“To go where no man has gone before,” was Geoff Hinton’s hope when he continued to pursue deep learning while other computer wizards abandoned the idea. His eventual success made him wealthy and opened new possibilities. Automated fusion, is one example, the model for managing a

Despite the misinformation he’s allowed to spread on Facebook,  I admire Mark Zuckerberg’s intention to create a global community that can promote human understanding. To foresee the many ways his dream could be misused would require the powers of Nostradamus, so I don’t hold h

What a year 2020 is turning out to be.  A pandemic, the upcoming elections, and the untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg are vying for top spots in the headlines. Given the cacophony, it’s little wonder few have noticed another woman has cracked a glass ceili

While browsing through the internet the other day, I learned about an exciting new discovery in quantum physics.  Scientists have learned that some quantum particles adhere to one another, not by electromagnetism, as we supposed, but by something called the strong force. I will ventu

Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes an intriguing article about why social media appears to have gone tribal, influencing the rest of society.  Surprisingly, our perception may not be the case.  After all, social networks are designed to give us what we want. Is it possible we want tribalism?

Given the many life and death threats facing our species, an algorithm to help identify which challenges are imminent and which can wait five minutes sounds great. Unfortunately, technology is part of the problem. The more we rely on it, the more we are likely to find ourselves in a d

Over the holidays, a couple  introduced me to their son who was visiting from Boston.  As he was a young man, I asked what he did for a living.  He said he was a medical researcher and was working on a drug for multiple sclerosis.  A lump hardened in my throat as I remembered a br

The title of this blog says it all.   On Facebook, our data doesn’t belong to us.  Ditto our “authorial rights” according to information scientist, Amelia Acker at the University of Texas at Austin.  (“Preservations Acts,” by Nora Caplan-Bricker Harper’s Magazine, Dec.

In my freshman year in college, I discovered The Communist Manifesto was on my reading list.  After years of hearing the book was pure evil, I gasped.  A few pages into the material, however, and  I learned what I’d been told was nonsense. What’s wrong comaraderie?  Coca-Cola

What frightens me about the generation that is building technologies to exploit the internet is its youth.  I fear these visionaries are too inexperienced to be left in total control.  Mark Zuckerberg’s motto, “Move fast and break things,” reflects the same rebellious attitude