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What We Talk About When We Talk About the 'Raised Hands' Emoji
Emojis are useful not just because they are colorful, and not just because they are fun, but also because they can be, at times, helpfully ambiguous. Want to convey a kind of non-committal enthusiasm...
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The Startup That Wants to Cure Social Anxiety
Brett Redding felt like he was out of options. “It started with little things—having trouble making eye contact,” he told me. Soon it got worse. Redding, a 28-year-old salesman in Seattle, found...
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Why Driverless Cars Don't Need Windows
For the last 80-some years, the model car has been pretty standard. The tail fins and bucket seats came and went, but there were almost always four wheels, two headlights, and windows, plenty of big,...
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Getting Approval for Arctic Drilling Might've Been the Least of Shell's Problems
Summer on the Chukchi Sea is pleasant for only a select few: the rugged polar bears, walruses, and whales that live on and under its seasonal islands of ice, built to brave the pounding wind and...
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The Store Where Robots Sell Robots
Arika Bunfill has heard it all. “Are you real?” “Will you clean my house too?” “Will you go out with me?” It’s hard out there for a robot. Bunfill works at the Beam store in downtown Palo Alto,...
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Long-Range Iris Scanning Is Here
An officer pulls someone over on the side of the highway. The cop sits in the car a moment, runs the plates—they’re fine—and gets out of the car. As he or she approach the driver’s side window, the...
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From Paint to Pixels
It’s unlikely Claude Monet would have been Claude Monet without the portable paint tube, which allowed him to work outside and experiment with capturing natural light. Andy Warhol wouldn’t have been...
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Questioning the Hype About Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence has always been hyped by its often-charismatic enthusiasts; lately it seems that the hype may be coming true. Media pundits, technologists, and increasingly the broader public...
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The Technology That Saved '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'
If not for a humble tape recorder, one of the most popular songs in history—arguably the greatest rock song ever recorded—may have evaporated in a dream. It's been 50 years since The Rolling Stones...
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The People's Manifesto on Police Body-Cameras
Body cameras are beginning to be used by law enforcement agencies across the country. And they’re starting to hit snags. In Fort Worth, two police officers shot a man—and, despite both wearing body...
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Could a Robot Write the Perfect Pop Song?
Grab some blank sheet music. Choose a key (a major key, preferably). Set your tempo at something moderate, 4/4 time. Write a melody, a chorus, and a bridge, with each line getting eight bars. Add...
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It’s Not Too Late to Get Body Cameras Right
Police-worn body cameras are coming. Support for them comes from stakeholders who often take opposing views. Law enforcement wants them, many politicians are pushing for them, and communities that...
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A Blueprint for a Better Human Body
When Elizabeth Wright smacks her right leg on a table, she says “ow.” That’s only interesting if you know one more thing: that her right leg is made out of carbon fiber and metal. It’s also part of...
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The Skyscraper of the Future
There's something inherently absurd about skyscrapers. They defy gravity and high winds. They require years of challenging high-altitude construction. They're dizzying to look at—from the ground and...
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A Giant, Fake City in the Middle of the Desert
Grigory Potemkin, the 18th-century war hero and nobleman, was also Catherine the Great’s lover and military advisor. According to ubiquitous legend, Potemkin fabricated villages along the banks of the...
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Facebook and the Illusion of Safety
I sat on the tiny swell of a hill behind my hotel, waiting for the four-story building to crumble into dust and take me with it. And then I would be gone—one moment here, the next moment not. This was...
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A Test That Finds the Perfect Drug?
When drug-company representatives visit Richard Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the psychopharmacology clinic of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, and ask him...
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How Stargazing Became a Numbers Game
People have long thought of astronomy as the science of looking to the stars, but discoveries in the cosmos increasingly come from a different kind of observational power. Space can now be seen in...
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Farming in the Sky
A couple of Octobers ago, I found myself standing on a 5,000-acre cotton crop in the outskirts of Lubbock, Texas, shoulder-to-shoulder with a third-generation cotton farmer. He swept his arm across the...
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See Spotify Run
Running alongside the Potomac River this past Wednesday afternoon, I had one of those thoughts that seems revelatory when high from either drugs or running, but obvious any other time: In the utopian...
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