Longreads

Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, on right, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As the Sabbath evening approached on Jan. 13, Ehud Barak paced the wide living-room floor of his…

CEO of the InternetPhoto: Nigel Parry; styling by Alvin Stillwell/Celestine Agency; Grooming by Erin Skipley/Ajentse What Im about to show you, Jeff Bezos says, is the culmination of the many…

Twitter is building a machine to convert 140 characters on Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, narcissism, the struggle for human freedom, and Starbucks into cash—and quick, before its moment passes. Is this asking too much of even the world’s best technologists?

It is difficult now to call up the particular mood that prevailed in the AIDS epidemic’s early years. I am not talking about the first rumblings, when no one knew enough to be afraid, but further in. In those post-AZT, pre-ARV-drug days, there was very little one could do if infected. Primitive prophylaxes against certain diseases offered one’s best bet but certainly no guarantee that one wouldn’t die of Kaposi’s sarcoma or cytomegalovirus or pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. The idea of life without AIDS, much less of being alive in thirty years, was almost unimaginable. Which is why in the late eighties, coworkers and I at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation came up with an idea to get people—gay men, in particular—thinking about the future. We decided to create a time capsule.