The award-winning battery pioneer talks about the future of energy storage and the path to scaling low-cost, nontoxic batteries. Jay Whitacre, a professor of materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and the founder of Aquion Energy, is the winner of …Continue reading
Technology Stalled in 1970
Peter Thiel has been behind some prominent technologies: he cofounded PayPal and was an early investor in such companies as Facebook and LinkedIn. But he’s convinced that technological progress has been stagnant for decades. According to Thiel, developments in computers and the …Continue reading
Steven Chu
As a leading and active scientist, Steven Chu broke the mold when he became energy secretary of the United States in 2009. In his four years of service, he made the Department of Energy more innovative, launching the Advanced Research Projects Agency …Continue reading
A Feminist Critique of Silicon Valley
Shanley Kane is cofounder and editor of the most interesting and original of new publications that cover technology: Model View Culture, a quarterly journal and media site that offers readers a remorseless feminist critique of Silicon Valley. The critical distance expressed by …Continue reading
Putting Technology in Its Place
Kentaro Toyama calls himself “a recovering technoholic”—someone who once was “addicted to a technological way of solving problems.” Five years in India changed him. After getting his PhD in computer science and working on machine vision technologies at Microsoft, Toyama moved to …Continue reading
Parents: Don’t Panic About Your Kids’ Social Media Habits
Kids today! They’re online all the time, sharing every little aspect of their lives. What’s wrong with them? Actually, nothing, says Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher who studies social media. In a book coming out this winter, It’s Complicated: The Social Lives …Continue reading