Browsing: Technology

In the early 1950s, the U.S. Air Force Supply Depot in Ohio was looking for a faster way to store and fetch information from its sizable inventory. They had 50,000 items in their records and wanted instant access to each one of them. The dominant storage technologies of the time—punch cards, magnetic tape and magnetic […]

Of all of the wondrous feats accomplished by Willy Wonka in his candy factory, the most impressive may have been wedging an entire meal into just one unassuming stick of gum: Upon popping it in your mouth and chewing, you’d first taste tomato soup, then roast beef and baked potato, and finally blueberry pie and […]

One team of strangers helped me with the Darpa Shredder Challenge. Another sabotaged me.

A landmark use of deep focus in film: The young Charles Foster Kane—in the background, but still in focus—is sent away by his poor parents in Colorado to live with a wealthy banker in New York.Mercury Productions / RKO Radio Pictures This is part one of a three-part series about the movie industry’s switch to […]

In 2009, more than 47 million computers in the U.S. were ready for “end-of-life management”—so hopelessly outmoded that no reasonable amount of refurbishment could redeem them. Market-driven innovation, thus far hewing to the demanding prediction of Moore’s law, means that every few months, the gadgets in our pockets and on our desktops are pushed closer […]

Technology for generating power from spent uranium hits policy barriers.

Analyzing music and sculpture in the digital age.

Brain-computer interfaces are getting very sensitive.

Machine learning is teaching us the secret to teaching.