Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
Inside the world of DIY synthetic biology. Where amateurs attempt genetic engineering in homemade labs. Will it lead to a wave of scientific breakthroughs, and valuable new life forms? Or a new generation of Dr Frankensteins?
Ted Kaczynski killed three and injured 23 with mailbombs. He was crazy. But he wasn't stupid. He did a lot of deep thinking about the philosophy of technology. Should we take his ideas seriously, despite his crimes?
Fascinating report. "Today, with Gadhafi dead and a provisional government of former rebels in charge, we can begin to uncover the secret, high tech spying machine that helped the dictator and his regime cling to power"
Trip to a Swedish car test site reveals complexity of new safety sytems. “It is not difficult to automatically brake a car. That is easy. It is a difficult decision on when to brake and not to brake, when to warn and not to warn”
"As much as we think the old world of phone numbers may one day disappear, and we’ll eventually be calling each other through Facebook or something, the practical reality is that they won’t." They're a gold mine for web advertisers
On Netflix and their risky bet on original programming. "Extreme expenditures on content — a planned $3.7 billion over the next five years — represent either a massive protective moat or a hole deep enough to drown in"
Interview with fugitive hacker Christopher Doyon. "Right now we have access to every classified database in the US government. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The pimply-faced kid in the basement"
The meteoric rise of smartphones. "In 1982 there were 4.6 billion people in the world, and not a single mobile-phone subscriber. Today, there are seven billion people in the world—and six billion mobile cellular-phone subscriptions"
"The concept of what we 'possess' online is based on the increasingly outdated concept of the digital 'file'. What happens to the law in a streaming, cloud-connected world? A world where here are no more 'files'?"
"When we disparage the digital environment as 'overwhelming', what we're also faulting it for is its lack of a narrative. The Internet moves, but it doesn't necessarily move forwards." It lacks a plot. But this may change
"Many people see geoengineering as a false solution to an existential crisis—akin to encouraging a heart-attack patient to avoid exercise and continue to gobble fatty food while simply doubling his dose of Lipitor." Are they right?
On the possibilities for implants that augment the human body. Ready to turn yourself into a remote control, a watch, even a hard drive? "A phone would definitely be feasible, but whether it’s desirable is a different question”
"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10"
