Fast Company

A leading creator of VR web standards gives a no-nonsense interview on what’s standing in the way of the future.

What if you could browse the web in virtual reality? Just imagine the potential. Hyperlinks could take you not to Wikipedia pages about history, but right to the landscapes of ancient cultures, immersing you in plagues and art and war. Recipe sites could give you smell-o-vision cooking simulations. Message boards could become face-to-face chats. The web as we know it could become tangible, interactive, and more immersive than ever.

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Braving the freezing temperatures, these refugees would go anywhere to make a safe life outside of Syria. But they might not be able to stay.

The tiny village of Neiden, Norway, isn’t usually a place that people visit in January. Far north of the Arctic Circle, it might be 25 degrees below 0 on a cold day. Apart from a handful of homes, and a lot of snow, there’s nothing there. But this winter, the Hotel Neiden was full.

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From the financier to the cast to the distributor, you need a lot of people on the same page to make a film this mysterious work.

The Invitation is one of the creepier slow-burn thrillers you’re liable to see this year, and probably any other. It’s full of the sort of Hitchcockian buildup of tension that few contemporary thrillers have the patience for, taking a creepy scenario—an invitation from the protagonist’s ex-wife to a dinner party at the house they lived in together before the death of their child—and wringing every ounce of drama out of the discomfort that would come up in that situation. The entire film is about letting the viewer know that something is wrong, but delaying the reveal of exactly what that is for as long as possible—and getting into a position to tell that story in that way is something it took director Karyn Kusama a long time to do.

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The most in-demand industries for freelancers probably aren’t what you’d think, which presents a new challenge for building skills.

As the freelance economy continues to grow, a number of industries have emerged as top employers, and they may not be the ones you typically associate with freelancing.

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Read past the headline, people.

Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CB Insights—a research firm that tracks investment in startups—had an idea for an April Fools’ Day joke that made fun of Silicon Valley’s unicorns and the venture capitalists who fund them.

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The short-term lending market could be the first major market to see transactions recorded by the ledger made famous by bitcoin.

In the latest sign that the financial industry is getting serious about the blockchain, an industry group that tracks securities ownership says it’s working on tools to shift some records for one $2 trillion market to the shared-ledger technology.

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Read past the headline, people.

Anand Sanwal, the CEO of CBInsights—a research firm that tracks investment in startups—had an idea for an April Fools’ Day joke that made fun of Silicon Valley’s unicorns and the venture capitalists who fund them.

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Photographer Helena Price’s touching project features designers, engineers, and product managers who break white-bro stereotypes.

“I was born in Thailand in 1980 in a refugee camp near the border of Thailand and Cambodia.”

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The Community Screening Series helps prisoners connect to each other, the world outside, and new educational opportunities.

The poster on the wall was a kind of marquee. “TRIBECA FILM INSTITUTE COMMUNITY SCREENING SERIES — ‘3 ½ MINUTES, 10 BULLETS’ — FEBRUARY 17TH, 2016.” But the venue was very different from the usual fare of Tribeca, best known for its glamorous annual film festival in New York, founded by Robert De Niro. Tonight’s screening was in Otisville Correctional Facility, a medium-security state prison about 60 miles northwest of Manhattan. The audience was a roomful of prisoners in muted green and maroon clothing, several of whom were serving out life sentences.

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Audrey Cooper is the paper’s first female editor in chief in its 151-year history, and she’s not afraid to shake things up.

Audrey Cooper, editor-in-chief of the San Francisco Chronicle, wants to give San Francisco a media outlet that reflects its role in the disruptive economy. Like the entrepreneurs the Chronicle reports on, Cooper isn’t afraid to innovate.

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