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The Blurry Corporation
Geoff Peters / FlickrWho works for a company? That may seem like a simple question, but the reality is that companies collaborate constantly with people who are not their employees. There are ad-hoc...
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When 911 Operators Can't Find Their Callers
Mike Blake / ReutersFive years ago, Jamie Barnett took his boss on a tour of a 911 call center in Fairfax, Virginia, a 20-mile drive from his office at the Federal Communications Commission in...
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Your Phone Is Listening—Literally Listening—to Your TV
Steve Marcus / ReutersThe TV is on in the background, and you’re replying to a quick email on your phone nearby. You don’t know it, but the devices are communicating. During a commercial, the TV emits...
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The Problem With Ketchup Leather
T.tseng / FlickrI didn’t know that burgers were broken. This week I was startled to learn otherwise. “Ketchup leather,” declares a Tech Insider“Innovation” headline on the matter, “is the solution to...
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A Visit to the NSA's Data Center in Utah
The NSA Data Center in Utah WikimediaWhen I told friends that I'd be driving across America to find The Cloud, many of them brought up the NSA's Utah data center, assuming it was on my itinerary. Which...
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Not Doomed Yet: 2015 Will Be the Hottest Year Ever Recorded
Toby Melville / ReutersI’m unsure how to write about the final defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline. On the one hand, it’s a domestic-politics story, a story of party signaling and allegiance, and thus...
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The Irony of Writing Online About Digital Preservation
Maison Bonfils / Library of Congress / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticRecently, Adrienne LaFrance wrote in The Atlantic about the digital death and rebirth of a story that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in...
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Coming Soon in Canada: Gas Stations With Climate-Change Warnings
Our HorizonIn the near future, motorists filling their tanks in North Vancouver might ask themselves not only “What is this costing me?” but also “What is this costing the planet?”That’s because the...
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Breaking Up Isn't as Hard as It Used to Be (on Facebook)
FacebookSometimes I wonder how Facebook’s algorithm sees the world.Every day, it watches hundreds of thousands of people fall in love, their mutual timeline posts increasing up to that fateful moment...
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The Racial Symbolism of the Topsy-Turvy Doll
K. Tait Jarboe / Zak Bickel / The AtlanticThe doll is two-headed and two-bodied—one black body and one white, conjoined at the lower waist where the hips and legs would ordinarily be. The lining of...
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Tech Update: Magic That Works, Magic That Doesn't
Front courtyard of The Queen’s College, Oxford, recently, in a panorama that Google Photos automatically created from several overlapping smart-phone shots. Here is a link to the same composite picture...
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The Technology That Created a New Generation of Runners
Daniel Munoz / ReutersThis summer, I went on one of the most visually stunning runs of my life. My path took me to the top of a 16th-century fort in Siena, Italy, as the rising sun lit the surrounding...
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Image-Melding, from Google Photos
Recently I recommended that you check out Google Photos if you have not done so already. Like Gmail, it’s a way to store huge quantities of digital material and leave its management to someone else. (I...
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Supercomputers, Tornadoes, and the Biggest Unsolved Mystery in Weather...
Lightning from a tornadic thunderstorm strikes a field near Clearwater, Kansas, in 2013. Gene Blevins / ReutersPredicting tornadoes is so difficult that many people still rely on natural warning signs...
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Shutting Down Jihadist Websites Won't Stop Terrorism
Eric Gaillard / ReutersThe homepage of al-Fateh is a colorful mess straight out of the nineties. Cartoon squirrels and a rainbow adorn the banner, which welcomes kids to the online home of a magazine...
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Thanksgiving at the White House: The Menu Changes More Than the Silverware
A table setting for a State Dinner at the White House in 2012 Joshua Roberts / ReutersLooking back at decades of Thanksgiving menus at the White House is fascinating—and, frankly, a little gross.What...
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The First Reusable Rocket Is Here
Blue Origin For the first time in history, a rocket has successfully taken off vertically, breached Earth’s atmosphere and entered space, and successfully landed intact and vertically, says Blue...
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How Railroad History Shaped Internet History
An 1882 sketch of the railroad depot at Council Bluffs, Iowa British Library / WikimediaCouncil Bluffs is a mid-sized town in Iowa, right on that state’s border with Nebraska. Although better known for...
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Google Photos: Did Microsoft Get There First?
Panorama photo created by Microsoft’s Windows Live Photo Gallery. For details, read on. In two earlier dispatches, here and here, I suggested that you give Google Photos a try if you hadn’t done so...
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The Joy of Skypesgiving
Kara Gordon / The AtlanticThis week, 42 million Americans will travel for Thanksgiving. They will be among the throngs pretending that a jogging stroller is a “small personal item.” They will be...
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