Monthly Archives: January, 2016

The Secret to the Brain’s Memory Capacity May Be Synapse Size

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you...
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Future ‘Mad Men’ Will Buy Ad Space in Your Dreams

The smaller computers get, the more they invade our personal space (or from another perspective, the more we invite them into it). We've gone from...

Greenlight VR Report: Consumers Are Surprisingly Unaware of Virtual Reality

After our latest US consumer research in October 2015, we wanted to find out if the trends we were seeing in the survey data...

Why We Should Use Behavioral Economics to Design Technology That Doesn’t Kill Us

One hundred years ago, bad decision making accounted for less than ten percent of human deaths. Nowadays, it represents a little over 44%. What...

How to Build a Starship — and Why We Should Start Thinking About It Now

With a growing number of Earth-like exoplanets discovered in recent years, it is becoming increasingly frustrating that we can’t visit them. After all, our...

Why Edward Snowden Showed Up to CES as a Robot, and What He Had to Say

While technologies such as smartphones, the internet, and social networks offer opportunities for more direct social action than ever before—they also amplify the power...

How Old Are You, Really? Biological Age Is Harder to Pin Down Than You Think

In less than a month, I’ll be leaving my roaring 20s behind. Like anyone crossing into a new decade of life, it feels surreal. I...

How Amnesty International Aims to Bring Technology and Human Rights Together

Technologies will advance and take hold long before our governments and laws are ready for them. To keep up with the needs of billions...

Somewhere Out There Could Be a Giant New Planet in Our Solar System: So Where Is It?

The possible ninth planet is thought to be quite substantial with a mass around ten times that of Earth and a radius that’s two...

CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Is a Huge Deal, But It’s Just the Tip of the Iceberg

CRISPR/Cas9 has been touted as an almost magical technology in the news—and rightly so. The technique allows scientists to alter the DNA of living...

‘Wait But Why’: Elon Musk’s Favorite Blog Makes Good Ideas Available to Everyone, With Cartoons

“The more 1000% authentic you are, the more you have monopoly over what you’re doing. Just be your weird self, and just be all...

Bitcoin Is Damaged Beyond Repair, and We Badly Need a Replacement

Not long ago, venture capitalists were talking about how Bitcoin was going to transform the global currency system and render governments powerless to police...

Digital Diagnosis: Intelligent Machines Do a Better Job Than Humans

Until now, medicine has been a prestigious and often extremely lucrative career choice. But in the near future, will we need as many doctors...

Anticipating Your Needs: Emotional Intelligence Is the Key to Smarter Gadgets

It’s weekend rush hour. You’re stuck in traffic. You got cut off. You’re increasingly frustrated. Your heart rate and blood pressure skyrocket. As you’re fuming...

This Week’s Awesome Stories from Around the Web (Through Jan 16)

ROBOTICS: Should We Outsource Emotional Labor to Robots? Slate "Even if social robots become more skilled at expressing a fuller range of human emotion (like “Nadine,” who...

Why Digital Overload Is Now Central to the Human Condition

A mom pushes a stroller down the sidewalk while Skyping. A family of four sits at the dinner table plugged into their cell phones...

In a Driverless Future, What Happens to Today’s Drivers?

Self-driving cars are becoming a very real technology. The latest Tesla car has an autopilot feature. The CEO of Uber has stated that he...

Blind Woman Receives Bionic Eye, Reads a Clock With Elation

Recently, the BBC broadcast the reaction of Rhian Lewis, a 49-year-old blind mother of two, as she read a clock correctly using her right...

The Top Technology Stories You’ll Be Reading in 2016

For the past century, the price and performance of computing has been on an exponential curve.  And as futurist Ray Kurzweil observed, once any...

Why Is Tech Accelerating? We Use Already Powerful Tools to Build Even Better Ones

No doubt you've heard of Moore's Law. What you might not realize is that Moore's Law only refers to the exponential price-performance improvements of integrated...
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Ray Kurzweil on Giving Future AI the Right to Vote [Video]

All technology impacts our individual daily lives one way or another—but perhaps no technology makes us question our collective humanity as much as artificial...

Using Technology to Create Safe and Ethical Retail Supply Chains

On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,129 garment workers. The world watched...

Cosmology Is in Crisis — But Not for the Reason You May Think

Science is advancing rapidly. We are eradicating diseases, venturing further into space and discovering a growing zoo of subatomic particles. But cosmology — which is...

This Week’s Awesome Stories from Around the Web (Through Jan 9)

ROBOTICS: When Should a Robot Say No to Its Human Owner? Adam Elkus | Slate "Telling a robot to only obey wise choices from a human owner merely shifts...

Why 3D Printing Will Be a Key Technology in the Next Space Race

NASA recently announced that they test fired a research rocket engine. Nothing special about that—other than the fact said engine was 75 percent 3D...

Check Out This Gravity-Defying Robot That Zips Up Vertical Walls

When robots were still largely the domain of science fiction, their most common shape was human (more or less)—two legs, two arms, one head....

From Bosons to Bigfoot: 6 Science Mysteries That Might Be Solved in 2016

From the origin of life to the fate of the universe, there’s plenty scientists simply don’t know. But they are making progress. 2015 has...

Facebook’s First Effort at Free Internet Is Just Another Walled Garden

Mark Zuckerberg is taking intense fire in India over an initiative that his organization Internet.org launched, to provide limited Internet access to the masses....

This Magnetic Wand May Fix Brain Circuits Gone Wrong In Addiction

We often think of addiction as a moral dilemma — a sort of spiritual calamity that one needs to rebuild their entire lives around...

Technologies We’re Excited to See Bloom in 2016 and Beyond

An important component of being optimistic about the future is maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism. It’s a delicate balance we’re always exploring at...
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