The 35th Anniversary Issue
As the power and potential of science and technology continue to grow, the insights that motivated the creation of Issues in Science and Technology become ever more pertinent. Society needs vibrant, well-informed debate about matters of science and technology policy. This 35th anniversary issue advances the debate, with insightful, independent essays on broadband access, sex and sport, the social sciences, decarbonization, and much more.
Editor's Journal
No End in Sight
Issues in Science and Technology began publication in the fall of 1984. Frank Press, president of the National Academy of Sciences at that time, explained that the magazine was “an independent journal”… Read More
Forum
Shock and Thaw
Read MorePowering Energy Innovation
Read MoreSocial Media Pollution
Read MoreSocializing Artificial Intelligence
Read MoreExpanding the CRISPR Conversation
Read MoreEcology Under Threat?
Read MoreProtecting the Census
Read MoreInside Research Ethics
Read MoreTroubles in Climate Journalism
Read More
Gallery
Fragmentation
Seth Clark’s collages and sculpture focus on deteriorating architecture. Usually designed for permanence, buildings are constantly being challenged by geological, meteorological, and other external forces. Clark enjoys studying the way they fall… Read More
Perspectives
Climate Emergency Politics Is Dangerous
A widespread popular movement over the past year or so has been insisting that ongoing climate change warrants the formal declaration of a “climate emergency.” This movement has been most salient in… Read MoreShould We Privatize Censorship?
Read MoreThe United States increasingly relies on the private sector to carry out missions that were once considered largely the mission of the state. The result is a legal, ethical, and administrative mess.
Socrates Untenured: The Social Media Problem Is Worse Than You Think
In 2016, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the organization responsible for much of the Russian state-sponsored social media campaign documented in the Mueller report, created a Facebook group called “Being Patriotic.” In… Read MoreIncorporating Ethics Into Technology Assessment
Despite concerns about a slowdown in technological innovation—as expressed recently by the entrepreneur Peter Thiel, the economist Tyler Cowen, and others—humankind is poised to make transformational scientific and technological strides in the… Read MoreSciences, Publics, Politics: Mindfulness Inc.
In February 2014, protestors from Eviction Free San Francisco walked on stage at the annual Wisdom 2.0 conference, interrupting a Google-sponsored corporate panel on “3 Steps to Build Corporate Mindfulness the Google… Read More
Gallery
On Earth: Imaging, Technology, and the Natural World
Since its inception,
photography has testified to the complex relationship between humans, nature,
and technology. In the wake of great nineteenth-century landscape
photographers, a new generation of artists are employing contemporary imaging… Read More
Features
An Innovation Agenda for Hard-to-Decarbonize Energy Sectors
Technological innovation is essential for fighting climate change. In the United States, both political parties actually agree on this key point, but neither party has yet developed an innovation agenda that matches… Read MoreThe Kids Are Online—and Alright
Ninety-five percent of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one; 45% of them say they are online on a near-constant basis. Some adolescents become entangled in inappropriate or… Read MoreRetrofitting Social Science for the Practical & Moral
I earned a PhD at Stanford University in the early 1960s. My dissertation adviser, the political scientist Heinz Eulau, was principal investigator of a project interviewing members of 57 city councils in… Read MoreWho’s Afraid of Roundup?
In May 2019, a California jury awarded $2 billion to a husband and wife who claimed that the weed-killer Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The defendant in the suit was Bayer AG,… Read MoreWhat’s Behind Technological Hype?
The percentage of start-up companies in the United States that are profitable at the time of their initial public stock offering has dropped to levels not seen since the 1990s dotcom stock… Read MoreScience, Sport, Sex, and the Case of Caster Semenya
In the summer of 1945, Harry Shapiro, the chair and curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, revealed to the public Norma and Normman, two statues… Read More
Book Reviews
Science and Society
The Chinese scientist He Jiankui’s 2018 announcement of the birth of twin girls whom he had genetically modified to be resistant to HIV stunned both the scientific community and society at large.… Read More
An Unsettling History
In the days and weeks after the horrific dual mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, in early August 2019, the national conversation focused once again—how disturbing that phrase, “once… Read More
Dental Exam
The Tales Teeth Tell aims to introduce readers to the wonderful world of teeth and what they can tell us about human evolution. In the field of evolutionary anthropology, teeth have long… Read More
Critical Rejection
In her 1930 essay “On Being Ill,” Virginia Woolf laments the absence of a literature of illness. “Considering how common illness is,” she writes, “how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings,… Read More