The Decade That Decides AI

Rows of high-performance computing servers in a data center

Artificial intelligence could reshape civilization within ten years. Whether humans stay in control of that process is still an open question. In early September 2026, an artificial intelligence researcher named Jacob Coxon published a resignation statement that cut through the…

Borrowed Organs

Surgeons performing an organ transplant operation in an operating room

As human donors fall short, biotech companies are rewriting animal biology in a race to make transplantable organs at scale. Opening On January 25, 2025, a surgical team at Massachusetts General Hospital completed an operation that experimental medicine had chased…

Childhood for Sale

Child creating video content with a camera on a tripod

How the creator economy turned children into income streams while labor protections failed to follow them home. I. The Childhood That Never Goes Off Camera When twenty-one-year-old Shari Franke sat before the Utah Legislature’s Business and Labor Interim Committee in…

The Cities That Are Sinking

Buildings standing beside rising water in a sinking urban area

How groundwater extraction and urban development are lowering coastal cities as the seas rise I. The Ground Is Moving Across low-lying coastal plains and river deltas around the world, long-term tide gauges and satellite radar networks record a persistent physical…

The Volatility Tax

Retail price tag attached to a pair of jeans

How Real-Time Algorithms Turned Everyday Price Tags into Moving Targets I. The Price Tag Used to Sit Still For more than a century of modern mass-market retail in Europe and the United States, an ordinary transaction rested on an assumption:…

The Hiring Mirage

Person searching and marking job listings in a newspaper

Inside the ghost job economy where millions apply for jobs that may never be filled You find a position that matches your background. You spend an evening adjusting your resume, tightening your cover letter, and completing the questionnaire on the…

You Bought It, They Remote-Brick It

Smartphone and remote control used with connected home electronics

How tech companies turned physical ownership into a temporary software lease. I. The Thing That Still Works On the morning of April 9, 2024, Dropcam home security cameras mounted above front doors and living-room baseboards quietly stopped functioning. Google had…

The Face Is the New Credit Card

Traveler passing through a biometric airport gate using facial recognition

How biometrics are turning the body into a credential for airports, payments, transit, and everyday life I. The Credential You Cannot Drop Imagine an enrolled traveler at Terminal 3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. Her phone stays…