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Most speakers already know how online life has changed the language. What many may not be aware of is the growing effect of hybrids such as “Hinglish” and “Konglish” that, pre-Internet, were confined to specific groups.

In response to my recent post, “The Bright Side of Globalization,” my friend and colleague Jean Houston sent me an excerpt from her book Jump Time entitled, “Wok and Roll in […]

The dual shockwaves of accelerating advances in space accessibility due to miniaturization and private sector competition have put NewSpace in the midst of a transformation.

Changing how we think of the brain may provide novel insights into how it actually works. By mapping larger patterns in brain biology, scientists could imitate the processes with machines. 

You spend a lot of time talking about sharing and alternatives to ownership when your child’s in preschool. In the morning story circle you don’t want to be an avaricious, […]

We know very little for certain about how TV or iphones affect people at any age, for better or worse. But there’s reason to be skeptical about new products designed to make us and our children smarter. 

3D printing has taken the technological world by storm as innovators figure out how to use the latest additive manufacturing technology to print out everything from small toys to large buildings. 

The US military has successfully tested a missile that uses microwaves to target a building’s computers and electrical systems.

In 2012, one in six spam e-mails came from a computer located in India. Additionally, as of the end of Q3 2012, almost half of all spam comes from Asia.

Ask most people to describe a “robot,” and they’d probably start to describe something vaguely human-looking, maybe something a little metallic or shiny with limbs. Something like the Roboy. Or WALL-E. Or […]

Getting risk wrong leads to dangers all by itself, and we will remain vulnerable to these mistakes until we let go of our naïve post-Enlightenment faith in reason and accept that risk perception is inescapably an affective system, not just a matter of rationally figuring out the facts. 

If you run into violinist Joshua Bell at a cocktail party, don’t tell him you find classical music ‘relaxing.’ “Beethoven’s symphonies are not relaxing,” says Bell, who at 45 is […]

Will you be better off this year than your were in the past? To the futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil, the answer is a resounding yes. 

How much infrastructure and training do children need to use a laptop or a tablet? Do they need, for example, schools and teachers? Do they need to have seen computers […]

New “deep-learning” software helps computers recognize patterns in large data sets the same way the human brain recognizes patterns in the world. The result has been much better A.I.

Congratulations to Drs. S. Haroche and D. Wineland for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. (It may be too early for Peter Higgs to win the Nobel Prize for the […]

The gap between invention and implementation is beset by a bias: when in doubt we prefer the status quo, even when solutions to deficiencies are apparent. Is it any wonder […]

The underlying rules of 3D printing that help innovators get past key cost, time and complexity barriers.

When the new BiblioTech library opens in San Antonio, Texas later this year, it will become the nation’s first “bookless public library” — everything is going to be digital, the library will rent out […]

On a related note to my last post, you’ve probably heard that the Pope recently took a bold step forward into the 21st century by joining Twitter. This is significant […]

Pervasive computing is all about interaction between the billions – soon to be trillions – of microprocessors that have infiltrated virtually every aspect of our lives.  A new book,”Trillions”, argues that we have to design an entire living environment where those devices communicate with each other and with us. 

In times of unprecedented change and uncertainty, we need to ask ourselves what are we certain about?

John Seely Brown argues that foregrounding the Humanities is our only hope of sustaining innovation in the United States.

“Now” trends are those with high energy and can be leveraged in the present; “Next” trends will begin to manifest towards the end of 2013 and gain traction through 2014; “Future” trends are fringe signals that will play out in 2015 and beyond.

We may not yet possess those cool transparent computers they have on CSI, but we live in a science fiction fantasy world of seamless information exchange, one in which even […]

To combat a decline in the number of computer science graduates, Microsoft is putting software engineers to work as teachers as part of its Technology Education and Literacy In Schools program.

A new report from some of Britain’s leading institutions warns of the implications involved in a “superhuman” workplace where productivity enhancements are encouraged…or required.

In order to make a cloud computing network more secure, DeTron is introducing its new QDK chip that cuts out any third party between sender and receiver.

With car’s on-board computer systems become more complex it was only time before they started receiving online updates, the same as a laptop or cell phone.

“Oy vey!” a Big Think blogger wrote to me yesterday. “Is BigThink.com down?” Oy yey, indeed it was. And we certainly weren’t alone.  Amazon in recent years has moved beyond […]