Author

Cities might become biological entities, walls hung with curtains of algae that glow at night and sequester carbon, and floors made from tweaked cellular material that strengthens like bones as we walk on it.

From Annalee Newitz

Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic.

From Annalee Newitz

Economic systems rise and fall just like empires. That's the kind of perspective we need to take if we hope to prosper for centuries rather than for the next quarter.

From Annalee Newitz

Unlike economics, whose sole preoccupation in our finance-obsessed era is the near-term profit motive, history offers a way to place our tiny lifespans in a narrative that spans dozens of generations - perhaps even reaching into a future where capitalism is no longer our dominant form of economic organization.

From Annalee Newitz

Humans have continued to evolve quite a lot over the past ten thousand years, and certainly over 100 thousand. Sure, our biology affects our behavior. But it's unlikely that humans' early evolution is deeply relevant to contemporary psychological questions about dating or the willpower to complete a dissertation.

From Annalee Newitz

'Interstellar' is a thematic sequel to Christopher Nolan's last original film, 'Inception'. It drops us into a dark future full of otherworldly landscapes and time distortions.

From Annalee Newitz