Every once in a while you come across a fact that is so sumptuous it begs to be considered a metaphor. And then, there are other facts that are so perfectly just-so that they need to be viewed as apocryphal.

287 words • None minute read

In the run-up to the 1964 World’s Fair, the great science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov was asked what that same event might look like 50 years later.

Scientific American • 1340 words • 6 minute read

London has been shaped by its railways, ever since the Metropolitan opened as the world’s first underground line in 1863. As the network grew, old stations, tunnels, entrances, passageways and shafts were left behind

The Guardian • Word count / reading time unavailable

Looking back at Sega’s influential console, which revolutionized video game graphics and internet connectivity, as it turns 20 Twenty years ago this week, Sega’s last console launched in North America, inaugurating a new generation of video game hardware and a new era of internet-connected conso

The Ringer • 3300 words • 15 minute read

The death of free will began with thousands of finger taps. In 1964, two German scientists monitored the electrical activity of a dozen people’s brains.

The Atlantic • 2250 words • 10 minute read

Are you productive? Efficient? Useful? More to the point, are you productive, efficient, and useful enough? These are the kinds of questions that arise (naturally and terrifyingly) when technology makes it easy to stay online and connected 24/7.

Harvard Business Review • 916 words • 4 minute read

What makes us truly and fully human? What tools, techniques and technologies enhance and reinforce our humanity? And given the vast diversity in how humans live and what they want, could there ever be a single answer, or set of answers, to the question “what is humane about technology?” What is

1062 words • 5 minute read

Google has big plans to build a Jetsonian smart city on the waterfront, and Torontonians have strong opinions about it: is it the solution to all our problems or the end of the world as we know it? We asked 18 super-smart people to tell us what they think

48 words • 1 minute read

My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on a braided rug before a hulking black-and-white television, watching the early Gemini missions.

2669 words • 12 minute read

When things go terribly wrong in a military aircraft, the pilot’s last resort is the equipment they’re sitting on: the ejection seat. And it cannot fail, ever.

Popular Science • Word count / reading time unavailable