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“In a Spiegel interview, Nobel Prize-winning German author Günter Grass talks about why he doesn’t fear death and why he thinks the Brothers Grimm had ‘oral sex with vowels’.”

Former Big Think guest Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, has died of cancer at the age of 85, according to the New York Times. The newspaper describes him […]

“Computer simulations show that a stiff wind blowing from the east for 12 hours could have given the Israelites a land bridge that allowed them to escape Egypt over 3000 years ago.”

How is it that we’re able to focus on a distant conversation while ignoring the person who is speaking right in front of us? Tony Zador, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, breaks down the brain mechanisms that allow us to have selective auditory attention.

I.B.M. announces its new contract to “supply the computing technology and services for an upgraded cellphone network across 16 nations in sub-Saharan Africa.”

The world’s top mathematics prize that outshines even the Nobel, the Fields Medal ceremony in India contrasts the romanticized and turbulent life of mathematical revolutionaries.

“How do we use the technologies of computation, statistics and networking to shed light—without killing the magic?” Jaron Lanier asks if digital classrooms are good for education.

Why exactly do fights break out when people are drinking? You might think it’s simple biochemistry—alcohol molecules wreaking changes on brain cells, leading to behavior change, leading to a broken […]

“A Wall Street Journal investigation has found that popular children’s websites install more tracking technologies on personal computers than do the top websites aimed at adults.”

Front-lighting technology similar to Amazon’s Kindle will eventually be standard on computers and up-coming e-devices, meaning the computer display currently burning holes in your eyes won’t last forever. The problem […]

It’s often said that children are the designers of humanity’s future. International research consultancy Latitude and ReadWriteWeb decided to take the adage literally, asking children to envision the future of […]

Each sport is governed by different sets of rules, and those that use balls each have different specifications for their equipment.

If you’re not a computer programmer, the name Bjarne Stroustrup might not mean that much to you. The creator of the coding language C++ isn’t exactly a household name. But […]

“How does religious ritual preserve humanity from chaos and entropy?” Yale professor of computer science David Gelernter says religious ceremony makes life beautiful.

“Too expensive, too heavy and unnecessary: Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer hold copilots in low regard. So, now the company plans to replace them with a computer.”

While Americans rush en masse to Wal-Mart and other retail outlets on this traditional “Black Friday” start to the holiday shopping season, why not just make presents for your loved […]

“Americans, plugged in and on the move, are confiding in their pets, their computers, and their spouses. What they need is to rediscover the value of friendship.”

It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth). Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay. Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.

“There’s a better reason for the non-fanatical to return to an antiquated medium like vinyl. Listening to music on a computer or iPod via headphones has become the ultimate in anti-social activities.”

Apparently you can teach some old dogs new tricks. In a piece by Digital Planet producer Colin Grant, artist David Hockney discusses his love affair with his iPhone and iPad […]

My new television show “Sci-Fi Science” on The Science Channel is inspired by my book “Physics of the Impossible.” The first season of the show takes viewers through the wildest […]

“Three volunteers running the distributed computing program Einstein@Home have discovered a new pulsar in the data from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope.” Wired Science reports.

Without the ability to daydream and hallucinate, computers will never think as humans do. David Gelernter, Yale professor of computer science, predicts the next stages of AI.

Technology Review profiles the year’s top young innovators under 35—impressive inventions in the fields of computing, web, communications, biomedicine and business are on display.

Larry Wall, the father of Perl programming language, says that the language he created in 1987 is very “post-modern.” Like po-mo architecture, for instance, Perl “collects features from other languages, […]

“By allowing artificial intelligence to reshape our concept of personhood, we are leaving ourselves open to the flipside: we think of people more and more as computers.”

Cloud computing shouldn’t be an either/or decision. We should definitely make use of the tremendous collaborative possibilities of the Web for some tasks but utilize “the awesome local, graphical power […]

Nathaniel James, Community Engagement Specialist at the Mozilla Foundation, spoke at American University yesterday about Mozilla’s “disruptive” plans to keep the internet open and accessible — plans that could change […]

It initially cost $3 billion to fully sequence all of the 25,000 or so genes that describe a human being. The resulting data is essentially an “owner’s manual” for our […]

Can you imagine trying to monitor an active volcano without any GPS? Or radios? Or computers? That is what is happening at the Santiaguito Volcano Observatory in Guatemala. You can help.