Every time humans discovered a new resource, or technique for using mass and energy, one side effect has always been pollution. Why should the information age be any different from those of coal, petr...
But Orpheus failed because, like all pakeha, he just couldn’t keep his mind on one thing at a time.
Strong privacy advocates—especially those promoting encryption and anonymity—may deny that this phenomenon is a direct physical corollary of their message, so I will let the reader decide whether a ph...
Snow and soot covered the ancient tree's broken branches and seared bark. It wasn't dead, not quite yet. Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren't doing well. The end w...
Oh, subjective obstinacy had advantages, Morris, when we were busy evolving into nature’s champion egotists. It led to human mastery over the planet … and several times to our species nearly wiping it...
Information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air,...
In 1983, Michael W. Doyle commented on the common observation that democracies almost never wage war on one another. Understanding the reasons for this phenomenon may be crucial to our hopes for preve...
As simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave . . . an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left ove...
Okay, so imagine we get past the next few rough decades and finally do what we should have back in TwenCen. Say we mine asteroids for platinum, discover the secrets of true nanotechnology, and set Von...
At last, a kind of immortality could be achieved by anybody who learned the new trick of recording their words and thoughts and stories, by marking impressions in wet clay. The immortality of speaking...