Until the late 18th century, parents took for granted their right to arrange their children's marriages and even, in many regions, to dissolve a marriage made without their permission.

Human beings do not like to think of themselves as animals.

Are We Giving Robots Too Much Power?

Scientists say that is very unlikely -- though they have done some checking just to make sure.

Theo Jansen is the Dutch creator of what he calls "Kinetic Sculptures," where nature and technology meet. Essentially these sculptures are robots powered by the wind only.

Fewer Americans now than at any time in the past half century believe they're moving forward in life.

We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization - a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.

Every now and then I meet someone in Manhattan who has never driven a car. I used to wonder at such people, but more and more I wonder at myself.

My existence, in short, costs the planet more than it can afford. This is not some handed-down moral stricture, nor any sort of guilty self-flagellation, but a simple recognition of fact. The consequences are obvious, and near enough now to see the warts on their noses. For my own future, as well as my children's, I must change.

Multitasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.

Sudo make me a sandwich.

Any technology that is going to have significant impact over the next 10 years is already at least 10 years old.

Sustainable growth is not the consequence of an unsustainable consumption boom but of the progress and diffusion of science, technology and innovation.

Just as surely as the SUV will yield to the hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end.

The "victimless leather" was kept alive in an incubator with nutrients, unsettlingly alive. Until recently, that is. Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the museum, had to kill the coat.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.

"That sounds like a bunch of baloney," he said. "Give me something real to do."

"Let's get our little American girls ready for the wide-open working world!"

Why is information security so dysfunctional?

Is it conceivable that today's Internet, which resembles in so many ways the information utility that was envisioned back in 1964, is not amplifying our intelligence, but in fact making us stupid?

There's a profound flaw in the protocol that governs how people share the Internet's capacity.

What has worked, what has not, and what has changed?

Why has the media establishment become so unpopular?

Perhaps the public has good reason to think that the media's self-aggrandizement gets in the way of solving the country's real problems.

Today, purchases of computer hardware and software account for half of all capital spending by businesses.

Morningside Analytics discovers and monitors online networks that form around particular ideas and identifies thought leaders with standing in these audiences.

Technology and Progress | Another Noteworthy Year