transformed the 19th century, was mundane: the sharing of local weather information. Corn speculators in England began...
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Why Is Google Making Human Skin?
This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/384922/why-is-google-making-human-skin/
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Before Net Neutrality: The Surprising 1940s Battle for Radio Freedom
In 1947, near the 40th anniversary of his invention of the Audion tube, Lee de Forest, “the father of radio,” addressed a message to the National Association of Broadcasters that was widely circulated...
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The Devil Wears Pulsars
The night sky is a perfect canvas for the stars—and for fashion designers seeking inspiration. Celestial objects are inherently stylish, because designers can translate them into simple shapes (think...
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A New Global Swarm of Weather-Sensing Satellites
Every bird, every bug, every human being on Earth is enveloped at all times by the signals of the Global Positioning System (GPS). Its 32 satellites, operated by the U.S. government, do far more than...
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In Cuba, Maps Make a Comeback
When Stephan Van Dam began designing two detailed tourist maps of Cuba in 2014, he couldn’t have known that one year later, the prospect of renewed relations between the country and the U.S. could...
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Building Robots With Better Morals Than Humans
The age of artificial intelligence may be very nearly upon us—which is, on one hand, great news. Machines have long helped humans do things better and faster and more safely and affordably. Except the...
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