When members of China’s massive bulletin-board forums perceive wrongdoing, they form a “human flesh search engine” and seek out real world vigilante justice.

Selections from the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan portray a military effort that is ineffective and frequently absurd. (Part of the NYT War Logs series.)

An interview with Clay Shirky on “why no medium has ever survived the indifference of 25-year-olds.”

When spouses get upset because their husband or wife wants to be frozen upon death, it’s not because they find the practice sacrilegious. It’s because their partner is consciously considering a future without them.

An early 1995 peek at what happens when secretive groups meet the Internet: a Scientology Usenet group, populated by believers and critics, stirs conflict that results in raids.

After his wife disappears, Hans Reiser’s defense contacts a Wired writer who they believe can help explain the world of groundbreaking code, video games, and sci-fi that defines Reiser’s existence.

Political races don’t run on ideas and grassroots activism–they run on voter databases. And no one has more voter data than Aristotle Inc., whose information has helped elect every president since Reagan.

Are video games capable of emotion?

Clay Shirky, writing in 1999 on the Web eclipsing TV’s reach: “We will always have massive media, but the days of mass media are over, killed by the explosion of possibility and torn into a thousand niches.”

Carl Malamud is on a quest to change the way average citizens can interface with the government – by scanning its paperwork and making it available free online. And he’s financing his effort with his own credit cards.

It’s the furthest artificial intelligence has come. And while the supercomputer may get attention for competing on Jeopardy!, Watson could also change everything from customer service to emergency rooms.

An email dialogue between David Gates and Jonathan Lethem on writing fiction in the age of online experiences.

Buckminster Fuller reconsidered.

“The problem is I’m older now, I’m 40 years old, and this stuff doesn’t change the world. It really doesn’t.” –Steve Jobs, 1996

Foursquare and Gowalla are in a VC-funded race to become the dominant location-based social network. But their founders say both companies have a larger purpose.

In the wake of 9/11, terrorist networks moved their recruitment and training efforts online, giving birth to Jihad-geeks like Irhabi_007.

In the chaotic days before the Berlin Wall fell, the East German secret police shredded 45 million pages. Fifteen years later, a team of computer scientists figured out how to put it all back together.

The justly paranoid man behind WikiLeaks.

What fragmented reading experiences do to neural circuitry. (It’s not good.)

The not-so-underground culture of neuroenhancing drug use, and where it’s headed.

The Conficker ‘worm’ has replicated itself across tens of millions of computers. Only a few hundred people have the knowledge to recreate how, and no one (except its anonymous maker) fully understands why.

The eighteen-year-old Moscow dropout behind chatroulette.com.

The editors of N+1 recap the revolution that is/was the internet with pit-stops to survey the Bolshevik Revolution, the NYT’s messy relationship with tech, and the value of an ad.

A growing movement is seeking a deeper knowledge of themselves through tracking sleep, exercise, sex, food, location, productivity. Technology has made it possible—but hasn’t taught us how to interpret the findings.

Two Paths for the Future of Text: Steven Berlin Johnson’s lecture on “commonplace” books in which great 17th and 18th century thinkers compiled their browsing, and what it means for journalism today.