CategoryTechnology
George Gilder: Wafer Scale Tech Will Have Smartphone’s Impact
However, in his COSM 2025 fireside chat with bestselling author Andrew Mayne, he conceded that it is a disruptive technology and many are hesitant to make the leap
Tech Addiction is Reaching a Frightening New Level
Young people are spending endless time online seeking drug-like states of mind
Space travel: The future is slowly becoming everyday reality
Catch the vibe at COSM 2025. Oh, and we’ll also be talking about the national debt…
Entrepreneur Hal Philipp: Perils of Success for Solo Inventors
He warns, when it comes to patents, “size matters.” Big companies command respect and are harder to cheat than lone inventorsHal Philipp’s inventions underpin automatic faucets, door sensors, and the capacitive touchscreens that made the smartphone era possible. In this podcast, he offers a candid field guide to turning ideas into impact. The discussion ranges from startup structure and venture capital to patent warfare, corporate brinkmanship, and the social aftershocks of the iPhone. Philipp is interviewed by Robert J. Marks and Bradley Norris. Engineering education Marks opens with a challenge to engineering education. Universities excel at training graduates for Boeing or Motorola, but seldom spotlight entrepreneurship as a viable path. Philipp agrees and then complicates the picture. If he could rewind, he says, he would “get a little more assistance,” likely allying with a larger organization to gain leverage. In Read More ›
Successfully Deciphering the Thoughts of Speechless People
The new technology may be a great advance for persons with disabilities but it raises serious issues about privacy once it gets into the wrong hands
Academia Embraces the Unscientific Religion of ‘Nature Rights’
Cambridge University Press’s call for boosting the rights of nature is straight out of Gaia theory that holds that the Earth is a living being. That is not a science-based premise
Clare Morell Advocates for a Phone-Free Childhood
Moderation won't work. Families need to take the tech exit
Why Did Our Very Ancient Ancestors Collect Ball-Shaped Stones?
Over a million years ago, it seems that some of our ancestors hiked through valleys in East Africa, searching for volcanic spheres
America Must Be First to Beat the Looming Spectrum Crisis
AI and reconfigurable technology can help win the spectrum race
TikTok is Back, Thanks to Trump. The Battle Against Tech Addiction Continues
TikTok has gone through a chaotic whirlwind over the last few days
TikTok is on the Verge of a Ban. Now Users Are Flocking to Another Chinese App.
National security and the mental health of a generation are at stakeA federal ban of the wildly popular social media app TikTok is set to take effect on Sunday, unless a last-minute intervention occurs, or an American-owned business buys the company. The FBI, as well as several state authorities around the country, have said the app represents a national security threat, as it allows a foreign adversary to access the data of the 170 million Americans who use it. Apart from the issue of national security, plenty of people, particularly sociologist Jonathan Haidt, have pointed out TikTok’s profound negative impact on kids and users in general. TikTok uses an advanced algorithm system to hook its users. Haidt and his research assistant, Zach Rausch, list out the multiple harms: Executives within the Read More ›
2025: Rejecting Brain Rot
Toward a more embodied and human way of life
The Radio Frequency Spectrum: A Finite Natural Resource
The increasing demand for the radio frequency spectrum that our wireless technologies depend on is unsustainable long-term
Oxford Word of the Year: Brain Rot
The flood of online content deteriorates our mental and intellectual states
Are Phones to Blame for a Spiritual Crisis?
Technology is often impersonal magic. It makes things easy, but erodes personal formationPhones block access to spiritual depth. That’s what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in his newest bestseller The Anxious Generation. The frenetic, distractible nature of the screen-based existence most of us live in every day is eroding our ability to pursue meaning, transcending values, and empathy for other people. Haidt was recently joined in conversation by Andy Crouch, a Christian author who has written extensively on technology and culture in books like The Tech-Wise Family and The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World. “My life is full of convenience,” Crouch writes in the latter title mentioned. It is full of transaction, at its best a mutually beneficial exchange of value, a kind of arm’s-length benign use Read More ›
Smartphone: The “Experience Blocker”
Experience is the key to emotional development and a fully human lifeSmartphones are distracting and addicting, but according to Jonathan Haidt, and supported by our common experience, they can also keep us from a basic ingredient of human life: Experience. Sometimes I wonder if the worst aspect of the “dopamine culture,” as culture critic Ted Gioia calls it, is not that we no longer have the attention spans to focus on our work, but that we no longer seem able to enjoy activities that aren’t based on screens. Simple pleasures like a good meal, meant to savor and digest at a slow pace, or going through a rich and complicated novel that yields real insight and literary joy, or even kissing an actual person in an affectionate way are all “old-school” Read More ›
The Dumbphone Revolution?
It's a crazy idea, but what if we just started using our phones to call and text people?
COSM: Ethernet Inventor Asks, Are We Ready for New IT Technology?
Bob Metcalfe will talk about new technologies like electromagnetic waves from the “dead zone” of the spectrum that are slowly becoming economically viable