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?
From the Industrial Revolution to the pill to AI girlfriends, technology is unbundling what used to be marriage’s package deal.
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.
There’s no time like the present to revisit the warning of forgotten media theorist Harold Innis: “Enormous improvements in communication have made understanding more difficult.”
Fertilization, irrigation, genetics: the three practices that let us feed the whole world for the first time in history
Introducing “How the System Works,” a series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life
“Accelerationism” is an overdue corrective to years of doom and gloom in Silicon Valley.
Stalled for decades, U.S. atomic power seems set for a comeback. Here’s what it’ll take to get it right this time.
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