Tim Berners-Lee wants to put people in control of their personal data. He has technology and a start-up pursuing that goal. Can he succeed? Three decades ago, Tim Berners-Lee devised simple yet powerful standards for locating, linking and presenting multimedia documents online. He set them free into the world, unleashing the World Wide Web. Others […]
Dr. Li-Meng Yan wanted to remain anonymous. It was mid-January, and Dr. Yan, a researcher in Hong Kong, had been hearing rumors about a dangerous new virus in mainland China that the government was playing down. Terrified for her personal safety and career, she reached out to her favorite Chinese YouTube host, known for criticizing […]
The image of Pinterest as a kinder, gentler social media juggernaut grew out of the site’s predominantly female user base and soft-spoken CEO — a reputation held aloft in recent years by the company’s commitments to racial and gender diversity. This made Pinterest an outlier among its generation of multibillion-dollar start-ups, where Uber’s unbridled aggression […]
(Cai lab/Advanced Functional Materials) August 15 at 4:22 PM When you’re reading, looking at a map or squinting toward the horizon, your eyes adjust themselves involuntarily and instantaneously, thanks to tiny muscles inside the crystalline lens that can bend it and change its shape. Like a camera coming into focus, this structure allows us to […]
Ever wish your eye came with a zoom lens? Soon they might. Scientists at the University of California San Diego have successfully created a pair of contact lenses that zoom in on something when you blink twice. Details about the creation were recently published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. To create the lens, the […]
You know something’s wrong right away on the first page. Why does this button say “NO” instead of “YES”? And one thing you can’t tell here: hovering on the thing you actually have to click (“here”) doesn’t change the cursor as expected. Bagaar Things get really nasty on the next page. Lots of people at […]
[embedded content] Adidas is doubling down on efforts to reduce waste in its shoe-making business with the development of what it claims is the first-ever performance footwear “that’s made to be remade.” In regular speak, it’s 100% recyclable. The Loop running shoe is the latest creation from Futurecraft, the creative hub launched by Adidas in […]
As the lines between art and technology continue to blur, digital art experiences become more commonplace. Already, you can visit a virtual reality museum or display artwork on a digital display that looks incredibly like a real canvas. But all these developments are raising an important question for art conservationists: How should digital artworks be […]
Enlarge Eliot Peper Synopsis Borderless, a novel released on October 30, 2018, continues the story begun in Bandwidth of a near-future Earth that has been wracked by natural disaster and yet still remains in thrall to Silicon Valley. Ars readers can enjoy an excerpt here. I’m not proud of it, but it’s true: I read […]