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A walkman and a headphone set

The Walkman, Forty Years On

The gadget that taught the world to socially distance.
by Matt Alt via The New Yorker on June 29, 2020

Vibrators Had a Long History as Medical Quackery

Before feminists rebranded them as sex toys, vibrators were just another medical device.
by Kim Adams via The Conversation on June 8, 2020

Algorithms Associating Appearance and Criminality Have a Dark Past

In discussions about facial-recognition software, phrenology analogies seem like a no-brainer. In fact, they’re a dead-end.
by Catherine Stinson via Aeon on May 15, 2020

The Way We Write History Has Changed

A deep dive into an archive will never be the same.
by Alexis C. Madrigal via The Atlantic on January 21, 2020

The Secret History of Facial Recognition

Sixty years ago, a sharecropper’s son invented a technology to identify faces. The record of his role all but vanished. Who was Woody Bledsoe, and who was he working for?
by Shaun Raviv via Wired on January 21, 2020

The Pirate Map That Launched My Career

Oceanographer Dawn Wright on how "Treasure Island" led her to map the bottom of the sea.
by Dawn Wright via CityLab on November 15, 2019

How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance

In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
by Shoshana Zuboff via Longreads on September 5, 2019
A clue and black clay figuring with a Sony Watchman attached as its "head."

Please, My Digital Archive. It’s Very Sick.

Our past on the internet is disappearing before we can make it history.
by Tanner Howard via Lapham’s Quarterly on September 4, 2019
Hooded person shining a laser pointer at an airplane in the dark

A Blinding History of the Laser Pointer

They can wreck your eyes, and they can land you 14 years in jail for shining one at a police chopper. But where did they come from?
by Ian Lecklitner via MEL on August 20, 2019
People dancing at Woodstock

When Science Was Groovy

Counterculture-inspired research flourished in the Age of Aquarius.
by W. Patrick McCray, David I. Kaiser via Science on August 5, 2019
Margaret Hamilton stands next to a stack of paper as tall as she is - the software she and her team produced for the Apollo project.

Margaret Hamilton Led the NASA Software Team That Landed Astronauts on the Moon

Apollo’s successful computing software was optimized to deal with unknown problems.
by Alice George via Smithsonian on March 14, 2019

Plug in Your Address to See How It's Changed Over the Past 750 Million Years

You can hone in on a specific location and visualize how it has evolved between the Cryogenian Period and the present.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian on February 15, 2019
A woman dressed in steampunk fashion.

Steampunk for Historians

It's about time.
by Scott P. Marler via Perspectives on History on December 3, 2018
Soldiers erecting a barbed wire fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

That Beautiful Barbed Wire

The concertina wire Trump loves at the border has a long, troubling legacy in the West.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on November 6, 2018

Here Is a Human Being

The Spotify and Ancestry partnership proposes to entertain users based on the narrowest possible conception of who they are.
by Cam Scott via Popula on September 27, 2018

When Televisions Were Radioactive

Anxieties about the effects of screens on human health are hardly new, but the way the public addresses the problems has changed.
by Susan Murray via The Atlantic on September 23, 2018
Apple Macintosh computers sit on double decked manufacturing lines, 1984
partner

The Undocumented Workers who Built Silicon Valley

Undocumented workers have been foundational to the rise of our most vaunted hub of innovative capitalism.
by Louis Hyman via Made By History on August 30, 2018
View of San Francisco from the Bay.

How Could 'The Most Successful Place on Earth' Get So Much Wrong?

A new book conjures the complexity of the Bay Area and the perils of its immense, uneven wealth.
by Richard Florida, Richard A. Walker via CityLab on July 3, 2018
Brochure for Gemini robot.

The Forgotten '80s Home Robots Trend

Alexa’s interface is treated as revolutionary, but you might be surprised to learn of its predecessors from the mid-1980s.
by John Ohno via Tedium on May 24, 2018
Stamped passport.

The New Passport-Poor

Travel documentation was created to restrict – and it may become even more entrapping in the future.
by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian via New York Review of Books on May 21, 2018
Items from the collection of the French National Conservatory of Video Games.

The Beautiful, Genuine Artistry of Retro Video Games

Amidst so much politics and tribalism, they can provide portals into thoughtfully rendered alternate worlds.
by Addison Del Mastro via The American Conservative on May 18, 2018

The Surprising History (and Future) of Fingerprints

Our identity is mapped at our fingertips, but also, maybe, our individual fate.
by Chantel Tattoli via The Paris Review on May 15, 2018
A man demonstrating television to another.

This Futuristic Color TV Set Concept From 1922 Was Way Ahead of Its Time

Back in the earliest days of imagining what TV looked like, the appliance was a magic technology.
by Matt Novak via Paleofuture on May 4, 2018

The First Film Ever Streamed on the Internet is Kind of Crazy

Beekeeping, alien planets, and the limits of narrative as technology.
by Joshua Wheeler via Literary Hub on April 30, 2018

The Turn-of-the-Century Pigeons That Photographed Earth from Above

In 1907, a patent application for the pigeon camera was submitted.
by Andrea DenHoed via The New Yorker on April 14, 2018

The Dot-Coms Were Better Than Facebook

Twenty years ago, another high-profile tech executive testified before Congress. It was a more innocent time.
by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on April 13, 2018

The Tools of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s sixty-year love affair with the word “tool.”
by Moira Weigel via The New Yorker on April 11, 2018

Agriculture Wars

On country music as a lens through which to trace the corporatization of American farming.
by Nick Murray via Viewpoint Magazine on March 12, 2018
Woman wearing a VR headset.

The Future of History Lessons is a VR Headset

A conversation with the creator of a virtual reality experience that takes you inside the protests leading up to MLK Jr.’s death.
by Derek Ham, Ann-Derrick Gaillot via The Outline on February 21, 2018

Sex, Pong, And Pioneers

What Atari was really like, according to the women that were there.
by Cecilia D'Anastasio via Kotaku on February 12, 2018
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