“A broken phone or corrupted drive can mean the loss of work, evidence, art, or the last traces of the dead. But sometimes data-recovery experts can summon lost files from the void.”
computers
Posted inEditor's Pick
Between the Sheets at the College Excel Championships
“One of the most unusual — and fun — events in college sports is a high-stakes spreadsheeting competition in Las Vegas.”
Posted inFeature
A Year in Reading: Inward Journeys
Navigating a world in flux demands some understanding of who you really are, and some of my favorite pieces from this year speak to that need.
Posted inEditor's Pick
My First Months in Cyberspace
“The earlier internet was a haven, everyone making it up as they went along.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Recurring Screens
“A screen saver periodically smokes the locusts out, thereby saving the screen from the disfigurement of monotony.”
Posted inCuration
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
Featuring stories by Willa Köerner, Robyn Ross, Ariel Sabar, Julian Lucas, and Dan Moore.
Posted inEditor's Pick
From Silicon to Slime
“Claire L. Evans on imagination as a form of computation, and the endless entanglement of our biological reality.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
“A Certain Danger Lurks There”
“How the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Ingenious Librarians
“A group of 1970s campus librarians foresaw our world of distributed knowledge and research, and designed search tools for it.”