Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More

Remembering the Challenger disaster, 25 years later.

Adam Rothstein is a blogger, tech thinker, unemployed philosopher�and now, a beta tester of one of the coveted Google Chrome notebook computers. In the first of four posts about the beta experience, Adam finds that the unnanounced arrival of the device makes him feel like a combination of The Matrix's Neo and a Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth.

A sleek, design-fictional robot railway inspector promises to make costly train derailments a thing of the past. It's a harbinger of the ambient, automated infrastructure to come�and a reminder that the future lies in the inevitable and necessary failure of beautiful ideas. Video after the jump.

A deft, original game that combines throwback imagery with physical gameplay�its very simplicity demonstrating the power of game development. Video after the jump.

A normal, cyclical change in continental air pressure gradients has the world turned upside-down.

New understandings of ecosystems bring network administration to bear on the problems of natural resources management. Through networks we seek the domestication not only of ourselves, but of nature itself.

The Internet doesn't want you to think about it too much, but you never really know what you're looking for. Evoking the presence of 17th-century savant John Dee, Scryberspace cracks open the search experience.

A shameless plug for an upcoming science fiction epic: it will feature narwhals, neural hacking, uncanny wearable computers, and mayhem on the ice. And it will be told in tweets.

Julian Smith: don't you ever interrupt me while I'm reading a book. Video after the jump.

The godlike vision granted by our far-flung sensors.