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Playing Defense Against the Drones
Tomer HanukaOne sweltering tuesday this summer, I found myself standing on the vast aluminum roof of an East Coast government building, staring at a slim metal rod with a microphone and a metal box...
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The President of Silicon Valley
Among tech leaders, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is a popular pick for a hypothetical president of Silicon Valley. Rashid Umar Abbasi / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticHearing from the leaders of the tech...
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What Kind of Computer Did Doogie Howser Have?
On my search for the first television show to have referenced the Internet, I got to thinking about Doogie Howser, M.D. The show aired in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but part of the titular...
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Here Is a Short Dog in Tall Grass
Vine / drake & poshVine is an art form. And today, I noticed that Vine brought forth this fruit:Look at that big happy smile. Look at his big happy leap at the beginning. Look at those big floppy...
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Scores of Scores: How Companies Are Reducing Consumers to Single Numbers
Luke MacGregor / ReutersIn his novel Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart imagined ubiquitous poles installed on sidewalks that display people’s credit scores as they walked by. Friends and...
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Raiders of the Lost Web
Maison Bonfils / Library of Congress / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticThe web, as it appears at any one moment, is a phantasmagoria. It’s not a place in any reliable sense of the word. It is not a...
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Paranoia, Half a Century Ago
The AtlanticIn a November 1967 cover story for The Atlantic Monthly, Arthur R. Miller, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote about the dangers of a federal proposal to build a National...
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Jupiter Is the Best Planet
Hubble's near-infrared camera and multi-object spectrometer captured a rare triple eclipse on Jupiter. NASAThese are the ground rules: You can’t say Earth is your favorite planet.This was the framework...
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On a Scale From 1 to 10, Silicon Valley Sexism Is a 7
Ellen Pao lost a high-profile discrimination lawsuit against venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. Robert Galbraith / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticHearing from the leaders of...
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The Sexism of American Kitchen Design
A housewife prepares a meal in her all-electric kitchen in 1936. APBefore women were all hunched over screens, applying filters and tapping out hashtags to food photos, we were hunched over sinks,...
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The Crowdsourcing Site That Wants to Pool Our Genomes
Stew Dean / FlickrIn 2010, I posted a vial of my finest spit to the genetic-testing company 23andme. In return, I got to see what my genes reveal about my ancestry, how they affect my risk of diseases...
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Bill Gates's First Job
Lakeside School ArchivesOur November issue features a lengthy interview with Bill Gates, who discusses with James Bennet the future of clean energy and his hopes for human innovation. In this portion...
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Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War
Zak Bickel / The AtlanticAs the 19th century entered its final decade, the War of Currents was nearing its peak. On one side of this war was Thomas Edison, who had invested heavily in direct current...
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Connected From Afar, Isolated From Up-Close
How people ignored each other before smartphones. pic.twitter.com/OZvhvWLBPK— Scott E. Bartner (@SBartner) January 18, 2015Yesterday we compiled a series of photographs from Eric Pickersgill:In each...
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We All Hate the Internet, but Sometimes It Saves Our Skin
Or: how 50 cents’ worth of Post-it notes, and a brief bout of searching, saved me hundreds of dollars just now.Glamor shot of the Nexus 5, red modelI am a fan of my Nexus 5 Android phone, made by LG...
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Humans of the Internet Are Smart
Today I had the opportunity to join the fine people of Digg for a conversation about some of the issues raised in my recent story on the ephemerality of the web. (Thanks, Digg!) It was so fun, and...
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Gattaca Within Reach?
Ed had a great note this week about a group of Harvard scientists using CRISPR, the revolutionary new gene-editing technology, to enable pigs to harvest donor organs for humans. (A Chinese team...
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On Taphonomy: Digging for Dinosaurs in My Twenties
Robert Adrian Hillman / Shutterstock / Kara Gordon / The AtlanticI will fly out from Boston. Dan from New York City. Our flights will be delayed. Mike will be leaning on his car outside the Salt Lake...
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Looks Like Silicon Valley, Acts Like Gossip Girl
The cast of the HBO comedy Silicon Valley Kevork Djansezian / Reuters / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticHearing from the leaders of the tech world is always revealing, and very often surprising. In our second...
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We All Hate the Internet, but Sometimes It Saves Our Skin
Or: how 50 cents’ worth of Post-it notes, and a brief bout of searching, saved me hundreds of dollars just now.Glamor shot of the Nexus 5, red modelI am a fan of my Nexus 5 Android phone, made by LG...
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