June 2010

Google knows that its search function is only as valuable as the information it helps you find—a principal source of which is the beleaguered news business. That’s why the company assigned some of its top thinkers to the puzzle of how to make journalism pay. Their answers may revolutionize the media.

Private rail networks could save the housing industry, revive the economy, and help meet the booming demand for walkable neighborhoods. History offers plenty of encouragement.

How new wireless technology will shape the city of the future—and automate everything from parking to engineering to traffic flow

Immigrant artisans created an exuberant American art form on New York’s tenements at the turn of the 20th century. The only major public collection of their work now lies in a heap behind the Brooklyn Museum. Its odyssey reveals much about a changing city— and a changing culture.

A new worm has infected millions of computers. Its creators wield the most advanced encryption known to man, and have stumped the best cyber-security experts in the world. No one knows what the worm’s masters are planning to use it for. And no one knows how to stop it.

The UAW’s stock holdings in the Big Three carmakers have caused some members to wonder whose side it’s on.

Witches are overwhelming the courts in the Central African Republic. And that may be a good thing.

Can a battle of the bands help end a brutal insurgency in India?

That depends on how you define invented. And cocktail.

The gruff, boastful art of claiming Indonesia’s surf as your own

What happens when high tech meets haute couture

Manhattan never was what we think it was.

How girls reluctantly endure the hookup culture

How the shopping network became one of the most effective retailing machines ever invented

Lady Gaga is simultaneously embodying and eviscerating Pop.

There’s nothing patriotic about the Tea Party Patriots.