Uncategorized

Hiking Japan’s old pilgrims trail alone, in equal measures soul stirring and blister ripping. Introduction 》 It’s 4:32 AM, May 19, 2025, and I’m walking the Nakasendo Way, a thriving old artery over which samurai and merchants used to tromp between the cities of Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). Today, I’m walking alone, dragging an oversize backpack, […]

Living with the Hamar Tribe Introduction Conversation hums quietly in the background, rhythmic chanting interjecting here and there. Dust flies as young men stand nervously in a line preparing to jump on the back of bulls covered in red ochre. Women chant and clap, their proud, scarred backs glistening in the setting sun. This is Ukuli Bula, the

Welcome to the Mystics of Bhutan It is 4:18 a.m., and I am perched along an icy ridge in the Paro Valley of Bhutan, transfixed by the first rays of dawn striking the Tiger’s Nest Monastery as monks chant thousand-year-old prayers. This new, co-living community in a 12-story downtown building where you rent a private room within

Try this: You walk into a Shanghai factory, May 2025. Robots deftly weld together electric cars that no human hand could ajoin with such precision. In Detroit Michigan a 38-year-old assembly line supervisor is training her staff to monitor cutting edge AI production processes. For some, the prospect of innovation spells efficiency and opportunity. But the pleas of fear

Introduction May 2025. A pupil sitting at a desk in London dissects a virtual cadaver as part of a fully immersive XR-enabled biology lesson. But around the world in Ohio, a factory worker has just been laid off. Now, the company he works for has ditched human-led, on-the-job training in favour of augmented reality (AR) software. These two

Introduction It was a sunny, warm May day in 2025, and the Larsons’ home outside Chicago was now powered entirely by the sun. Their secret? An smart meter with AI capabilities which will decide the most efficient use of their energy, minimizing the amount of wasted electricity. But their enthusiasm turned to unease when they learned that

It’s a busy morning in May 2025, but as a car in Tokyo races by a pedestrian, and somehow misses them, it’s not just any car. Thousands of miles away, a device connected to the home health of an Ohio family is breached, and family members’ sensitive health data is exposed to the ether. There’s a common

The Promise and Perils of a Wired World Introduction May 2025: It is a spring morning. A whiff of technological magic takes place on a remote farm in India. A farmer manages field moisture levels with real-time data from internet of things (IoT) sensors enabled by 5G. In London, a smart-grid network powers the relatively “invisible” workings of a

Global Supervision and Cooperation The disruptive potential of quantum computing is too vast and too potent to leave unchecked. Policymakers and technologists need to come to agreement quickly on global standards for transparency, ethics and testable error accountability. Seventy percent of CIOs will want to see “dedicated guardian offer agents” to be created by 2028 to oversee quantum activities

Introduction May, 2025. A new, lifesaving drug simulation is being tested inside a modest pharmacy here, and it’s driven by the most powerful of computing algorithms: quantum. While in Berlin, across the Atlantic, a top cybersecurity expert stays up during the night concerned about what lies ahead for her industry. The encryption algorithms she has long relied