Cupholders Are Everywhere
As people spent more and more time in cars, auto interiors transformed into living spaces, where food and drink became necessities. An Object Lesson.
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Projects
Metropolis Now
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Nigel Young / Foster and Partners New Mexico’s Sad Bet on Space Exploration
Spaceport America was supposed to bring a thriving space industry to the southern New Mexico desert—but for now it’s a futurist tourist attraction, not an operational harbor to the cosmos.
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On Google and Facebook: 'The Finest Intelligence Operation on Earth'
On Tuesday, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook finally appears before Congress. Franklin Foer, who has extensively chronicled the relationship between social-media…
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Kay Nietfeld / AFP / Getty Silicon Valley Falls to Earth
As Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress, the cultural attitude toward technology is dramatically shifting.
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The Atlantic The ‘g’ in Google’s Old Logo Is Really Weird
A tale of two “g”s
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Justin Sullivan / Getty / Katie Martin / ... Mark Zuckerberg Says He’s Not Resigning
In an interview, the Facebook CEO tells The Atlantic he’s not walking away from the company, but he is looking for outside expertise.
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Edmon de Haro The Era of Fake Video Begins
The digital manipulation of video may make the current era of “fake news” seem quaint.
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Associated First National Pictures / Sunset Boulevard / ... A Landslide of Classic Art Is About to Enter the Public Domain
For the first time in two decades, a huge number of books, films, and other works will escape U.S. copyright law.
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Regis Duvignau / Reuters Humankind’s Most Important Material
Glass has changed the world like no other substance, but people usually overlook it. An Object Lesson.
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Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP How the Government Could Fix Facebook
After years of allowing the world’s largest social network to police itself, Congress and federal regulators are discussing some promising reforms.
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Philippe Wojazer / Reuters Zuckerberg Says Balancing Facebook's Business and Community Is 'Quite Easy'
It’s not about the business, the head of Facebook maintains, but about the conflicts among users.
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Philippe Wojazer / Reuters 'Most' People on Facebook May Have Had Their Accounts Scraped
Facebook announced yet another way that data leaked from the platform.
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Elijah Nouvelage / Reuters What Motivated the YouTube Shooter?
The suspect, Nasim Aghdam, was driven by animus toward the video site’s policies.
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Ben Margot / AP Silicon Valley 'Has No Words'
After a shooting at YouTube’s corporate campus, technology CEOs offer platitudes. Shouldn’t they have more to say?
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Graeme MacDonald / Reuters A Shooting at YouTube Headquarters
An employee said he saw “blood drips on the floor and stairs” at the company’s offices in Northern California after a shooting.
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Los Alamos National Laboratory The Atomic-Bomb Core That Escaped World War II
Before two deadly nuclear mishaps, scientists used to risk “tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon.” An Object Lesson.
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Bettmann / Getty When the Revolution Was Televised
Martin Luther King Jr. was a master television producer, but the networks had a narrow view of what the black struggle for equality could look like.
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Andrew Thirlwell / Getty Can AI Stop Shark Attacks?
Surveilling sharks, not killing them, could be the future of safe beaches.
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Paul Sakuma / AP Facebook's Ideological Imperialism
Andrew Bosworth’s memo may seem insidious, but its logic used to be very popular.
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Ng Han Guan / AP What Happens When a Space Station Falls Out of the Sky
“Have you ever seen Gravity?”
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Hulton Archive / Getty Enough With the Trolley Problem
A 50-year-old philosophical thought experiment has been central to the debate about autonomous vehicles. It’s time to give it up.
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J. Scott Applewhite / AP Trump’s Complaints About Amazon Have a Historical Precedent
The fraught history of government-subsidized package delivery
