Is It a Good Thing We Can't Predict Earthquakes?
If we could, at what catastrophe probability would a government order an evacuation: 75 percent? 50 percent? 25 percent? More »
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Edward Tenner is a historian of technology and culture. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center and holds a Ph.D in European history. More
Edward Tenner is an independent writer and speaker on the history of technology and the unintended consequences of innovation. He holds a Ph.D. in European history from the University of Chicago and was executive editor for physical science and history at Princeton University Press. A former member of the Harvard Society of Fellows and John Simon Guggenheim fellow, he has been a visiting lecturer at Princeton and has held visiting research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy. He is now an affiliate of the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He was a founding advisor of Smithsonian's Lemelson Center, where he remains a senior research associate.
If we could, at what catastrophe probability would a government order an evacuation: 75 percent? 50 percent? 25 percent? More »
We naturally focus on catastrophic risks like nuclear meltdowns, but chronic dangers like pollutants can be just as significant in the long run More »
Behold an analogue pattern generator that creates designs so fine they remain invisible to the naked eye More »
Japan is a leader in emergency robots, so why aren't machines responsible for entering these radiation-heavy zones? More »
Employers screen job candidates via on automated scan of resumés. Could this search focus on too narrow a pool? More »
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When growing up in the industrial Chicago of the 1950s I regularly saw from the elevated tracks a slide rule factory where spider silk was used in making cursors More »
Would Errol Morris still have made films if Thomas Kuhn hadn't thrown an ashtray at him? More »
Standards for balls, pins, and lane treatments have permitted a transformation of the game More »
Are patents truly a proxy for technological innovation? Today's applications run hundreds of pages, and significant ideas may be getting lost in the shuffle. More »
Can protective technology make althetics more dangerous? An old controversy continues in women's lacrosse. More »
From LEDs to increased fuel economy, the 747-8 spotlights great achievements. But even those show limits to progress. More »
A Time cover story on the prospects for abolishing death by 2045 is only the latest of a series of media features about Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity movement More »
The authority should have paid attention to the clown More »
Our scientific knowledge has exploded in quantity in recent years. But a deluge of data is only as good as its storage system, and ours needs work. More »
Summers' idea was so explosive because of the context in which he raised it More »
If the supercomputer bests the human champion next week, the news will be everywhere. But we shouldn't worry. More »
Why have successful entrepreneurial ideas over the last generation not succeeded in raising living standards? More »
