Futurism

With the successful recovery of the SpaceX Dragon capsule, private space exploration takes a great leap forward. But it's also a reminder of the history of private business in manned spaceflight, both real and imagined.

This third installment of a serial review of Kevin Kelly's What Technology Wants encounters technology as a force with a sense of purpose and a plan. What that plan consists in we don't know�and it seems that technology isn't telling.

The global security apparatus meets its match in the Internet.

Flying towards the future, eyes fixed on the past.

Since when is technological advancement a prerequisite for artistic seriousness?

From Steve Martin to the shield of Achilles, considering the relationship of image and text in a networked age.

Two very different sets of assumptions about what books are and what reading them in a networked age should be like.

German robotics company Festo offers a postfuturist menagerie: autonomous kites, silver air-jellyfish and flying robo-penguins.

At the blog Paleo-future, visions of techno-optimism & brave new worlds�all in a packet of cigarettes.

Larry Page tells us to ask ourselves if the work we do is changing the world. But is change always and everywhere for the better?