Center for Science and the Imagination

By Sarah Rothbard

This post originally appeared on Zócalo Public Square. Zócalo Public Square is a partnership of the New America Foundation and Arizona State University; Future Tense is a partenrship of New America, ASU, and Slate.

When Michael M. Crow, the president of Arizona State University, introduced Craig R. Barrett, the former CEO and president of Intel, he called Barrett “a singularly important actor in one of the most profound technologies in human history.”

But when Barrett entered Stanford University in 1957 as a student of metallurgical engineering (not even knowing how to spell the word metallurgical), the changes of the next half-century with which he would be intimately involved were impossible to imagine. The world was only on the cusp of technologies like the modern transistor and integrated circuits that made our current digital age possible; advanced computing hadn’t yet been realized.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Crow, in front of a full house—with additional audience members watching in a nearby overflow room—at the Phoenix Art Museum, Barrett discussed the past 50 years of technological change and offered some broad thoughts on his hopes for the future.

In 1965, said Crow, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore (Barrett’s old boss), observed …read more
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By Madeline McSherry

Coding is the hottest skill on the job market, the modern-day language of creativity, and a powerful force in the economy. And now it’s making its way into Congress, high school classrooms, and even the newsroom.

A group of leading thinkers in technology gathered at New America NYC on March 28 to discuss the value of programming skills in the 21^st century. Moderator Marvin Ammori, a Bernard L. Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation, was joined by Zach Sims, CEO of Codecademy; Martha Girdler, engineer at Etsy; Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock, co-founder of Hacker School; and Julia Angwin, senior technology editor for the Wall Street Journal.

We’ve grown so accustomed to technology that we hardly ever question how the machines and applications we use operate. What would once have looked like witchcraft to us has become mundane. But the need for high-skilled programmers has skyrocketed—so why aren’t more creative visionaries stepping up to learn code?

All too often, we draw the distorted distinction between math- and science-minded individuals and the seemingly more “creative types.” But the speakers debunked this myth, explaining that coding is indeed an innovative and artistic process. Those equipped with programming skills can realize their creative visions and fashion new …read more
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By Ryan Gallagher

It’s not quite the Batplane. But a new Pentagon-backed autonomous “bat drone” that can use a long claw to pluck objects off of the ground is ready for deployment.

Earlier this week, California drone developer MLB Company announced that it had completed a project, funded by DARPA, to develop a specialized “V-Bat” unmanned aircraft. Kitted out with high-res cameras and laser sensors, the drone is designed to be used for everything from urban surveillance to wildlife monitoring. It can take off vertically and hover steadily, and it can also fly like a normal winged aircraft at heights of up to 15,000 feet for 10 hours at a time. The V-Bat is able to fly pre-programmed missions using GPS navigation and the DARPA version can search for objects on the ground, which it can pick up with a 6-foot extending claw. Here’s a video of the drone during a test flight:

Last year, DARPA said in a press release that the V-Bat technology “paves the way for precise long-range delivery of small payloads into difficult-to-reach environments.” It is another example of how the U.S. military has invested heavily in developing new drone technology, from stealth unmanned aircraft capable …read more
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By Adam Sneed

Cyborgs have arrived on Earth, but there’s no reason to worry. They’re nothing like the cold machine-men from The Terminator. Cybernetic technologies that integrate with the human body is something you could soon be able to try for yourself—in fact, you might even want to.

Cyborgs and bionic life forms were the topic of conversation on Saturday at Future Tense’s segment of Emerge2013: The Future of Truth, a conference held at Arizona State University. (ASU is a partner with Slate and the New America Foundation in Future Tense.) Devices already exist to extend our senses beyond their natural limits, and advancements in neuroscience and robotics have demonstrated the possibility of wiring robotic devices straight into the human brain. Looking into the future, humans could use technology to tailor their own experiences, desires, and abilities. But what does this mean for how we find and share common truths?

To work through this question, Future Tense brought together Neil Harbisson, a cyborg and founder of the Cyborg Foundation, science journalist Emily Anthes, and Slate staff writer Will Oremus.

Harbisson is one of the world’s first cyborgs. He was born without the ability to see any colors, which complicates …read more
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By Evgeny Morozov

Of all the startups that launched last year, Fuzz is certainly one of the most intriguing and the most overlooked. Describing itself as a “people-powered radio” that is completely “robot-free,” Fuzz bucks the trend toward ever greater reliance on algorithms in discovering new music. Fuzz celebrates the role played by human DJs—regular users who are invited to upload their own music to the site in order to create and share their own “radio stations.”

The idea—or, perhaps, hope—behind Fuzz is that human curators can still deliver something that algorithms cannot; it aspires to be the opposite of Pandora, in which the algorithms do all the heavy lifting. As its founder, Jeff Yasuda, told Bloomberg News last September, “there’s a big need for a curated type of experience and just getting back to the belief that the most compelling recommendations come from a human being.”

But while Fuzz’s launch attracted little attention, the growing role of algorithms in all stages of artistic production is becoming impossible to ignore. Most recently, this role was highlighted by Andrew Leonard, the technology critic for Salon, in an intriguing article about House of Cards, Netflix’s first foray into original programming. The series’ origin myth …read more
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