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The long-term issue

November 2020

It won’t happen overnight, but we can solve some of the world’s biggest problems. Here’s how.

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Letter from the editor

To think your way out of a crisis, look beyond it

Derek Brahney

Features

Categorized in Tech policy
How the truth was murdered
Pandemic, protest, and a precarious election have created an overwhelming flood of disinformation. It didn’t have to be this way.
Categorized in Tech policy
Capitalism is in crisis. To save it, we need to rethink economic growth.
The failure of capitalism to solve our biggest problems is prompting many to question one of its basic precepts.
Categorized in Humans and technology
Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape.
Our sense of the future has expanded and contracted over time. But survival means learning new lessons from the shocks society is facing right now.
Categorized in Artificial intelligence
AI has exacerbated racial bias in housing. Could it help eliminate it instead?
A discussion on whether machines can ever be fairer than humans.
Categorized in Climate change
Inside Singapore’s huge bet on vertical farming
Covid-19 has made food security a major issue. Now Singapore is investing heavily in high-tech farming as it tries to become more self-sufficient.
Categorized in Space
This spacecraft is being readied for a one-way mission to deflect an asteroid
Can slamming into a space rock at 15,000 miles per hour prevent it from hitting Earth? The DART mission aims to find out.
Categorized in Humans and technology
Why you don’t really know what you know
One of the world’s biggest science experiments shows why everybody needs to re-examine what it means to know something.
Categorized in Climate change
Finding homes for the waste that will (probably) outlive humanity
The not-in-my-backyard problem that will go on long after the last backyard is gone.
Categorized in Climate change
Suppressing fires has failed. Here’s what California needs to do instead.
It’s time to reverse a century of fire-management policy. That will require sweeping regulatory reforms, and tons of money.

Also in this issue
- The true dangers of AI are closer than we think
  Forget superintelligent AI: algorithms are already creating real harm. The good news: the fight back has begun.
  Categorized in Artificial intelligence
- An interview with a virus-hunter
  There are probably many zoonotic diseases that we don’t know about. Here’s someone whose job is to find them.
  
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- The startup turning human bodies into compost
  Recompose will start accepting its first bodies in November.
  Categorized in Biotechnology
- The volunteers blanketing cities with wireless internet
  Before the pandemic, people found creative ways to get around big internet providers. Now they’re doing even more.
  Categorized in Smart cities
- “Are we being good ancestors?” should be the central question of our time
  Current crises show us the perils of not thinking far enough ahead. One philosopher has a plan to make sure we change that.
  Categorized in Humans and technology
- How “gross national happiness” helped Bhutan keep covid-19 at bay
  Zero deaths and better community relations suggest that the country’s national focus on well-being over economic gain isn’t just lip service.
  Categorized in Tech policy
- How to count insects from space
  The biodiversity of bugs serves as a planetary early warning system. But tracking their numbers takes big thinking.
  
  Categorized in Climate change
- Don’t worry, the earth is doomed
  A brief list of the existential and catastrophic risks facing the human species.
  
  Categorized in Humans and technology
- Fiction: Quiet earth philosophy
  A short story from the November 2020 issue.
  Categorized in Humans and technology
- From the archives: Reaching the masses
  A look back at some of our coverage of communication between governments and people.
  Categorized in Tech policy

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