November 8, 2019
Time Travel Roundup
Writing for Live Science, Adam Mann suggests that the concept of time travel might be hardwired into our brains. Our tendency to conflate time and space in our linguistic structures is possible evidence of this “structural” tendency to believe that…
October 30, 2019
Does Quantum Computing Mean the End of Cryptocurrency?
Traditional computing models are actually “pre-modern” in that the model of physics they take as their starting point is “classical.” They rely on formulae more analogous to Newton’s laws of motion than the quantization paradigm. But quantum…
October 24, 2019
The Cyber Danger Zone
The Peter Parker Principle is the name given to society’s acknowledgment of that immortal quote from Amazing Fantasy #15, the origin of Spider-Man: “With great power there must also come—great responsibility.” The quote even appeared in a United…
September 24, 2019
The Weirdest of Weird Tech
Tentacle tech What it is: Researchers have managed to replicate octopus flesh, developing “a structure that senses, computes and responds without any centralized processing—creating a device that is not quite a robot and not quite a computer, but…
September 24, 2019
Why We Sometimes Distrust Technology
Residents of cities like Detroit are getting fed up with police surveillance technology, and don’t care whether it decreases crime. Several digital rights advocacy groups are also weighing in, calling for bans on government use of facial recognition…
August 17, 2019
Tiny Air Vehicles Roundup
Back when we were more optimistic about the effects of technology on society and everyday life, the joke was that if we don’t get jet packs, all that technology isn’t worth the effort. The joke facilitated the naming of a great Scottish indie group…
August 16, 2019
Big Data and the Final Frontier
It may not have been as entertaining as a Star Trek fan convention, but last February in Munich, the European Space Agency and a handful of other EU organizations hosted the Big Data from Space conference, where hundreds of papers were read on the…
July 25, 2019
No Debate Championship for Artificial Intelligence
It wasn’t a “roast” like Dan Robitzski of Futurism says it was, but in February, Harish Natarajan, a former championship college debater, won the audience vote over Project Debater, an IBM program designed to respond to its opponents in a debate and…
July 24, 2019
‘Weird Tech’ Roundup
“Anything that was in the world when you were born,” Douglas Adams wrote, “is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you’ll probably get a career in it. Anything invented…