When the company behind Virtual Children creates a reality TV show called "The Substitute," 10 couples compete to raise a Virtual Child from birth to age 18 in a nine-month period where the prize is the right to keep their virtual child or risk it all for the chance of a real baby.

In 1994 it would have taken about seven days to send someone a copy your holiday snaps. Now using a digital camera and email it takes about ten minutes. This fast-moving documentary takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the world of convergence. Technology change: In the early days computers were huge and needed to be kept in air-conditioned rooms. Next they moved to the desktop and the internet was developed. Memory and processing power increased, and...

Robert Langdon, Harvard professor of symbology and religious iconology, arrives at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to attend the unveiling of a discovery that "will change the face of science forever." The evening's host is his friend and former student, Edmond Kirsch, a forty-year-old tech magnate whose dazzling inventions and audacious predictions have made him a controversial figure around the world. This evening is to be no exception: he claims he...

This frighteningly prophetic tale from the progenitor of modern science fiction remains as powerful today as when it was written-more than a century ago. Firebrand activist Graham falls into a drug-induced sleep in 1897 London-and is stunned to wake in the year 2100 to a world he does not know. But the world knows him. When word spreads that the "Sleeper" has awakened, it rocks the foundations of what the planet has become: a dystopian existence...

Explore the science, innovation and sheer genius it takes to transform the most basic ingredients into powerhouse machines. From aircraft to big rigs to earth movers, venture deep inside factories and witness the hard work and craftsmanship necessary to build these incredible machines. Uncover the hidden stories of human ingenuity that have transformed the earth's most essential raw materials into monumental marvels of modern technology. Natural resources,...

The highway truck — a modern workhorse, a heavy hauler vital to commerce — carries an 80,000-pound payload and must operate in every condition from sub-zero cold to triple-digit heat. To survive, it must be strong, durable and fuel-efficient, like the Mack Pinnacle, an engineering achievement made possible by platinum, petroleum, copper, manganese and polyurethane.

To extract precious metals found beneath the earth requires a massive 232-ton, two-story-tall dump truck with a load capacity of 320 tons — a giant earth-mover like the Komatsu 930E. This amazing engineering achievement is made possible by five essential raw ingredients: coal, chromium, mineral oil, latex rubber and sulphuric acid, an electron superhighway that generates massive power.

Successful innovations must be desirable to consumers, technically feasible, and viable from a business point of view. But how do you meet these requirements? Tim Brown advocates using the three stages of "design thinking": inspiration, ideation, and implementation. For inspiration, innovators must look at the world through the eyes and the ears of users, perhaps studying analogous situations or extreme users to spark a generative process. Ideation,...

It's Watergate. On servers.

On the eve of the presidential election, a conspiracy threatens to alter the outcome of the vote—and the future of American politics. At the heart of the plot is a powerful computer program, aimed at rooting out hypocrisy among politicians to expose their truths . . . and ours. Left to unravel the conspiracy is a bitter, hotheaded former journalist, but he's just not sure he cares enough to get to the bottom

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The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.