All Articles

Media entrepreneur Saad Mohseni Mohseni describes Afghanistan today as the way the U.S. was in the 1950s. But the rate of change is very much accelerated, meaning “Afghanistan will resemble the western world vis-à-vis media probably in the next five to ten years.”

Skype programmer Jaan Tallinn isn’t so sure we’ll ever be able to build networks that can replicate– even in a business context – the communicative power of meeting in person. Instead, he believes, we’ll continue to edge asymptotically closer.

New York Times technology columnist David Pogue says to predict future technologies, focus on what is possible rather than what isn’t, and extrapolate from the behavior of young people.

I saw Melissa Harris Perry deliver the keynote speech for King Week at Emory University this past Tuesday. Perry is a professor of political science at Tulane University, the new […]

A new surgical robot—developed by the army for use on battlefields—is light and relatively cheap. It also uses open-source software so it can be adapted to different medical uses.

Each of the below deserves all kinds of links.  But I only have a moment, and I dislike links for the same reason I dislike footnotes. 1.  It turns out […]

Around the world, it’s becoming easier than ever to sell your human capital – the sum total of your knowledge, experiences and talents – to the highest bidder. Using new […]

As we approach Saturday’s Republican primary in South Carolina, Mitt Romney’s nomination is looking more and more likely. Political futures marketIntrade now gives Romney an almost 90% chance of winning […]

The US and China are stuck in a stalemate when it comes to cyber security and hacking. That’s because the US is as much an aggressor as it is a victim. A Q&A with Adam Segal, counterterrorism and national security expert at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Large swathes of the Internet today are protesting legislation now pending in Congress that would censor the Internet and burden many sites with impossible-to-meet regulatory demands. What’s the rationale behind […]

What will tomorrow’s cities look like? They will be models of energy efficiency everywhere from the home to the city’s infrastructure. Investment in new technology is set to boom.

One need not read all 145 pages of the SOPA and PIPA bills to understand the debate in Washington DC. Big Think has provided a brief guide to the issue for your convenience.   

Internet expert Jonathan Zittrain tells Big Think that the free and open culture inspired by the Internet has empowered anyone with a “shred of artistic talent” to participate in Internet free culture. Now, that free culture could be limited by Congress and the Internet is fighting back.   

China is continuing to take strong action to avert climate change by making its economy more efficient. The country’s carbon emissions will soon be linked to its GDP growth.

— By Victoria Bassetti, David Norton and Alan Rosenblatt Now that Mitt Romney can claim two wins in the Republican primaries/caucuses, where do his rivals go?  We know physically: South […]

In response to a federally mandated deadline of February 21, the Obama administration has rejected a Canadian company’s application to build an oil pipeline that crosses US territory.

One of the key questions that the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) poses is what are the core values of the Internet that we as a society want to uphold?

Authors:David Lawson is a barrister and Public Law specialist at Hardwicke. Leon Glenister is a pupil barrister. The risks of untested and under-tested medicines are well known.  The Thalidomide scandal saw 10,000 children born […]

According to the online community that has formed in opposition to the legislation, it amounts to online censorship. But is the controversy really about free speech, or is it just another showdown between rich and powerful Hollywood, and even richer and more powerful Silicon Valley? How will SOPA and PIPA affect everyone?

As China develops its civilian space program, many of the same technologies could be used to weaponize satellites, challenging the US in space. But is that just paranoid speculation?

In today’s excerpt – the accelerating pace of change. I began my career in financial services in the late 1970s. In my first decade in that industry, there were only […]

I always say, there is nothing sexier than a man with a lot of credit card debt. Let the other ladies have the husbands who have made smart financial decisions, […]

In Monday’s GOP primary debate, Newt Gingrich earned praise from conservatives while drawing justifiable anger from many for his labeling of Barack Obama as the “food stamp president.”  As the […]

The international body that controls decisions over how to count time may decouple atomic clocks from the movement of the Earth around the Sun. That could mean problems down the line.

The world’s second largest economy can trace its roots back to a document stored in the roof of a mud hut.

My first introduction to newspaper reading was the Sunday comics. Stretched out on the floor beside my Dad, both of us propped up on our elbows, we read everything from […]

Credit-rating agencies were among the bogeymen of the global financial crisis, and for good reason. Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, Fitch, and others failed to appraise the real risks of billions […]

Thursday, January 19 is when Apple will announce its development of new educational technology. User-friendly interactive electronic textbooks could seriously disrupt the publishing business.

In April of 2010 I wrote my first blog about Greece in which I suggested that €30 billion would not solve or even impact the Greek problems. In that same […]