Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX has a new dream.  Beyond technology for the earth and the stars, he wants to redesign humankind.  If we don’t use our know-how to enhance ourselves, he believes artificial intelligence will conquer humanity. (“Hacking mortality,” The Week

I have a friend who is averse to reading emails.  That makes it difficult for us to arrange to meet for coffee because I’m averse to telephones.  As spies we’d do dismally.  How would we come together long enough to arrange a dead drop, a place where we would leave and pick up

I wonder how many apps developers can create that the public will continue to buy. A new one allows Donald Trump supporters to find restaurants where they can feel safe, not from guns, but from a “socialist goon squad.” (“Only In America,” The Week, March 22, 2019, pg. 6.)  

Facebook went down the other day and what a blessing it was.  I like keeping up with friends but I hate the commercials I have to scroll through to reach them.  If scrolling can be counted as an aerobic exercise, I’m fit. Promos aren’t the only reason I needed a break.  I’m t

My activities on the internet have expanded to a degree that I require 3 email addresses, not counting messaging on Facebook.  Initially, I hoped different addresses would make storing my correspondence easier to find later.  My experience has proved the opposite. Of course, I shoul

I admit it.  Some mornings, I dedicate time to cursing my computer.  Overnight, some dark magic has rendered my passwords useless or an old blog has risen from the grave to republish itself on Facebook.  On those days, I call my guru.  Usually, he’s good at sorting out the probl

In the 1950’s, during the height of the cold war, the United States had an active civil defense corps, volunteers young and old who protected the nation’s borders without a wall.  As a teenager, I joined the air defense program.  Twice a week, I drove to a hilltop in southern Ca

Like healthcare, homelessness is one of the intractable problems facing our society and it keeps growing.  Local governments have the desire to solve the problem and, to some degree, they have the finances.  What they don’t have is the trust of the client population, people who ha

In the opening scene of the film, The Graduate, the operative word was “plastics.”  Today, Dustin Hoffman is all grown up, though that scene remains a movie classic.  For billionaire Jeremy Grantham the new word for this era is “topsoil.”  Necessary to feed a burgeoning glo

Technology is changing the way we do business, but it is  also changing our daily habits.  Eating lunch is one example.  In the good old days, if we were swamped with work, we might remain at our desks and nibble tuna fish sandwiches from a paper bag.  Later, when food carts took