On Sept. 16, 2007, a Japanese YouTuber who goes by the handle “Computing Aesthetic” uploaded a forty-eight-second-long video with the deafening title, “ULTRA MEGA SUPER LUCKY…

In 1950, with the Cold War in full swing, Soviet journalists were looking desperately for something to help them fill their anti-American propaganda quota. In January of that year,…

Scott Aaronson, theoretical computer scientist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), runs a popular blog called “Shtetl-Optimized.” Which is a curious…

I’ve never seen the computer you’re reading this story on, but I can tell you a lot about it. It runs on electricity. It uses binary logic to carry out programmed instructions.…

In 1953, at the dawn of modern computing, Nils Aall Barricelli played God. Clutching a deck of playing cards in one hand and a stack of punched cards in the other, Barricelli hovered…

Chicago-bound motorists passing mile marker 121 on Interstate-88 through Aurora, Illinois, on Sept. 30, 2011, at 3:00 p.m. likely noticed nothing that seemed particularly remarkable.…

Greg Laughlin studies exoplanets, but also high frequency trading and the extremely distant future. He is a fan of William Gibson and Ray Bradbury and was once accused by the European…

Waste looks like the pile of plastic, Styrofoam, and cardboard that your tiny new earphones came in. It looks like plastic bottles overflowing in the waste bin beside a water fountain.…