Should we fear or welcome the internet's evolution? The "internet of things" is the rapidly growing network of everyday objects-eyeglasses, cars, thermostats-made smart with sensors and internet addresses. Soon we will live in a pervasive yet invisib...

The Internet has transformed the manner in which information is exchanged and business is conducted, arguably more than any other communication development in the past century. Despite its wide reach and powerful global influence, it is a medium unco...

On the ancient Silk Road, treasure-laden caravans made their arduous way through deserts and mountain passes, establishing trade between Asia and the civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean. Today's electronic Silk Roads ferry information acros...

Over the last few decades, the "pictorial turn" in the natural sciences, prompted by the computer's capacity to produce visual representations, has generated considerable theoretical interest. Poised between their materiality and the abstract level t...

First published in 1958, John von Neumann's classic work "The Computer and the Brain" explored the analogies between computing machines and the living human brain. Von Neumann showed that the brain operates both digitally and analogically, but also h...

The iPad. The Kindle. Twitter. When "The Best Technology Series" was inaugurated in 2005, these technologies did not exist. Today, they not only make headlines: they define our twenty-first-century lives. In his introduction to "The Best Technology W...