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The Space Alphabet: A Trippy, Orchestral Tribute to Celestial ... Stuff
Hello, nerd parents of the Internet. I'm slated to join your ranks in September, so I've been stockpiling things from estate sales that I hope my child will enjoy with me, at least until he's old...
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Ed Iacobucci
Five years ago, I had an article in the magazine about the latest startup scheme by Ed Iacobucci -- who by that time, in his early 50s, had a long string of startup and other tech-world successes...
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The Next Big Thing for Exploring the Distant Universe: Balloons
A rendering of a high-altitude balloon suspended over most of the Earth's atmosphere. That thing dangling from its underside is a telescope. (NASA/Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility)The history of...
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Portlandia Everywhere: Where the Hipsters Are (According to Yelp)
These days, every big city has a section of town where you can get a cold-brewed iced coffee made with beans source from a single farm in Nicaragua -- and a PBR. And when you are there you know that...
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Fog, More Beautiful Than You Have Ever Seen It Before
You can read shapes into clouds, but you can read intentions into fog. The silky stuff doesn't just hang in the sky in the fluffy, carefree way clouds tend to; it sticks close to ground, surrounding...
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Doug Engelbart in his Prime
As you've heard, the tech-industry visionary Douglas Engelbart has died, at age 88. I met him only a few times and have no special standing to comment on his passing. But on the eve of our nation's...
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The Southwest's Forests May Never Recover from Megafires
Burnt-out terrain off of Forest Rd. 141 in the Gila National Forest, New Mexico, on May 30, 2012. New Mexico's Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire ravaged more than 170,000 acres, becoming the largest...
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Confirmed: Spiders Are Even More Terrifying Than Previously Thought
Shutterstock/Valentyn VolkovSpider webs are architectural marvels. Their silks are similar in tensile strength to alloy steel. Their adhesive properties adjust to movements of prey ensnared in them....
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The Hut Where the Internet Began
Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication web filled with people and...
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What Gmail Knows About You
Immersion, a tool built by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers, helps Gmail users understand their own trail of Internet breadcrumbs. (MIT Media Lab)When Google hands over e-mail records...
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How Bats Take Flight, Revealed by X-Ray
If you have seen a bat in nature -- which is to say, if you have seen a bat that will go on to haunt your nightmares, mercilessly -- you have probably seen the creature in one of two situations: either...
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Reddit: A Pre-Facebook Community in a Post-Facebook World
Reddit, by way of Facebook (Facebook.com) Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, co-founder of Internet community site Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, shared a joke that's popular on his site:...
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Blankets, the Original Viral Media
Discarded airline blanket (Christopher Schaberg) On April 28 1993, a crewmember on an American Airlines flight to Dallas-Ft. Worth from Washington D.C. radioed ahead to request a change of blankets;...
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'Camp Grounded,' 'Digital Detox,' and the Age of Techno-Anxiety
Kale, fresh from our garden, wrapped around an old iPhone (Alexis Madrigal).On a weekend in the middle of June, a few hundred people gathered together at an event called Camp Grounded in northern...
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The Surveillance-Internet Complex
A secure phone at the NSA Cryptologic Museum (Oliver Hulland). On Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the nation about the dire threat posed by the military-industrial complex. An...
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The Happiest Moments of People's Lives, Shared on Twitter
Rob Carlin's happiest moment: holding his twins for the first time (Twitter/@RobCarlinCSN)Imagine the happiest moment of your life. Maybe it was your wedding. Or the moment your child was born. Or the...
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Apple's Violation of Antitrust Law, Explained in 6 Bullet Points
A commuter reads on his Kindle e-reader as a subway train arrives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 18, 2011. (Reuters)In a major rebuke, a federal judge has ruled that Apple violated antitrust laws...
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What Samsung's New American HQ Says About the Korean Giant
Samsung breaks ground on a new $300 million North American headquarters building in San Jose today. The building will house more than 2,000 employees in R&D and sales. As you'd expect, it's a green...
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How to Wash Your Hair in Space
Karen Nyberg is a mechanical engineer who earned her PhD in the control of thermal neutrality in space suits. In May 2008, she became the fiftieth woman in space, serving on the crew of the space...
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Does the Latest Google Chrome Break Offline Gmail?
My hypothesis is that the latest Chrome does break offline Gmail, based on the following experimental evidence:Act One: About eight hours ago, as noted in a choleric-themed dispatch, I observed that I...
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