Technology & Innovation

From low-tech gadgets enabling livelihoods in remote African villages to satellites that spy on human rights abusers, a look at some (not necessarily sexy) technologies shaping the future.

What can and should government do to protect personal data in the burgeoning digital economy? Should we have opt-in or opt-out rules? The former would inflict a consumer price.

Email marketing is considered unappealing and annoying for almost a third of recipients yet it is the biggest channel by far in the growing digital marketing sector in the Middle East.

With oil now over $112 per barrel, is it time to panic? While the American psyche is disproportionately influenced by oil prices, our economy is suited to weather the current storm.

While China’s rise as a global power is often a foregone conclusion, it faces crucial challenges in the years ahead: a real estate bubble, a transitioning economy and political unrest. 

China’s rising credit agency Dagong Global has downgraded the credit rating of the U.S., Britain and Germany while raising China’s. Is power in the global financial network in flux?

With endless updates and alerts from social media informing us how much fun our friends are having in their lives, a new psychological problem of the digital era is arising: The fear of missing out. 

Katrina gave New Orleans two stories to tell: One of disaster and another of innovation. Since 2007, the city has produced far more entrepreneurs than most American cities. 

In the growing industry of cloud computing, I.B.M. is defining the market away from companies like Amazon by wooing bigger customers with promises of security and backup guarantees. 

Nicole Ferraro says Facebook is somewhat upfront about how many people actually use its site but Twitter claims it has 175 million registered users yet fails to say how many are active.

Consumer-oriented cloud applications make it really easy for employees to share sensitive corporate documents, maybe too easy, warns Maria Korolov.

For the first time, Australians can turn off behavioural advertising used on the websites of most of the country’s major online advertisers.

While losing work is stressful, recent findings show wellbeing associated with disengagement at work may result in an equal if not greater drop in wellbeing than unemployment.

The undoing of the company began when a potential investor, after months of search, was ready to put up $1M, but made it clear the founder would have to be replaced.

Three key elements of Behance’s project management: “Google Docs spreadsheets, Zendesk help desk software, and our own Action Method task management system.”

The Wall Street Journal reports a top government economist’s radical solution to India’s corruption scandals: Paying bribes should be legal.

Amid much schedule-juggling due to her son’s minor illness, Michele Corey had some insights including the need to stop being on autopilot, focus on what most matters and ask for help.

The future of the green cloud may, in fact, be determined by our action or inaction on seemingly unrelated battles like Cap & Trade, says government cloud computing advisor, Kevin Jackson.

The world may have no more than half a century of oil left at current rates of consumption, the British bank H.S.B.C. warns in a new report, as developing countries’ demand surges to new levels.

The future of economic growth lies in the population centers of developing nations, but will emerging-market cities be healthy enough to drive rapid economic growth?

Google is offering to add a social twist to Web searches, in a bold offensive to prevent Facebook and other social-networking companies from gaining an upper hand in Web innovation.

Eight business and social media experts explain how businesses can—and indeed must—use social media to expand their sphere of influence, attracting customers and shaping opinion.

Should more be done to limit companies like Apple from staking claims to generic words and phrases? What’s the harm in this kind of appropriation of language?

Fifteen million iPads were sold last year. Charles Arthur looks at the impact of tablet computers on the way we relate to technology and users reveal how their work lives changed.

What if the most innovative kids’ property today was not a TV show, but a website? For Aardman Animations’ head of broadcast, Moshi Monsters leads the way.

Why and how online ad sites need to catch up in terms of aesthetics and usability. They should integrate social recommendations and filter the chaos, for starters.

Mobile apps will get most traction in HR’s workforce management — time and attendance and absence management — perfectly meeting the needs of a distributed, mobile workforce.

Traditional media advertising remains a more effective driver of online traffic than the social networking equivalent, a multimarket study has found.

Do Not Track allows us to veto tracking by third parties, who are welcome to respond by offering cash-for-data. It creates a market mechanism for negotiating over privacy preferences.

Big Think spoke to The New York Times chief theater critic, Ben Brantley, about the present and future state of journalism and online criticism.