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• Fall 2025

  Tracing the Roots of Motion Capture

  

  Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s pioneering motion studies laid the groundwork for the sophisticated systems used in biomechanics, animation, and virtual environments today.

• Winter 2025

  AI and Copyright Law

  In “Who Is Responsible for AI Copyright Infringement?” (Issues, Fall 2024), Michael P. Goodyear presents a novel argument for treating AI systems as legal persons capable of direct liability for… Read More

• November 21, 2025

  Subsidence

  The AI boom means more demands on data centers—and running a data center requires complex technical infrastructure, vast environmental resources, and experienced human talent. In E. G. Condé’s story, a labyrinthine data center is in the middle of a massive outage. When the corporation that owns the center fails to diagnose the problem provoking the outage with its fancy technical systems, it’s forced to turn to human intuition to sniff out a more fundamental dilemma.

• June 17, 2025

  Neil Chilson Helps Turn Knowledge Into Benefits for Humanity

  Neil Chilson, Jason Lloyd

  Neil Chilson, head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute, discusses what it’s like to work at a policy think tank, the questions about artificial intelligence that motivate his work, and why he is optimistic about our technological future.

• Summer 2024

  What We Talk About When We Talk About Impact

  David H. Guston

  When most people talk about “impact,” they often imagine one thing physically hitting another, for example, the impact of the meteorite that scientists think was responsible for killing off the dinosaurs—and leaving,… Read More

• October 31, 2025

  Coser y Cantar

  What does ethical fashion look like? Gabriela Damián Miravete’s story explores transborder labor and the future of the textile industry.

• Summer 2024

  What Can Artificial Intelligence Learn From Nature?

  Refik Anadol Studio

  

  Living Archive: Nature showcases the output from the Large Nature Model (LNM) by Refik Anadol Studio. Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles maintains a research practice centered around discovering and developing novel… Read More

• Spring 2025

  A Fragile Network

  Recent events are putting significant stress on the public and private research university ecosystem—the lifeblood of American innovation.

• December 3, 2024

  A Cutting-Edge Bureaucracy

  Natalie B. Aviles, Jason Lloyd

  The word “bureaucracy” conjures up images of red tape and long lines at the DMV, not cutting-edge innovation. But some of the most significant scientific and health innovations of the past century… Read More

• Spring 2025

  If These Walls Could Talk

  Kathryn Freeman, Matt Moment

  

  In her enchanting narrative paintings, Kathryn Freeman imagines a world where people coexist with flora and fauna in moments of leisure and creativity.

• Winter 2024

  A Scientific “Forced Marriage” Takes on the Mysteries of the Loop Current

  Virginia Gewin

  As it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the shape-shifting stream of tropical water known as the Loop Current passes between the Yucatan Peninsula to the west and Cuba to the east. When… Read More

• Fall 2024

  Who Is Responsible for AI Copyright Infringement?

  Michael P. Goodyear

  Twenty-one-year-old college student Shane hopes to write a song for his boyfriend. In the past, Shane would have had to wait for inspiration to strike, but now he can use generative artificial… Read More

• November 12, 2024

  Biodesign Challenge

  The Biodesign Challenge bridges art, design, and biotech to engage students and the public in dialogue about the implications of emerging biotech. Read more about the project in “What Is Biodesign?” by… Read More

• August 8, 2025

  The Song Between Worlds

  On a future Mars overrun by wealthy tourists, a young explorer ventures out to hear an elusive Martian song vocalized by the long-time residents of the planet. But they quickly run up against what it really means to seek—and share—intangible cultural goods.

• Summer 2023

  To Save Society from Digital Tech, Enable Scrutiny of How Policies Are Implemented

  Ido Sivan-Sevilla

  In May 2023, the leaders of the G7 nations called for “guardrails” to limit potential damage caused by artificial intelligence (AI). Days later, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed ChatGPT,… Read More

• Winter 2025

  Centering Patients in Long COVID Research

  Brian Vastag

  In 2021, Robert DeRosa sought treatment for crushing fatigue, unexplained pains, loss of teeth, gastrointestinal distress, and other symptoms that had persisted for nearly a year following a COVID-19 infection. His physician,… Read More

• June 13, 2025

  All That Burns Unseen

  When a government worker is charged with collecting data from the fire-ravaged community she grew up in, she gets help from an unexpected ally: a fire-fighting drone.

• Summer 2024

  The Power of Space Art

  One of the remarkable qualities of space art is its ability to amplify the mysterious intangibility of the cosmos (as with the late-nineteenth-century French artist Étienne Trouvelot) and at the same time… Read More

• May 30, 2025

  The Shade Technician

  In a heat-sieged city whose residents have become functionally nocturnal, an essential worker labors during the day to fix private shade structures designed to provide shelter from the grueling sun for anyone who can pay.

• May 30, 2025

  The Limits of Heat Resilience

  How resilient to extreme heat can humans really be? Our bodies have a limit—and our response to climate change should reflect that.

• Summer 2024

  Supporting Scientific Citizens

  Lisa Margonelli

  What do nuclear fusion power plants, artificial intelligence, hydrogen infrastructure, and drinking water recycled from human waste have in common? Aside from being featured in this edition of Issues, they all… Read More

• May 14, 2025

  How Did Science Become So Polarizing?

  For most of the past half century, Americans of both parties expressed high levels of trust in science, coinciding with bipartisan support for investment in scientific research. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, however, … Read More

• May 9, 2025

  Ride

  Jasmine, a hotel worker in a future climate-ravaged Hawaii, is desperate for a change to her monotonous routine. When a guest tells Jasmine about a secret hack to tinker with the taxi-share system the island’s workers rely on, she’s forced to ride with some unusual fellow commuters, who change her mind about what her true destination should be.

• Spring 2025

  War Is Us

  John Alic

  Richard Overy is a preeminent historian of war, especially the Second World War. He is perhaps best known for Why the Allies Won, which seems to me the finest account of… Read More

• Winter 2021

  Natural Historians of the Industrial Landscape

  Julie Anand

  

  Hilla and Bernd Becher were a collaborative duo of German conceptual art photographers who profoundly changed the way artists saw the post-World War II landscape. For more than 40 years, they studied… Read More

• January 16, 2024

  Ground Truths Are Human Constructions

  Florian Jaton

  Artificial intelligence algorithms are human-made, cultural constructs, something I saw first-hand as a scholar and technician embedded with AI teams for 30 months. Among the many concrete practices and materials these algorithms… Read More

• March 14, 2025

  When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis

  Robot, a disease-detecting drone, has been meticulously trained to gather public health data in hard-to-reach communities—and to use that data to stymie the spread of dangerous viruses. But when the public health authorities responsible for Robot are defunded, it’s forced to assemble a new team to keep its communities safe.

• Fall 2024

  The Puzzle of Pricing the Future

  R. David Simpson

  Liliana Doganova describes her book, Discounting the Future: The Ascendency of a Political Technology, as a study in the “historical sociology” of discounting. Discounting—determining what value to place on income in… Read More

• Summer 2022

  Exploring the Depths of Scientific Patronage

  Deborah Poskanzer

  Naomi Oreskes’s Science on a Mission is really three books in one. It’s a history of the fruitful partnership between American oceanographers and the US Navy, focused on ocean research undertaken in… Read More

• February 28, 2025

  Mothering the Bay

  When a busy BART train suddenly screeches to a stop deep under the San Francisco Bay, passengers turn to personalized AI agents to understand what’s happened—but they begin to realize that those agents may obscure more than they illuminate.