Ever wanted to text-chat with a bottlenose dolphin? Or collaborate with a bonobo on a chart-topping blues-rock anthem? I’m not promising it’ll happen, but… something like it might. A reader and friend passed along this bizarre and intriguing article from NPR: Peter Gabriel’s Interspecies Internet. The “interspecies internet” project is actually led by Neil Gershenfeld, … Continue reading
The word “metadata” has been popping up in the news a lot lately, thanks to the revelation that the U.S. National Security Agency has been collecting it from millions of Americans for years. And this is no flash-in-the-pan political scandal that will be forgotten next year; as our ultra-connected, electronic future continues to emerge, we’ll … Continue reading
Okay, so you’re a smart, responsible citizen of the world and you want to know what’s going on around you. Are you more likely to flip open a newspaper – or flip open the laptop? Well, a new survey suggests people are now putting as much trust in social media, like Facebook, for news, as … Continue reading
The world is a complicated place, as you can tell if you’ve ever tried to predict the weather or the stock market, or if you’ve taken a single glance at the Schroedinger equation governing all physical particles. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a way to visualize such systems and processes? And wouldn’t it … Continue reading
When’s the last time you made a call by dropping a coin into a public phone? I know I haven’t done it since I was a teenager. And with the cell-phone era in full swing, there’s probably an entire generation of people now who don’t even know what a payphone is. But the phone booth … Continue reading
It’s no secret that the internet has given us new ways to communicate. But if you think the information revolution has come and gone, I’ve got news for you: it’s just getting started, and we’re already seeing a dramatic transformation in the way we learn about the world. It’s also causing a shift in some … Continue reading
Have you ever posted an article or a video on a social network? If so, congratulations! I’m about to explain how you’re shaping the world to come. You are a curator of the universe, and a herald of the future. I am? What does that mean? It means you collect and share items of your … Continue reading
Today, there are 7 billion people in the world speaking roughly 6,000 languages. One day, they’ll all be able to talk to each other naturally, without knowing any language except their own. This has some powerful implications for many areas of society, and we’ll take a look at four of them below. But first, allow … Continue reading
The English language has achieved something unique in human history: it has become a truly global language. It’s spoken by nearly a billion people spread across six continents, and is as close to a worldwide lingua franca as there has ever been. The interesting part about those 1 billion English speakers? Only a third of … Continue reading
We’ve come a long way since the turn of the millennium, no doubt about it, and our technology is the niftiest it’s ever been. But there are some stubborn vestiges of the previous century that have overstayed their welcome. They stick around like your in-laws after Christmas, using up money, resources or time, and just … Continue reading
Cosmic Revolutions 