On August 11, 1994, a man in Philadelphia sat down at a computer and bought a CD. The album was Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales, the price was $12.48 plus shipping, and the seller was a young company called NetMarket. Nothing about the object...
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“The cloud” may be the most successful disappearing act in modern technology. Upload a photograph and it seems to float away. Stream a film and it arrives from nowhere. Ask an AI system a qu...
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Bluetooth is such an ordinary part of modern life that its name barely sounds strange anymore. We tap an icon and headphones connect to a phone, a keyboard finds a computer, or a car starts...
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You mention hiking boots over dinner. The next morning, an advertisement for hiking boots appears on your phone. You never remember searching for them. The coincidence feels too precise, and...
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You see someone stretch their jaw, squeeze their eyes shut and take a long, involuntary breath. A few seconds later, your own mouth opens. Sometimes you do not even need to see the yawn: hea...
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Watch a herd of cows for long enough and the group begins to look less anonymous. Certain animals repeatedly graze near one another, rest side by side or seek each other out. Some lick and g...
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Ask whether snakes have legs and the obvious answer seems to be no. A cobra, viper or grass snake has no arms, no feet and no visible limbs at all. Yet the evolutionary answer is more intere...
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Put a glass of water near a cat and it may drink calmly. Turn on a faucet and the same cat might become fascinated, batting at droplets for minutes. Lower it into a bathtub, however, and you...
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The little hat-and-glasses icon has become shorthand for secrecy. Open an Incognito window in Chrome — or a Private Browsing window in another browser — and it feels as though you have stepp...
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Wi-Fi feels almost absurdly simple from the outside. Tap a network name, enter a password, and within seconds a phone can stream a film from a server thousands of kilometers away. No cable r...
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