Robo Truckers and the AI-Fueled Future of Transport
[ad_1] While adaptive cruise control might seem very different from a fully autonomous vehicle—and it is, technologically—the two technologies reside on the same spectrum. And in even the most advanced…
The World Is Drowning in Plastic. Here’s How It All Started
[ad_1] In the early 2010s, brands began phasing out the plastic microbeads they’d been adding to toothpaste and face scrubs to boost their scrubbing power. Some of these products contained…
What It Means to ‘Feel Normal’ Online
[ad_1] Despite the flood of investigative exposés on dataveillance, users in the United States seem more enmeshed than ever in those infrastructures, as if they are responding with a collective…
The US Needs to Recognize Intimate Privacy as a Civil Right
[ad_1] Underlying Bedoya’s argument—and that of James in the Jack’d case—are the antidiscrimination principles governing modern civil rights laws. Under state and federal law, powerful entities, both public and private,…
Streamers Use Playlists to Control the Music Industry
[ad_1] Paul Johnson’s life was like any other struggling musician’s—working multiple jobs, picking up gigs, hustling. Then his warm acoustic folk-pop tune “Firework” made it on to one of Spotify’s…
This Dangerous Meme in US Politics Is Over a Century Old
[ad_1] “This incredible journey we’re on together has only just begun,” former president Donald Trump told a rally in Ohio on September 17. In response, the crowd saluted him with…
Games, Mysteries, and the Lure of QAnon
[ad_1] QAnon is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. One week, it’s the false rumor that 5G cell towers spread disease, another week it’s Wayfair.com trafficking children…
Kanye West Was Right(ish) | WIRED
[ad_1] Four thousand is a reference to the 40 acres Black people were supposed to receive as reparations and start-up seed investment after the US Civil War, reparations that were…
How Does Queerness Fit Into the US Census?
[ad_1] How does a data set like the US census deal with people who defy its expectations? How can a data set encompass those its designers never imagined? These questions…
What If You Tried to Swallow a Whole Cloud?
[ad_1] As the soup collapsed inward toward the center of the solar system, its molecules would be squeezed closer together and the pressure would rise. It would take a few…
If Humans Went Extinct, Would a Similar Species Evolve?
[ad_1] The rise of powerful new technology means that humanity must confront the risk of its own demise. The invention of nuclear weaponry, for example, has already shown just how…
What Adults Don’t Get About Teens and Digital Life
[ad_1] On a snowy winter day, we were in the library of a charter middle school in Portland, Maine. It was the first of many school visits where we teamed…
The Curious Afterlife of a Brain Trauma Survivor
[ad_1] Sophie Papp and her family had a ritual for the recently departed. Whenever a relative died, she and her brother and cousins would all squeeze into a car and…
How China Threatens to Splinter the Metaverse
[ad_1] When Mark Zuckerberg announced in October 2021 that Facebook was changing its name to Meta Platforms, the news made waves well beyond Silicon Valley. Overnight, it became the talk of…