Science and Technology

GMOs Are Safe—So Let’s Label Them

Genetically engineered foods are safe, but there are still good reasons to label them.

How Patent Law Created Inventors

Alexander Graham Bell and telecom’s founding myth.

A New Deal for the Colorado River

What is being called a drought is likely the new norm.

For Americans, Science and Religion Are Largely Compatible

It is when science directly touches faith that the conflict flares up.

Of Popes and Dogs

The Church has always had a vexed, somewhat aggrieved relation to dogs and their status as things to be blessed or sanctified.

The Bill of Rights in the Modern Age

Technology, business, and government are changing the 482 words in the U.S. Constitution.

The Neighborhood Effect

A bad environment can worsen the life chances not only of a child, but that of the child’s child.

Why This Ebola Outbreak is Different

The real reasons this outbreak has turned into an epidemic are weak health systems and lack of workforce.

When Epidemic Hysteria Made Sense

From a historical view, there was a time when alarm, even a run-to-the-hills psychology, made sense in reaction to a disease appearing on our shores.

Burning China’s Garbage

Protests against a new waste management system signals a turning point in Chinese environmentalism.

Don’t Lose Track: Here’s What’s Going On with the NSA

The newest report sees nothing illegal about warrantless collection of Americans’ international calls and e-mails.

Privacy is Not Dead—It’s Inevitable

The internet has become an environment of total tracking and total control.

Stop and Look

Geocaching invites you to consider spaces normally relegate to the blur of background scenery.

On Evgeny Morozov

“I hate the word ‘problematizer,’ but it leaps to mind when I think about Evgeny.”

The Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement Can Succeed Where Politics Failed

The divestment movement’s moral clarity entails a risk if advocates shift from demonizing fossil fuels to demonizing the people who dig them up. 

Censored by Google

Any literate person could recognize that the essay was a work of art. But Google’s family-friendly algorithm decided it was porn.

What’s Wrong with Technological Fixes?

Evgeny Morozov answers questions about his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.

The Day Wikipedia Went Dark

The free Internet will rise or fall on the involvement and ingenuity of the people, not on courts or lawmakers.

The Big Picture

A review of Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E. O. Wilson.

Dennett’s Strange Idea

On Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.

The Return of the Expressed

Computer Science and Civil Courage

Are the questions we seek to answer to be dictated by the powerful few, or are they to be open to debate among citizens and scientists?

Notes on Prosthetic Imagination

As computers amplify human imagination, there is cause for both worry and wonder.

The Cult of High Technology

A skeptical look at the selling of high tech.

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