What is science’s rightful place? How should we govern technology?
The new cold war means a race with China over AI, biotech, and more. This poses a hard dilemma: win the war by embracing technologies that make us more like our enemy — or protect ourselves from tech dehumanization but become subjects to a totalitarian menace.
If you think the power system must run itself by now, you’re wrong. Behind every nicely toasted bagel is a vast network of generators, transformers, computers, wires — and, yes, people in backrooms sweating to make sure the juice flows exactly where, and when, it needs to go. What could possibly go wrong?
A new alliance between tech and the family?
U.S. housing policy claims to promote homeownership. Instead, it encourages high prices, sprawl, and NIMBYism.
Science funding badly needs reform. Jay Bhattacharya could be the man for the job — but Trump may have blown up his chance.
There is so little fresh surface water on Earth that if you collected it all into a ball, it would barely reach across New York City. Running water is a miracle — but the technology that brings it to us and takes the waste away is actually thousands of years old. The only barrier to staying hydrated today is political will.
For years, scientists kept the debate about risky virus research among themselves. Then Covid happened. As President Trump prepares to crack down on virology research, the expert community must face up to its own failures.
Is the Trump administration’s goal to run the government or oppose it?
The traditional selling point of the suburbs: they’re nature preserves for Living, set apart from the real world. What if we made them little fiefdoms instead?