‘Our Minds Can Be Hijacked’: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia
After having epiphanies about the downsides of persuasive design, several young creators of addictive smartphone technology abandon their posts at Google, Twitter, and Facebook to try to become part of the solution.
How the 1970s Could Vanish from Vancouver
Brutalist architecture — heavy on concrete and blocky shapes — used to be polarizing. In Vancouver, where land is scarce and developers are bulldozer-happy, it’s in the process of disappearing.
This Island Is Not for Sale: How Eigg Fought Back
After a few rich men owned the British island of Eigg, residents purchased it and created what it hopes is a model of community ownership and the good life.
How a Tax Haven is Leading the Race to Privatize Space
Luxembourg is a small but savvy nation. With few natural resources — besides a long line of grand dukes, a legacy of skirting tax loopholes, and a valuable national sovereignty — the country has looked to the stars for its next big venture: asteroid mining. The only problem? The 1967 Outer Space Treat explicitly prohibits countries from claiming ownership of any object in space, including asteroids.
The First Social Media Suicide
Alienated and traumatized in a vacuous Paris suburb, 18-year-old Océane saw the world as devoid of intimacy and compassion, a world further cooled by social media, yet she broadcast her own death. Why? What was she trying to teach us about the suffering of others?
The Princess Myth
“Royal time should move slowly and by its own laws: creeping, like the flow of chrism from a jar.” On the 20th anniversary of her death, Hilary Mantel performs a remarkable post-mortem on Diana, Princess of Wales.
Why We Fell for Clean Eating
On the rise of orthorexia — “an obsession with consuming only foods that are pure and perfect” — and the burgeoning industry that feeds it.
Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence
When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the U.S. for Istanbul — and began to realize that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does.
The Town Where Everyone Owns a Gun
After the mine closed nearby, and the residents started to move out of Nucla, Colorado, the town passed an ordinance that every household in the municipality was required to own a gun. But as the residents see it, their main enemy is Telluride, the liberal city next door.
The Great Self-Esteem Con
By now, the idea that positive self-esteem is necessary for success is more or less taken for granted. But what if it’s all based on very shaky, smartly packaged science?