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Painting of a person doing arithemetic.
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Solve for AI

What the history of the pocket calculator reveals about the future of AI in classrooms.
by Bronwen Everill via HNN on April 30, 2025
Computer blue screen with error message.
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Y2K Sent a Warning. The CrowdStrike Outage Shows We Failed to Heed It.

The Year 2000 computer problem has become a punchline in recent years, but the CrowdStrike outage shows the joke's on us.
by Zachary Loeb via Made By History on July 24, 2024
Newspaper headlines about C. Everett Koop's warnings about video games.

When the Surgeon General Warned About Pac-Man

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy published an op-ed in The New York Times calling for a ‘Warning Label on Social Media Platforms.'
by Louis Anslow via Pessimists Archive on June 18, 2024
A scene from "Time Bomb Y2K" depicting a situation room filled with computers.

Heritage 2000

Some years wield such power that you must comply with them.
by Dan Piepenbring via n+1 on January 26, 2024
Typewriters on table at Milwaukee QWERTYFest

How Milwaukee Is Celebrating the Typewriter’s Long, Local History

150 years of typewriter history in the city that invented the QWERTY keyboard.
by Jennifer Byrne via Atlas Obscura on July 5, 2023
Two DJs, DJ Aladdin on the left.

Scratch Cyborgs: The Hip-Hop DJ as Technology

Hip-hop DJ culture provides a rich site for exploring how culture and industry can converge and collaborate, as well as how they need each other to move forward.
by André Sirois via The MIT Press Reader on September 22, 2022
Jill Lepore and the cover of her Book "If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future"

“We Don’t Want the Program”: On How Tech Can’t Fix Democracy

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”
by Jill Lepore, Danah Boyd via Public Books on November 2, 2020
Robert Rauschenberg and Billy Klüver collaborating on an art project

“God Help American Science”: Engineering Theatre and Spectacle

When an event promises you will "hear the body broadcast its sounds," "see without light," and "see dancers float on air,” there’s bound to be disappointment.
by W. Patrick McCray via W. Patrick McCray on September 7, 2016
Silhouettes of people dancing at a techno music festival with colorful laser lights.

Machine Soul

A history of techno.
by Jon Savage via Hyperreal Music Archive on June 1, 1993
Digital strands imposed over the Capitol building.

Tech Policy Could Be Smarter and Less Partisan if Congress Hadn’t Shut Down This Innovative Program

For years, the Office of Technology Assessment helped Congress see around corners on science and tech. Its 1995 shutdown left lawmakers flying blind.
by Max Ufberg via Fast Company on August 1, 2025
President Gerald R. Ford and the Shah of Iran confer over a map in 1975.

History of Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Detailed in New Collection

U.S.-Iran diplomacy, intelligence on South Korea's nuclear program, and fears that a reactor given to India would become a “do-it-yourself bomb kit.”
by William Burr via National Security Archive on June 25, 2025
Vannevar Bush
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Science in War, Science in Peace: Origins of the NSF

The establishment of a federal agency devoted to space, physics, and more belied a cross-party consensus that such disciplines were vital to national interest.
by Danny Robb via JSTOR Daily on May 28, 2025
Cartoon of well-dressed arm holding a lit match

The Gilded Age Never Ended

Plutocrats, anarchists, and what Henry James grasped about the romance of revolution.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on February 24, 2025
A bulldozer juxtapositioned with destroyed buildings and barren land.

The Shrouded, Sinister History Of The Bulldozer

From India to the Amazon to Israel, bulldozers have left a path of destruction that offers a cautionary tale for how technology can be misused.
by Joe Zadeh via Noema on February 20, 2025
A drawing of two speakers resting on clouds and sending colorful soundwaves through the air.

Bluetooth Speakers Are Ruining Music

You have two ears for a reason.
by Michael J. Owens via The Atlantic on February 5, 2025
Depictions of possible causes of apocalypse through war, disaster, and climate change.

Apocalypse, Constantly

Humans love to imagine their own demise.
by Adam Kirsch via The Atlantic on December 31, 2024
Jimmy Carter examines solar panels to be installed at the White House.

Jimmy Carter, Green-Energy Visionary

As President, he told us that we needed to shift to solar power. We should have listened to him then.
by Bill McKibben via The New Yorker on December 29, 2024
Rep. Stephen Horn, examines a chart showing his grades for each agency's progress on the Y2K computer problem.
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What to Know About Y2K, Before You Watch 'Y2K'

The Year 2000 computer problem continues to nag at us 25 years later.
by Zachary Loeb via Made By History on December 18, 2024

How Jukeboxes Made Memphis Music

When R.E. Buster Williams ruled jukeboxes and jukeboxes ruled music.
by Robert Gordon via Oxford American on December 10, 2024

The World of Tomorrow

When the future arrived, it felt…ordinary. What happened to the glamour of tomorrow?
by Virginia Postrel via Works In Progress on December 5, 2024
A variety of apples on a rustic wooden table.

Apples Have Never Tasted So Delicious. Here’s Why

Apple experts divide time into “before Honeycrisp” and “after Honeycrisp,” and apples have never tasted so good.
by Laura Helmuth via Scientific American on October 24, 2024
The newsroom of the Mobile Press-Register, ca. 1982.

Journalists and the “Origin Story” of Working from Home

Journalists helped to pioneer what would eventually result in our mobile world.
by Will Mari, Juliette De Maeyer via The Saturday Evening Post on October 14, 2024
A computer, business documents, envelope, and a broadcast tower.

How Tech Giants Make History

AT&T’s early leaders used PR to sway public opinion, casting their monopoly as a public service and obscuring its political roots.
by Richard R. John via Pro-Market on October 10, 2024
1950s office worker holding a handkerchief to his brow.

How Air Conditioning Took Over the American Office

Before AC, office workers relied on building design to adapt to high temperatures. The promise of boosted productivity created a different kind of workplace.
by David Dudley via CityLab on September 3, 2024
A crystal ball reflecting a landscape.

50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974

A half-century ago, "Saturday Review" asked some of the era's visionaries for their predictions of what 2024 would look like. Here are their hits and misses.
by David Cassel via The New Stack on August 24, 2024
Roll of raffle tickets labeled "National Security Priority"

How Everything Became National Security

And national security became everything.
by Daniel W. Drezner via Foreign Affairs on August 12, 2024
Old advertisements selling cars to women.

Driving While Female

Is the car our most gendered technology?
by Leann Davis Alspaugh via The Hedgehog Review on July 31, 2024
Buzz Aldrin lands on moon for the first time, Apollo 11.

Apollo 11 Launch: "If You Can Survive the Simulations, the Mission is a Piece of Cake"

The grueling, relentless simulations astronauts that prepared the astronauts for quick decision-making in space.
by Myles Burke via BBC News on July 15, 2024
Rick Beato on the left, and John Philip Sousa, on the right.

Separated By More Than A Century, Two Musicians Share A Complaint

What happens when the automation of music makes it too easy to create and too easy to consume?
by Mark R. DeLong via 3 Quarks Daily on July 15, 2024
Jailhouse Rock (1957).

How Has Music Changed Since the 1950s?

A statistical analysis of how music composition evolved over time.
by Daniel Parris via Stat Significant on July 10, 2024
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