Twittersphere Rallies to Help Turks By-Pass Block
Emily Parker, a New America Foundation fellow who has a new book on digital activism in authoritarian governments, noted that many people are able to use Twitter despite bans in countries such as...
View ArticleNet Neutrality and the Fight for Your TV
“We could remember this as the beginning of the cable-ization of the Internet,” lawyer and Internet policy expert Marvin Ammori said, “where some ‘channels’ or companies get better treatment than...
View ArticleFuture Tense Initiative & Tsinghua University Launch New U.S.-China Green...
WASHINGTON, DC — The Future Tense initiative – a partnership of New America, Arizona State University, and Slate magazine – is pleased to announce the launch of Green Electronics: A U.S.-China Maker...
View ArticleSecret 'Cuban Twitter' Poses Big Hurdle For Bloggers, Exiles
"Cuban authorities already try to paint critical bloggers like Yoani Sanchez as U.S.-funded mercenaries, and the report about ZunZuneo will only give them more ammunition," said Emily Parker, a former...
View ArticleHacking the University
If 2012 was the year of the Massive Open Online Course, according to the New York Times, 2013 was something of a reality check. MOOCs were meant to give people all over the United States (and the...
View ArticleFrom Nowhere to Nobels
Women now hold more than half of all American jobs, but they still make up less than twenty-five percent of the science, technology, engineering, and math or STEM workforce. And the numbers are even...
View ArticleBeyond Net Neutrality
That's how things worked when Tim Wu, an academic who's now a law professor at Columbia, coined the term network neutrality in 2002. ISPs purchased connectivity from a handful of companies that...
View ArticleDeath of the Infomercial
Since the 1950s, late night TV has been the world of the infomercial: late night hucksters selling ginsu knives, wearable towels, Snuggies... But infomercials have become a victim of their own success....
View ArticleDefending the Open Internet
Tim Wu, 41, a law professor at Columbia University, isn’t a direct participant in the rule making, but he is influencing it. A dozen years ago, building on the work of more senior scholars, Mr. Wu...
View ArticleIn Google case, E.U. court says people are entitled to control their own...
“It definitely makes Europe a less favorable place for these companies to do business. . . . But that’s a balance these countries are allowed to make,” said Tim Wu, a Columbia University professor who...
View Article‘Net Neutrality’ Puts FCC at Center of Storm
Silicon Valley is “very frustrated,” said Marvin Ammori, a technology-policy consultant who helped organize a letter of protest to the FCC from more than 100 tech start-ups and big companies including...
View ArticleThe Rise of Blogger-Activists, and the Regimes that Rule by Fear
Emily Parker, author of Now I Know Who My Comrades Are, joins the program to explain how the Internet is helping to change activism.Click here to read the full article
View ArticleThe Battle Over Private Search
Of all the news to come out of this week’s Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, one update went almost unnoticed: Apple is partnering with a small startup to make online searching more private. Is...
View ArticleWorld Cup Party with Robots!
Future Tense celebrated the 2014 World Cup, complete with a demo of actual robots playing soccer, followed by the opening game on the big screen.Daniel D. Lee, director of the GRASP (General Robotics...
View ArticleTim Wu runs for New York State Lieutenant Governor, promising to clamp down...
Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term "Net Neutrality," is running for Lieutenant Governor of New York State on a leftist, reform platform that starts with blocking the...
View ArticleTim Wu Makes A Bid For Net Neutrality
The internet has revolutionized human connectivity, but can be described, most simply, as a public space. Which is why New York state residents ought to pay close attention to the net neutrality...
View ArticleThe Father Of Net Neutrality Wants to Fix New York Politics
Tim Wu was barely 30 years old when a concept he invented, network neutrality, became a central part of internet policy debates. Now, a decade later, he's not only trying to reinvent the concept for a...
View ArticleYou Should Ditch Work to Go Watch Soccer, Say Productivity Experts | New York...
Christine Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation who studies our interactions with technology, pointed to the perils of multitasking. That is, most people who care about the match and are stuck...
View ArticleFuture Tense Initiative Announces Winners of Green Electronics Challenge
WASHINGTON, DC — The Future Tense initiative – a partnership of New America, Arizona State University, and Slate magazine – is pleased to announce the winners of Green Electronics: A U.S.-China Maker...
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The Ghost in the Data Edition
Welcome to Techno Sapiens, a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows, Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society, and Marvin...
View ArticleGoogle Plus finally gives up on its ineffective, dangerous real-name policy
After three years, Google finally got it. Google now admits it was wrong to require real names on Google Plus, and it’s apologized for taking so long, causing “unnecessarily difficult experiences for...
View ArticleNet Neutrality a Key Battleground in Growing Fight over Encryption
Activists and tech companies fended off efforts in the U.S. in the 1990s to ban Internet encryption or give the government ways around it, but an even bigger battle over cryptography is brewing now,...
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The Quantify This Edition
Welcome to the second episode of Techno Sapiens, a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology &...
View Article"Nothing Could Be Further from the Truth" | Foreign Policy
As Washington awaits the release of the highly classified probe into the CIA's torture program, John Brennan's integrity is being questioned just when the agency needs it most.
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The Digital College Dropout Edition
Welcome to the third episode of Techno Sapiens, a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows Christine Rosen, senior editor of New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society,...
