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The hope is that capitalizing on the availability of DNA technology in today’s market will help deter criminal acts in the future, as well as expedite arrests and investigations when incidents do occur.

education programs for residents of all ages--an attempt to create a healthy environment for local kids

. The architects argued that flipping a landscape vertically, so that public space connects homes, schools, and workplaces within one building, would create more mixed use communities than high-rises with hundreds of rooms simply stacked on top of one another.

developers are rarely enthused about building diverse communities--often, it's more profitable for them to build new, luxury towers that act like gated communities for the rich. A project like FLIP/CITY would likely require political will, too, and zoning laws would have to adapt to the new mixed-use shapes and needs created by them.

Both sides agreed on seemingly only one thing: That a discussion and regulation of short-term rentals in New York City is overdue.

digital currency will bring the same safety and ease of monetary transfer that the M-Pesa has to Kenyans to the roughly 40% of Ecuadoreans who don’t have access to a bank account. Plus, it offers Ecuadoreans the opportunity to start saving

What is increasingly evident is that the traditional role of banks is being reimagined by non-banking software and hardware companies

Bitcoin will increasingly enter the mainstream and challenge the traditional rails of finance along which money has moved.

Goods of all kinds can reach customers in places that just didn’t make financial sense in the past.

This leads to the increased competition for all kinds of things, especially for information-based products and services that the United States leans on for much of its economy. Digital currencies, Bitcoin in particular, will lower economic barriers.

It might be different kinds of loans, payroll and other small business services and specialized accounts that serve specific needs and populations.

“Ultimately, new technology can reveal desires that already exist on a deep level in society,” says Rafman of the works, which pull from and amplify the seductive forces of video games and cinema. “This desire to escape completely into another dimension has existed for a long time.”

Virtual reality’s recent resurgence in prominence begins with Oculus and its visionary 23-year-old founder, Palmer Luckey. In 2012, the then-18-year-old with an affinity for retooling defunct ’90s VR headsets took a hacked-together model to Kickstarter with a funding goal of $250,000. A month later, over 10,000 individuals contributed $2.4 million to the campaign for what was at the time mainly aimed at being a gaming peripheral. Two years later, Facebook wrote a check to buy Oculus VR for $2 billion

“This is not a drill. It’s real. It’s a moment,” says Michael Naimark, Google’s first resident virtual reality artist (like Char Davies, he’s listed as a pioneer of VR on Wikipedia). “And the arts community can play a huge role in propagation.

Throughout art history, art has reflected the prevalent social relations of the time. It makes sense, then, that the most relative and innovative art forms being produced today would mirror our reality—one defined by a perceived sense of agency in a world filled with invisible algorithms and clicks baited to us by past clicks. The internet spoils us with infinite choice: opportunities to invent our personas, refashion our self-brands, optimize our lives, and enhance our experience. But with mega-corporations quietly holding the joystick, can we really self-determine our destiny?