The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. Well friends, here we are again: awards season. Not only that, it’s the second awards season to happen amidst a major Covid-19 case surge that makes red carpets and big galas unadvisable […]

Jacob Loewenstein started off his talk at the Augmented World Expo by apologizing. It was a small crowd—fewer than a hundred people, masked and spaced apart in Ballroom B of the Santa Clara Convention Center in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, waiting to hear about collaboration software. Loewenstein is the head of business development […]

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that “the algorithm” knows you better than you know yourself. A computer can supposedly predict whether you’ll quit your job or break up with your partner. With 1,000 words of your writing, it can determine your age within four years. And no algorithm seems closer to omniscience than TikTok’s, which […]

So what’s a better way to think about addressing these problems from a design perspective? This question is one of the reasons why we founded the Institute, because there’s actually been a handful of things that have been tried in the space, to varying degrees of success, but a lot of that knowledge exists within […]

At any of these space stations, NASA will be the “anchor tenant,” Mastracchio says. But as the commercial space travel market grows, the station will host other visitors, which could include those coming for tourism, sports, entertainment, and advertising. In fact, how the ISS’s successor takes shape and which additional modules get prioritized for development […]

At any of these space stations, NASA will be the “anchor tenant,” Mastracchio says. But as the commercial space travel market grows, the station will host other visitors, which could include those coming for tourism, sports, entertainment, and advertising. In fact, how the ISS’s successor takes shape and which additional modules get prioritized for development […]

With bots and console resellers snatching away many people’s chance to directly purchase a PlayStation 5 or a new OLED Switch, virtual reality headsets were a popular gift during the holiday season. The Meta (Oculus) Quest 2 in particular experienced a surge in corresponding app downloads heading into the new year. Whether you’re finished slashing […]

There’s more to sex than the physical engineering—which is why technology alone can’t solve all the problems it claims to.

The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter. Almost exactly one year ago, Warner Bros. made a rather startling announcement: In 2021, all of the movies on its slate would be released on HBO Max the same day they hit […]

Almost from the beginning of the Covid pandemic, reports have accumulated of persistent, weird, disabling symptoms in survivors, a syndrome that’s come to be known as long Covid. The complex of fatigue, confusion, heart arrhythmias, gut disorders, and other problems—which may persist months after an infection begins, or arise months after it seems to have […]