Oct 15 Watch 7:25 Did air conditioning play a role in Reagan’s election? Searching for ripple effects of history-making tech By PBS News Hour In the new book and PBS series “How We Got to Now,” Steven Johnson presents six game-changing innovations and how they shaped the modern world. Hari Sreenivasan talks to Johnson about surprising connections between invention and American society. Continue watching
Oct 14 Watch In ‘Innovators,’ Isaacson tells story of digital revolutionaries By PBS News Hour After profiling visionary individuals like Benjamin Franklin and Steve Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson has turned his attention to a whole group of creative minds, weaving the tale of the many inventive thinkers who launched the digital revolution. Judy Woodruff sits… Continue watching
Oct 03 Quiz: Do you know what these patented inventions do? By Laura Santhanam In this quiz, see if you can identify what some devices were designed to do based on renderings submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Continue reading
Sep 18 Dustbusters, pacemakers and seven other inventions NASA science made possible By Laura Santhanam NASA announced this week that the agency would partner with the private sector to send astronauts to the International Space Station. The space agency awarded contracts to aerospace companies, Boeing and SpaceX. Together, they will send commercial crews into… Continue reading
Jun 19 How innovation in oil and gas production is giving the U.S. a competitive edge By Robert Bryce U.S. oil and natural gas output is soaring. But less than a decade ago, no one saw it coming. Even industry executives were signalling that production had peaked. But innovations that have made drilling technology "smaller, faster, lighter, denser, cheaper"… Continue reading
Jun 18 How America can overcome the challenges of an aging population By Milton Ezrati America has always projected virtues of youth, overwhelming the world with its brute force. But demographic challenges, namely an aging workforce and low birth rates, mean the American economy has some adjusting to do. That's a good thing, says economist… Continue reading
May 23 The critique of Piketty and his reply By Thomas Piketty Former Harvard president Larry Summers admires the research of "rock star" French economist Thomas Piketty, but he's been skeptical that innovation and entrepreneurship don't have more to do with the high rate of return on capital. Innovation is great, Piketty… Continue reading
Nov 15 Watch Astro Teller talks playing the ‘moonshot game’ Astro Teller talks playing the 'moonshot game'… Continue watching