Author Archive

Derek Thompson

Ideas

3 Theories for Why You Have No Time

Better technology means higher expectations, and higher expectations create more work.

Ideas

The Not-Com Bubble Is Popping

The unicorn massacre unfolding today is exactly the opposite of what happened in 2000.

Ideas

Workism Is Making Americans Miserable

For the college-educated elite, work has morphed into a religious identity—promising identity, transcendence, and community, but failing to deliver.

Emerging Tech

Why Flying Cars Are an Impossible Dream

The air taxi is the Godot of technology: always on its way, never here.

Cybersecurity

How the Grinch Bots Stole Christmas

It’s a Christmas tale for our time: Cyber nerds using high-tech software to buy a slew of baby-monkey robots and holding them ransom for thousands of dollars.

Digital Government

Why Nerds and Nurses Are Taking Over the U.S. Economy

A blockbuster report from government economists forecasts the workforce of 2026—a world of robot cashiers, well-paid math nerds, and so (so, so, so) many healthcare workers.

Emerging Tech

The Secrets of Google’s Moonshot Factory

How the tech giant is trying to leverage the science of breakthroughs and resurrect the lost art of invention

Artificial Intelligence

The Post-Human World

A conversation about the end of work, individualism, and the human species with the historian Yuval Harari

Artificial Intelligence

When Will Robots Take All the Jobs?

There isn’t much evidence from today’s statistics that human workers are on the verge of a historic shift. But just wait until the next recession.

Digital Government

Why Facebook Scares the Media -- And the US Government

Facebook’s potential is without precedent. But its public scrutiny will be unprecedented, too.

Digital Government

The Joys and Sorrows of Late-Night Email

For a certain class of workers, nighttime isn't time off work. It's time on email.

Modernization

Mobile Is Eating Global Attention: 10 Graphs on the State of the Internet

Online photo sharing has sextupled in two years. Nigerians are on their phones 30 percent more than Americans. We now spend more time on mobile than on print and radio combined.

Emerging Tech

What Jobs Will the Robots Take?

Nearly half of American jobs today could be automated in "a decade or two," according to new research. The question is: Which half?

Modernization

The 9 Ways That Twitter Could Fail, According to Twitter

Befitting any young, undeveloped, and unprofitable company, the list of risks is long and wide-ranging.

Modernization

The Most Fascinating Charts From an Epic Slideshow of Internet Trends

Facebook is the only major social network in decline. Saudis share more online than anyone. You check your phone 150 times a day. And much more.

Digital Government

Why Is American Health Care So Ridiculously Expensive?

It would be nice to say that high prices are a bug of our medical system. But they're a feature. They're part of a choice we've made.

Digital Government

Marissa Mayer Is Wrong: Working From Home Can Make You More Productive

The statistical evidence on telecommuting suggests that (1) sometimes people just like to work from home for a change, and (2) they're actually quite good at it