FILE – In this April 29, 2017, file photo, landscaping consisting of real Earth plant species mixed with sculpted Pandora artificial flora is surrounded by ponds and gentle waterfalls at the Pandora-World of Avatar land attraction in Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The 12-acre land, inspired by the “Avatar” movie, opens ... Read More »
David Nelems Submitted A retrofit for a school bus that will enable buses to collect solar power and sell it back to a power company. Art created by using a welding simulator. Robotics, 3-D puzzles and site-surveying drones. Sound like the latest episode of “Shark Tank”? It’s actually just a sample of the work and innovation happening right now at ... Read More »
American democracy is in crisis. Part of that crisis has to do with technology. But there’s another, often overlooked, factor at play. I’m a professor, so I think that fixing America starts with education. We can help improve our democratic processes by using technology to improve schools. I don’t mean that we should put iPads into every school, or give ... Read More »
Asher Labovich, 13, and his 10-year-old brother, Emerson, left, mess around with the family’s Alexa, an Amazon Echo voice assistant, while their mom, Laura Labovich, watches in Bethesda, Md. (Bill O’Leary / The Washington Post) What if you could make President Trump say whatever you wanted? How about listening to the vaguely robot-like voice of yourself, programmed into an app ... Read More »
These last two years, we’ve been having fewer green technology ideas. At least that’s according to a new study by the Brookings Institution, which reveals that the number of clean energy patents granted in America has declined since 2014. While the number of new patents per year doubled between 2001 and 2014, it has since fallen by 9 percent (see ... Read More »
Metro-East Montessori School teacher Carrie Wilson Herndon won two awards for innovative use of technology in her classroom. Her students are making robots that can open a chicken cage, another robot that collects eggs, and another that can provide water to the birds. The students also don protective beekeeper suits and take care of honeybee hives the school maintains at ... Read More »
A new court filing from Alphabet claims that Uber hid a key piece of self-driving technology that it allegedly copied from Waymo, the Google parent company’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary. “They were hiding a device,” Alphabet said in a filing today, supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction that would prevent Uber from working on self-driving technology. Uber says it isn’t ... Read More »
The US “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency” (Darpa) is an elite organisation tasked with developing secretive military technologies. True to form, its logo is oddly reminiscent of a supervillain’s – imposing and stark. Some of its projects, too, are futuristic weapons with darkly amusingly self-aware names, such as Mahem – a kind of self-forging molten metal spear that can penetrate armour. But ... Read More »
Labor MP Jim Chalmers and former NBN chief executive Mike Quigley warn that economic gains from automation will not share themselves naturally. Photograph: Nic Delves-Broughton/PA The Labor MP Jim Chalmers was at a town hall meeting in Eagleby, Queenslandthis week when an older couple approached him. They were part of a crowd that turned up to see Bill Shorten’s “Bill ... Read More »
Illustration by Jasper Rietman Illustration: Jasper Rietman Countless decisions must soon be made about how Britain navigates the world, having cut itself adrift from the European Union. And alongside the obvious things like trade deals and immigration rules, we ought too to make choices about who and how we want to be as a society. What is Britain in the ... Read More »
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