Journal

Meet the Jenny Holzer of small-town America.

Whenever photographer Victoria Crayhon goes on a road trip, she makes sure to bring along a few packets of marquee letters. That way, if she comes across an old movie or motel marquee sign that looks like it’s seen better days, she can leave her own clever inscription on it. Over the past 14 years, Crayhon has left her roadside messages on signs all across the country and documented them in her brilliant photo series Thoughts On Romance From The Road.

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“A long time ago, in an African savannah far, far away…”

Although there’s plenty of aliens in the Star Wars canon, most of the main heroes and villains look human. But why human? The universe existed a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. In that context, it would make just as much logical sense for these characters to look like elephants, hippos, or rhinoceroses as it would for them to be human.

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Power to the people.

There’s a silent battle happening in cafes, offices, and even your own home. It’s about who lays claim to the valuable power outlets. As we carry more electronics with us and the ball and chain of a regular office desk are unshackled, it’s only natural that demand outweighs supply. (And good luck finding three separate outlets at the airport for your laptop, phone, Kindle, and camera.) Zolt’s Laptop Charger Plus, a pocket-friendly adapter, seeks to make it a little easier to power up multiple devices at the same time.

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The exhibition is about how coding can take personalization to the extreme, curator Ginger Gregg Duggan says.

Innovation within the fashion world has yielded some wildly inventive things: generative textile prints, statuesque kicks, and wearables that give you superpowers. But what interests Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox—curators of Coded Couture, a forthcoming exhibition at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery—is how designers are using technology as an essential part of their regular creative process.

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The automaker is hiring robotics expert Gill Pratt—and investing $1 billion in R&D labs near Stanford and MIT.

Toyota has big plans for artificial intelligence—and not just in cars. The automaker is earmarking $1 billion in funds for a new subsidiary called the Toyota Research Institute (TRI). The R&D firm will focus on building artificial intelligence products for automobiles and the home.

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Instagram appears to be testing using the iPhone’s newest functionality to make better ads.

Instagram is experimenting with new advertisements that use the iPhone’s 3D Touch functionality. The advertisements, which are believed to be still in the testing and development phase, let customers apply added force to their clicks in order to browse between multiple photos.

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New technology lets computers understand what they see in an image—or a million images.

Data analytics firm Orbital Insight is partnering with the World Bank to test technology that could help measure global poverty using satellite imagery and artificial intelligence.

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In part 1 of this new series, Gregory Ferenstein explores the belief systems of Silicon Valley’s elite, from immigration to education.

Over the course of my career as a technology journalist, I’ve found that Silicon Valley is home to a unique political and moral ideology: a pro-business liberalism that often gets mistaken as libertarianism. Philosophically, people who found Internet startups (“founders”) are best described as idealists: They believe that there is always a better solution to problems, a solution that benefits most people and reduces conflict.

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We talked to some of the most forward-thinking influencers we know to find out why art is changing, and how brands should change with it.

A conversation about the future is inseparable from a conversation about technology. The increasing role of and dependence on smart devices and the quickening march toward an absolute Internet of Things that simultaneously maps where we are and where we’re going—the world of tomorrow has never seemed so close to today.

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We spoke to people who have helped build successful, seemingly enduring companies about what it takes to create a meaningful business.

It’s now easier than ever to launch a company. But while 400,000 businesses flood the market in the United States every year, the vast majority of these will never get off the ground, much less be around in five years. By some estimates 80% percent of all startups will crash and burn.

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