DNA Strand

Using DNA As a Memory Drive

Scientists have successfully encoded a simple movie in bacteria DNA, and played it back. Using DNA for data storage is not as crazy as it sounds...
Prince Rupert Drops

Prince Rupert’s Drops of Mystery

400 years of trying to solve the mystery of Prince Rupert's Drops, bizarrely hard beads of glass that have long captivated scientists.
Hurricane Harvey

Does the Internet Help or Harm Our Ability to Weather Natural Disasters?

Does our technology help us deal with disaster? Or does it put us at risk by creating the illusion that we are immune from disaster?
Unite the Right rally

Is Doxxing the Right Way to Fight the “Alt-Right?”

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, people with similar names to white supremacists involved in the march were also caught in the crossfire.
Mother and daughter using smartphone

6 Ways to be a Digital Mentor to Your Kids

What’s involved in being a digital mentor? People have been asking me various version of this question in ...
NYC movie theater air conditioning

Can We Live Without Air Conditioning?

Air conditioning is a profoundly paradoxical technology: the hotter it gets the more we use it, and the more we use it the hotter it gets.
Comic illustration of a mother ignoring her child in favor of a smart phone

Yes, Smartphones Are Destroying a Generation, But Not of Kids

Why parents need to embrace our role as digital mentors: offering kids and teens ongoing support and guidance in how to use the internet appropriately.
Be Here Now

The End of “Here And Now”

Thanks to the miracle of contemporary connectivity, I can be here, in one place physically, another place mentally, still others visually or financially.
platinum-iridium cylinder

What’s a Kilogram?

At the end of the nineteenth century, the kilogram was conceived as the mass of one liter of water at 4°C, the temperature at which water was densest.
WWI prosthetic arm

A Brief History of Prosthetic Limbs

Prosthetics have come a long way from the wooden big toe found on a a 3000-year-old mummy, or the Etruscan bridgework made of human teeth.