View ArticleTracing Ebola’s Breakout to an African 2-Year-Old | New York Times
Patient Zero in the Ebola outbreak, researchers suspect, was a 2-year-old boy who died on Dec. 6, just a few days after falling ill in a village in Guéckédou, in southeastern Guinea. Bordering Sierra...
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The End of Serendipity
Welcome to Techno Sapiens, a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society, and Marvin Ammori,...
View ArticleRelief Official Urges Groups to Step Up Ebola Efforts | New York Times
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is “a complete disaster,” and health agencies do not yet grasp its scope, the president of the relief group Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday.
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The Automate Everything Edition
Welcome to Techno Sapiens, a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society, and Marvin Ammori,...
View ArticleTechno Sapiens: The Tacocopter Edition
Welcome to Techno Sapiens, this is the final episode in a biweekly series of six podcasts hosted by Future Tense fellows Christine Rosen, senior editor of the New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology...
View ArticleCan We Imagine Our Way to a Better Future?
It’s 2014 and we have no flying cars, no Mars colonies, no needle-less injections, and yet plenty of smartphone dating apps. Is our science fiction to blame if we find today’s science and technology...
View ArticleMake Energy announces a US-Mexico Innovation Challenge
WASHINGTON, DC — The United States and Mexico joined forces to address climate change through energy innovation. On November 15, 2014, we launched an online competition called "Make Energy: A US-Mexico...
View ArticleThe Future of Reproduction
Human reproduction has long been a preoccupation of ethicists, scientists and science fiction, from the lab-reared children of Brave New World to the artificial uteri shown in The Matrix. And as the...
View ArticleWhen Superiority goes wrong: Science ficiton and offset strategies
*The New America Foundation recently hosted a daylong conference, headlined by Neal Stephenson, that sought to re-focus science fiction on providing inspiration to today’s scientists and engineers. *
View ArticleSA New Surveillance Blimp Takes to the Skies Over Maryland
The Army has been exploring the use of airships in warzones for a number of years. But the Baltimore blimps’ 24/7 radar mean that they’re technically capable of watching for more than just missiles or...
View ArticleToo Hot to Connect
Are our Internet providers putting sufficient effort into network resiliency in the face of climate change? Comcast could not comment and Verizon did not respond to my request, but Time Warner Cable...
View ArticleHow Will Human Ingenuity Handle a Warming Planet?
Humans are altering the Earth system at every scale, up to and including the global climate. Going forward, how will human ingenuity handle a warming world? We're all familiar with the doomsday...
View ArticleHow Technology Is Changing the Family Tree: A Future Tense Event Recap
At a Future Tense event in New York City last week, Jacobs, along with the author Maud Newton; Chris Whitten, the CEO of the collaborative family history site WikiTree; and genealogist Wilhelmina...
View ArticleGood News: Replicas of 16th-Century Sculptures Are Not Off-Limits for 3-D...
Despite our modern aversion to “copying,” the act of reproducing sculpture is nothing new. Museums have been created high-quality casts of their sculptural work for centuries, as Wenman pointed out.
View ArticleFirst-Class Flyers Get to Try Virtual Reality, Coach Passengers Stuck in Real...
The Australian airline Qantas, in partnership with Samsung Electronics Australia, just announced that it will offer virtual-reality technology on some flights.
View ArticleDepartment of Transportation Says Your Online Shopping Is Clogging America’s...
The U.S. Department of Transportation released a highly tech-focused report this week, “Beyond Traffic,” that aims to move the conversation about America’s aging transport system out of the 20th...
View ArticleThe Battery War
For all the global obsession with oil that has marked the past decades, the real future of energy may be something quite different. An advanced lithium-ion battery could power our electric cars and...
View ArticleWill Technology Put an End to Disability?
In collaboration with the award-winning documentary on disability and technology, Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement.Attention-grabbing advances in robotics and neurotechnology have caused...
View ArticleWho Does the Autopsy?
On Thursday, March 26, Future Tense—a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University—will hold an event on medical device security and privacy at the New America office in Washington,...
View ArticleOur Data, Our Health
Mobile devices are collecting and disseminating a wealth of data about our health—from smartphone-based glucose monitors to Wi-Fi–enabled pacemakers. These innovations allow patients, doctors, and the...
View ArticleGIANT LEAP: THE RACE TO MARS AND BACK
Humans have long been fixated on Mars, first as a metaphor of what lies beyond our reach, and now, increasingly, as a destination – for our probes, and ourselves, and perhaps even for our first base in...
View ArticleThe Race to Mars and Back: A Future Tense Event Recap
President Obama has called for Americans to enter orbit around Mars by “the mid-2030s.” To make that happen will require a lot of scientific and technological research, international cooperation, and...
View ArticleCoffee in Space: A Bold Cup of Innovation
The collaborative work necessary on the ground to put ISSpresso in orbit is exciting in and of itself—imagine if Starbucks and Boeing had done such a thing in tandem with NASA. Putting espresso in...
View ArticleRESOLVED: TECHNOLOGY WILL TAKE ALL OUR JOBS
Policy wonks and journalists in Washington like to fret about otherwise desirable technological progress subtracting millions of manufacturing and entry-level service sector jobs from the overall...
View ArticleDesigning the Future
"We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us" - Winston Churchill Churchill's observation can easily be extended beyond buildings to all things—from the phone in your pocket to the...
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