Adam Rothstein is a blogger, tech thinker, unemployed philosopher�and now, a beta tester of one of the coveted Google Chrome notebook computers. In the first of four posts about the beta experience, Adam finds that the unnanounced arrival of the device makes him feel like a combination of The Matrix's Neo and a Milo from The Phantom Tollbooth.

The Internet doesn't want you to think about it too much, but you never really know what you're looking for. Evoking the presence of 17th-century savant John Dee, Scryberspace cracks open the search experience.

Michelle Obama teams up with Walmart to fight obesity and bring down the cost of healthy food. But the problems of processed food emerged from yesterday's answers to questions of purity, safety, and health; will the future be any different? The latest in our series on the science and technology of food, co-produced with GOOD.

Cupertino opens up the north forty for farming as app-culture's Green Revolution continues apace.

Medical gadgets and the iPhone would seem like a match made in heaven, but device makers have had a hard time finding appealing solutions. Is a blood pressure cuff the perfect fit?

A laboratory in Montana that limns the bases of avian flight; a tumblr that collects evidence of our airborne technological fantasies.

An international group of scientists proposes a "knowledge collider" to bring supercomputing to bear on social problems. While crunching the numbers won't be a problem, figuring out what they mean will prove more challenging.

During next week's CES, you'll rarely hear a single word about why you should really care about the devices debuting there... but is that really so surprising when even the electronics makers at CES can't answer as simple a question as why their gadgets matter?

Exotic lighter-than-air craft�including argon- and methane-filled balloons and hopping dirigibles�offer tantalizing prospects for future missions to Saturn's largest moon.

Perspectives on the FCC's recent net neutrality ruling leave us thinking about the the rise of the app and the enclosure of the commons.