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The Golden Age of Post-Television
ASPEN, Colo.—When Netflix released the first season of House of Cards to the world, every episode at once, it was treated as a milestone in a revolution. It was a front-page story in The New York...
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A Superhighway Across the Bering Strait
At a Russian Academy of Science meeting in March, Vladimir Yakunin, the 66-year-old head of Russian Railways, unveiled detailed plans for what may seem like an impossible infrastructure project....
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Who Owns Your Face?
I have been thinking lately of the minister and novelist Frederick Buechner, who recounts once in a book that, in the middle of his morning routine, bleary-eyed and sleep-drunk, he sometimes looks up...
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How to Use a Texting App Without Sending a Text
Voice messaging—or sending short audio clips instead of text messages—has taken China by storm. Step on a Beijing subway and you’ll see people barking into their phones intermittently, as if they’re...
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How Math Can Defeat Bullies
Do kids have an unheralded incentive to master math? This week, I’m sharing responses to the question, “What insight or idea has thrilled or excited you?” This installment comes courtesy of John Allen...
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Should Google Always Tell the Truth?
What is Google’s responsibility to its searchers? In a Thursday panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Ashkan Soltani, the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist, offered a hypothetical that...
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Swimming With Sharks on the Internet
Let me start by saying this: Your chances of getting attacked by a shark are infinitesimal. It’s more likely that you'll win a mega jackpot in the lottery than be killed by a shark—and probably, almost...
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Will This Wetsuit Keep Away Sharks?
To understand why so many people are drawn to deadly creatures of the deep, look to the quote by the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson: “We are not afraid of predators, we’re transfixed by them … We love our...
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Why Land on the Moon? To See If We Can
Forty-six years after it happened, people still talk about the moon landing as though they’re gathered around a finish line. Understandably so. With Apollo 11’s successful mission in 1969, Americans...
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Sleep-Deprived Moms Are Already Living in the Future of Online Shopping
For many new mothers, the experience of early parenthood means having a smartphone in one hand and a baby in the other. Common tasks include: Searching Google Images for horrifying rashes, watching...
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The Secret Lives of Hackathon Junkies
On the third day, half the people on the Startup Bus got motion sick. We hadn’t slept for two or three nights, the roads through the Smoky Mountains were perilously curved, the tour bus was traveling...
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The Day the Computers Betrayed Us
The computers betrayed us on a warm July morning. Across the world, nearly 5,000 United flights were grounded and delayed for two hours because of an “automation problem.” Connections were missed and...
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The Selfie and the Self
In her 1967 film Kusama’s Self-Obliteration, the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama covered animals, people, and plants with polka dots—her trademark. Kusama said that the tablecloth-esque pattern, which she...
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Braces, Pointless and Essential
For much of my childhood, around once a year or so, my parents would drive me across town to a new orthodontist’s office, where they’d receive yet another written recommendation for braces to send to...
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The Secret Startup That Saved the Worst Website in America
Loren Yu was on a weekend trip in Los Angeles when he received an urgent email from a friend. The friend, Kalvin Wang, had a proposition. "If your response isn’t ‘no way,’ then we should talk ASAP,...
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Hackers Scored Personal Data on Over 21 Million Americans
On Wednesday, computer glitches grounded thousands of United flights and suspended securities trading on the New York Stock Exchange, although neither failure is thought to have stemmed from “malicious...
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The Ennui of the Fitbit
Fitbit now features a Tory Burch-branded line of fitness trackers. The devices themselves—the gizmos that actually turn your movements into data—feature the recognizably be-mazed Burchian logo,...
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When You Give a Tree an Email Address
"My dearest Ulmus," the message began. “As I was leaving St. Mary’s College today I was struck, not by a branch, but by your radiant beauty. You must get these messages all the time. You’re such an...
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Why Do Puns Make People Groan?
Sometimes in life, I’m just trying to have a little fun with some wordplay, and the people around me aren’t having it. They’d rather have no pun at all. Wait, wait, no, come back! Don’t close that tab!...
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Reddit Gets Ugly, Then Gets What It Wants
Four months after Ellen Pao’s loss in a gender discrimination suit filed against a prominent venture capital firm turned her into a national symbol of the victims of workplace sexism, Pao resigned on...
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