Long Before It Was Groovy, LSD Was a Medicine and a Weapon
How the Positive Side of Psychedelic Drugs Got Lost in the Mayhem of the 1960s
How the Positive Side of Psychedelic Drugs Got Lost in the Mayhem of the 1960s
We React With Distrust and Paranoia, While They (Literally) Rise Above
Blame the Software—and a Lack of Incentives to Check for Errors
When a Party Leader Implausibly Denies a Data Breach, We All Lose
Cybersecurity professionals are fond of saying that there are two kinds of companies: those that have been hacked and those that don’t yet know they’ve been hacked. Right now, the Republican National Committee appears to fall into a new category: an organization that refuses to acknowledge that it’s even vulnerable.
The CIA, in reporting on Russia’s intervention in the presidential election, determined that the RNC had been breached by Russian hackers during the election, but none of the information stolen from the party had …
The Media Behemoth Is Perfectly Positioned to Lead Investment in Civic-Minded Journalism
In a Country Where Dissent Is Harshly Punished, a Digital Footprint Isn't Worth the Risk
Clueless Optimism and Bull-Headed Arrogance Make the World Safe for Big Tech, Not Real People
How Antiquated Equipment Could Imperil Democracy Itself
Players Could Mobilize by Donating Blood, Filling Sandbags, and Evacuating Threatened Areas
Digital Media Ownership Is Partly Based on Lies
Words Can Serve as Weapons Under the Right Circumstance
Our Local Government Cybersecurity—and Votes—May Be At Risk
There’s something particularly unusual about the recent revelations that foreign hackers successfully breached voter registration systems in Arizona and Illinois.
It’s not just the intriguing possibility of Russian involvement. Nor is it that FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials took the notable step of confirming the penetration and warning state election boards to conduct vulnerability scans.
It’s that the targets of the hacks—state and local election data—don’t …
A Massive Crowdsourcing Project Is Digitizing Thousands of Coded Union Telegrams, and Unearthing Astonishing “Emails”
For a Glimpse of Library Collections to Come, Check Out the Fascinating Project to Document Born-Digital Material on Global Health Events
From a Single, Globally Accessible Collection to Nonexistent, Imagining the Institutions in 2100
Snapping and Sharing a Photo of Your Ballot Is Good for Democracy
Ambiguity Makes It Difficult to Regulate the Technology’s Potential Benefits and Harm to Our Bodies and Environment
Without Cords and Jacks to Unplug, How Will Our Fictional Heroes Rebel Now?
Rightly or wrongly, we tend to speak of science fiction authors as prophets: We’re delighted to find that Philip K. Dick inveighed against the internet of things half a century ago and terrified to learn that Octavia Butler somehow anticipated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 1998. The richer stories, however, are often visions of the future that don’t quite come to fruition, especially when they go awry in unexpected ways. It’s all the more striking when the authors themselves are in a position to watch their own dreams dissolve. …
If Extraterrestrials Make Contact, Science Fiction Has Some Advice for Selecting Humanity’s Spokesperson
How Delusions Change With Technological Advancement
So Long as Computers Don’t Understand the Copied Content, Copyright Law Will Stay Focused on People
Just Because Governing Online Speech Is Hard Doesn’t Mean It’s Forbidden by the Constitution
We Could Be Doing a Much Better Job of Educating Senior Citizens About Cybersecurity
Citizen Scientists Are Great for Data Collection and So Much More
The earthquake near Washington, D.C., five years ago in August 2011—the one that damaged the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral but had little other noticeable impact—caught me by surprise. Sitting in an office on the 12th floor of a building downtown, I thought it might have been an improbably large truck on the street below, until a co-worker suggested we probably ought to leave the building. We spent the rest of that sunny afternoon milling around with other …
Cutting-Edge Genetic Research That Could Lead to Species Extinction Should Be Handled With Care
Snowless Mountains and Poisoned Beaches Will Drive a Wedge Between Athletes of Different Classes
The Osher Map Library’s Online Archive Is Astoundingly Detailed and Inherently Incomplete
He Was Right About “Future Shock” but Wrong About the Solution
One of Israel’s Coolest After-School Programs Trains High Schoolers—Especially Girls—in Cybersecurity
How a Massive Volcanic Eruption Spun the World Into Chaos and Helped Inspire the Famous Novel
Two hundred years ago this June, during a dreadfully cold and wet summer, Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein. Since then Frankenstein has become iconic, spawning a legion of adaptations and reinterpretations. The Oxford English Dictionary even includes entries for the verb “to frankenstein,” which means to stitch something together in a grotesque fashion, and the prefix “franken-,” which means to make anything monstrous. …
That Luke Skywalker Prosthetic Arm May Strike the Average User as Less Than Sensational
Will You Be Able to Trust Your Self-Driving Vehicle to Make the Right Choice in a Crash?
Call It the “Pyrocene,” an Unprecedented Collision of Free-Burning Flames with Our Fossil-Fuel Powered Society
An Invasive Vine Threatening Nepal's Fragile Ecosystem Becomes Part of the Area's Sustainability Solution
The GOP Has Had Plenty of Opportunities to Preserve Freedom of Expression Online via Antitrust Regulation, and Thwarted Them All