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"But the even greater danger -- the greater danger facing us in cyberspace goes beyond crime and it goes beyond harassment.  A cyber attack perpetrated by nation states are violent extremists groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack on 9/11.  Such a destructive cyber-terrorist attack could virtually paralyze the nation. "

Introduced this past June with Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean," Google Now is designed to ambiently give you information you might need before you ask for it. To pull off that ambitious goal, Google takes advantage of multiple parts of the company: comprehensive search results, robust speech recognition, and most of all Google's surprisingly deep understanding of who you are and what you want to know.

I just read a fascinating book by Douglas W. Allen, The Institutional Revolution, which attempts to explain England's transition from its apparently illogical early-modern institutions - aristocracy, purchased army commissions, lighthouses, private roads, even dueling - to modern institutions. And today, we see many of those institutions challenged.

Overcoming spinal cord injuries (I learned a lot about the spinal cord from the first segment, e.g. the systems that control walking are at the base of the spinal column, the brain has little to do with it), remote brain controlled mechanical hands, self-directed robots, and so on:

*This piece was originally published, in Italian, in the exceedingly innovative (and very Italian) website "Che Futuro." *As somebody who spends a lot of time in non-Anglophone countries, this is a situation that I see commonly. I rarely see it as well-described as this.

"It has been a wild ride of a century full of expected wonders. Molecular manufacturing became a reality well before 2050, turning all sorts of once-valuable materials into commodities, and yes, we even eventually got flying cars."

"Moore's Law describes the phenomenon that makes this year's computer more capable and less expensive than last year's. But it won't go on forever. "

"We've noted on more than one occasion that economists may be missing a trick when it comes to how technology is changing the global economy. More so, that developments like 3D printing, could even pose a black-swan risk for Asia in their own right."

What Apple teaches us about the American economy, and no, it is not all what you would expect; 

The web evolves: making it easier to create and curate content. Facebook in a timeline of the evolving web.

It was the talk of Davos, grabbing the imagination of a forum otherwise shrouded in gloom: a miracle machine that cracks the code of life within hours and could revolutionise healthcare.

"If you're a smart Ph.D from MIT, you'd never go to Wall Street now," one hedge fund executive told the magazine. "You'd go to Silicon Valley. There's at least a propsect for a huge gain. You'd have the potential to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. It looks like he has a lot more fun."

The BBC's Matt Danzico investigates what place traditional academic institutions have in a world consumed by do-it-yourself education.

"n a recent Wall Street Journal interview about college costs and online learning, Stanford University President John Hennessy said, "What I told my colleagues is there's a tsunami coming. I can't tell you exactly how it's going to break, but my goal is to try to surf it, not to just stand there." "

"Britain plans to make it easier for technology firms to list their shares in London, the government said on Thursday, in an attempt to stem the flow of high-growth companies heading across the Atlantic in search of capital." Interesting. Countries in a competition to keep their tech wizards at home. But how important are stock markets for innovation? And nation-states? Don't think too fast stocks and nation-states are something of the past... 

"Is there a new political philosophy emerging from things like open source software development; massive community sharing hubs like Wikipedia, Kickstarter, and Reddit; peer-to-peer social networking; experiments in "Liquid Democracy," and the rapid spread of resource sharing tools like ZipCar, AirBnb and Car2go? Is it time to start talking about replacing the "welfare state" with the "partner state"? On Monday September 24 at 7:30pm at the New York Law School, we're looking forward to exploring all those questions and more with noted author Steven Johnson, whose new book Future, Perfect is must-reading for people who believe in the power of open, collaborative peer-to-peer networking to achieve real social progress."

"The upshot of all this is that it's not going to take much to procure a drone and do anything you want with it. And if you try to outlaw them, then, well, only the outlaws (and government) will have drones." Exactly. 

"As technology evolves to make the office more obsolete, it's going to result in massive changes--and massive opportunities." But the process is sometimes painstakingly slow, as it conflicts with traditions, the desire for 'real face time' and office politics.