Headline

Why would someone who spent much of his career working for a multinational telecommunications company care so much about preserving “net neutrality?”
That someone would be me. I worked for Vodafone, the British telecom giant that serves Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania, while living in both London and The Hague. I went on to work with young technology companies, then at the U.S. State Department, and …

A:
Test me all night, baby.
No, really. Sign me up to be the subject of A/B testing. I’d even be willing to sign a blanket consent form, right now, so that all of Silicon Valley’s biggest brains can test me for the purpose of improving the human future.
Everybody’s doing it. In fact, you’ve likely been A/B tested without your knowledge if you’ve ever used …

The meaning of blue lies in its contradictions.
The color is associated with introversion and introspection, but it’s also associated with the expansiveness and openness of oceans and skies. It’s a sacred color in the world’s religions, but blue movies are obscene movies. And while the color can represent life in many ways, it’s also true that “when we die, we turn blue,” said art …

Syrian migrants were being rebuffed by their richer neighbors. Walls were being raised to keep out barbarian hordes. Old empires, having closed themselves off to trade, were in decline. Revolutionary religions and philosophies were being exported overseas, stirring up violent conflicts but also forging connections among far-flung peoples.
These were all challenges of the ancient world—times and places far removed from the 21st-century United States. But …

In the March 1942 issue of the journal Modern Hospital, Charles F. Neergaard, a prominent New York City hospital design consultant, published a layout for a hospital inpatient department that was so innovative he copyrighted it. The plan held two nursing units—groups of patient rooms overseen by a single nursing staff—in a single building wing. For each unit, a corridor provided access to a row …

Are Americans finally ready to un-rig their Constitutional system?
I’ve spent nearly the past decade traveling the United States and talking with people about the Constitutional system, and I think the answer is yes.
My work on the question started in 2008, with an experiment called the Constitution Café. These were an evolution of the Socrates Café, public gatherings around the globe (from Tokyo to Sydney to …

You heard it here first: The next bubble to burst in California, perhaps even before Silicon Valley and real estate, just might be the festival bubble.
The festival economy is growing so fast that it runs the risk of overheating. Even after expanding from one weekend to two in 2012, and increasing capacity this past year from 99,000 to 125,000, the Coachella Arts and …

Apparently, these are existential times. During the weeks leading up to last year’s presidential election, The New York Times columnist Charles Blow announced that then-candidate Donald Trump was “America’s existential threat.” A Time magazine opiner, doubling down, declared that Trump was an “existential threat” not just to America, but the rest of the world, too.
More modestly, other voices worried that Trump was an “existential …

In 1917, U.S. Secretary of War Newton Baker disliked the idea of female workers on Army bases so intensely that he didn’t even want to build toilets for them. They might tarry. Females did not belong in the Army, Baker thought, though the more forward-thinking U.S. Navy already had welcomed women into its ranks to replace men in landlubber assignments.
Many adventurous and patriotic young women …

Since the publication of my William the Conqueror in the Yale University Press English Monarchs series in October 2016, I have often been asked how long it took me to write the book. In response, I usually say that it has taken 50 years and three years.
Both numbers are inaccurate, but they contain two essential truths. It was around 50 years ago, as a …