Science

Science Times: The Future of Computing
What’s next? If we had a supercomputer that could predict the future, we would tell you. Then again, if the past is any guide, the predictions would certainly be wrong. This special issue takes a many-faceted look at a set of technologies that are changing the world in more ways than could ever have been foreseen. Some things are clear already: The world of innovation is undergoing tectonic shifts, and the future is likely to look less like Silicon Valley, more like China and Africa. Beyond that? As Theodor Holm Nelson points out in the essay that concludes this issue, we are definitely headed somewhere: “A wall? A cliff? A new dawn? We must choose wisely, as if we could.”
John Hersey

What’s next? If we had a supercomputer that could predict the future, we would tell you. Then again, if the past is any guide, the predictions would certainly be wrong. This special issue takes a many-faceted look at a set of technologies that are changing the world in more ways than could ever have been foreseen. Some things are clear already: The world of innovation is undergoing tectonic shifts, and the future is likely to look less like Silicon Valley, more like China and Africa. Beyond that? As Theodor Holm Nelson points out in the essay that concludes this issue, we are definitely headed somewhere: “A wall? A cliff? A new dawn? We must choose wisely, as if we could.”

Power in Numbers: China Aims for High-Tech Primacy

A lab worker with the Tianhe-1A, a Chinese supercomputer, at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China.
Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

A lab worker with the Tianhe-1A, a Chinese supercomputer, at the National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin, China.

China’s booming economy and growing technological infrastructure may thrust it to the forefront of the next generation of computing, many American experts say.

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Creating Artificial Intelligence Based on the Real Thing

Facing the physical limits of conventional design, researchers work to design a computing architecture that more closely resembles that of the brain.

Vast and Fertile Ground in Africa for Science to Take Root

Computer science study in Africa shows great promise, with one Ugandan university even charting its own course in many aspects of mobile computing ahead of the developed world.

Graphic: State of the Art

A snapshot of the rapidly changing world of computing, communications and technology.

IN THE LAB From left, Fred Ford, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden worked on the prototype of a farming robot.
Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

IN THE LAB From left, Fred Ford, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden worked on the prototype of a farming robot.

The business of Silicon Valley today is less about focusing on an industry than it is about a continuous process of innovation with technology, across a widening swath of fields.

A Conversation With George Dyson

Looking Backward to Put New Technologies in Focus

The science historian George Dyson, author of the new book “Turing’s Cathedral,” talks about the genius of Alan Turing and John von Neumann, and growing up in the birthplace of the H-bomb.

A High-Stakes Search Continues for Silicon’s Successor

As silicon processors grow more packed with each generation, they lose efficiency, and researchers are looking for a new medium.

Out of a Writer’s Imagination Came an Interactive World

The author Neal Stephenson’s reputation for prescience about the online world is well earned, even if he regards it lightly.

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An artist's conception of stars moving in the central regions of a giant elliptical galaxy that harbors a black hole.
Lynette Cook/Gemini Observatory via Nature, via Associated Press

An artist's conception of stars moving in the central regions of a giant elliptical galaxy that harbors a black hole.

Cosmologists have measured the biggest black holes ever found, work that could shed light on the formation and evolution of galaxies.

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Search Resumes for Evidence of Life Out There

An effort to find radio signals from extraterrestrial civilizations starts anew using an innovative set of radio telescopes.

Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by 5.9 percent in 2010, upending the notion that a brief decline during the recession might persist.

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Plunging Deep (in Pockets) to See Titanic at 100

There are many ways to mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s most famous shipwreck, but time is running out for a submersible trip to the deep.

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Video: Steven Pinker

An interview with the Harvard psychologist and linguist on violence, language and Twitter.

Slide Show: Science, Skin and Ink

Photographs of science tattoos from the book “Science Ink,” by Carl Zimmer.

Podcast: Science Times
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This week: The future of computing and the poetry of medicine.

Predicting the Future of Computing

Readers are invited to make predictions and collaboratively edit this timeline on the future of computing.

Essays on Computing

Taking Faster and Smarter to New Physical Frontiers

From scheduling conference rooms to rooting out incipient tumors, computers that can go to the information that we care greatly about

Leave the Driving to the Car, and Reap Benefits in Safety and Mobility

A Google team’s self-driving cars have traveled nearly 200,000 miles on public highways in California and Nevada, 100 percent safely.

Death Knell for the Lecture: Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education

Until now, it has been hard to see how to make individualized education affordable. But advances in technology may provide a path to this goal.

Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines

Quantum computing is one of the most exciting things happening in science right now. Just not for the reasons you usually hear.

In Planning Digital Defenses, the Biggest Obstacle Is Human Ingenuity

Anticipating security threats is not merely a matter of reasoning abstractly about how new technology might raise new risks; it requires an understanding of human nature.

An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe

With a harvest of data from a wired planet, computing has evolved from sensing local information to analyzing it to being able to control it.

In an Open-Source Society, Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants

The Internet is a belief system, a philosophy about the effectiveness of decentralized, bottom-up innovation. And it’s a philosophy that has begun to change how we think about creativity itself.

Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer

Computer scientists may have the best skills — they can use machines, algorithms and the wisdom of the crowd — to fight cancer.

Full Speed Ahead, Without a Map, Into New Realms of Possibility

We are in a world nobody designed or expected, driving full tilt toward — a wall? a cliff? a new dawn? We must choose wisely, as if we could.

China Is Poised for an I.T. Golden Age

Open platforms, low development costs and a huge and growing market put China in line to emerge as a leader in computing innovation.

New Tools for New Computing Challenges

In whatever forms it takes, we can expect the interplay between computing and networking to increase, creating rich, unexpected and intimate fusions.

Opinion
Dot Earth Blog

More on the 'Sensitive' Climate Question

Can studies of Earth's cold times help clarify what lies ahead as greenhouse gases build?

Science, Environment and Health Series | Special Sections