Real policemen hardly recognize any resemblance between their lives and what they see on TV. The first difference is that a policeman's real life revolves round criminal law. He has to know exactly wh
To live in the United States today is to gain an appreciation for Dahrendorf's assertion that social change exists everywhere. Technology, the application of knowledge for practical ends, is a major s
Now custom has not been commonly regarded as a subject of any great importance. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinki
More and more, the operations of our businesses, governments, and financial institutions are controlled by information that exists only inside computer memories. Anyone clever enough to modify this in
It looksrather like a futuristic stretch limousine, but its actual function is rather more populist: the Superbus is a novel public transport system being developed in the Netherlands by the Delft Uni
Formany people, "biometrics" conjures up images of a Big Brotherish surveillance society. But tell them they could save a few precious seconds at the supermarket checkout just by waving thei
It wasborn amid a blaze of hype at the height of the dotcom boom, but initially failed to thrive. Indeed, Bluetooth, a shortrange wireless technology used to interconnect portable devices, has been
What if architects could build living systems rather than static buildings-dynamic structures that modify their internal and external forms in response to changes in their environment? This provocativ
Coal has several advantages as a fuel. It is abundant. It is widely distributed: countries that are short of other fossil fuels, such as Germany and South Africa, have mountains of it. As a result, it
If there was ever an industry vulnerable to technological change, it would have to be selling cars in America. For decades a franchise network made up of thousands of dealers has peddled ordinary cars