Way before Ray Kurzweil, Keynes showed us what happens as exponential growth accumulates over time. His projections about how big the economy would become after decades of compounded growth sounded like lunacy to readers during the Great Depression but were amazingly accurate, as was his prediction that humanity would move past its “struggle for subsistence” within a century. At the same time, he overestimated how quickly the work week would get shorter – most of us are working a lot more hours than he envisioned.

This description of what Usenet is and how it works, written shortly before the Web exploded into the mainstream, got important things right: the net’s great variety and utility, its unruliness, and the overall spirit of helpfulness and sharing that persists more than two decades later.

Economist Julian Simon is an intellectual hero of ours. Throughout his underappreciated career he made the case that things were getting better instead of worse, backed up his arguments with masses of data, and won wagers against prominent Malthusians. This piece is a great introduction to his thinking, and gives him some of the recognition he’s due.

Before the Watson supercomputer trounced the two best human Jeopardy! players early in 2011, this article revealed its uncanny ability to mine vast amounts of text in search of answers to tough questions, and to navigate the punning and other wordplay that the quiz show throws at its contestants. This is one of the articles that made us say to each other “Something’s different now…”

Kasparov, a powerful writer, explains how computers came to dominate humans at chess and why this is not cause for alarm that they’ll soon be able to do everything better than we do. Chess has long been an exemplar of human intelligence, and increasingly a metaphor for how humans and machines may co-exist.

The digital economy is not just different, too often it’s invisible. Brian Arthur brings it to life with a description of all the ways it increasingly surrounds us. As “software eats the world”, to use Marc Andreessen’s evocative phrase, we’ll all need to get more and more familiar with this other economy.

Captures the palpable energy coming from San Francisco’s young technology entrepreneurs, who by perceiving no barriers are knocking a lot of them down. We share Heller’s sense that things are happening more quickly there than just about anyplace else.

For the data lovers among us, here’s a slew of encouraging trends from falling poverty and crime, to rising life expectancy, literacy and computer power. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but the positive numbers feed our optimism.

A field study, in these Hard Times, of the Homeless (as observed in the H Street Encampment, Fresno, California). Being an examination of who they are, how they think, and what they do.

As a young soldier in Vietnam, Cecil Ison saw something, something so horrific that he buried the memory of it for thirty years and swore he’d never allow it to surface again. Then, on March 20, 2003—the day after we started bombing Iraq—the past leapt up and grabbed him.

It started with a candle in an abandoned warehouse. It ended with temperatures above 3,000 degrees and the men of the Worcester Fire department in a fight for their lives.

Specialist Sean O’Shea guarded the most high-profile prisoner in U.S. history.

Why do we even have coal mines? That question is what led Jeanne Marie Laskas to spend a few weeks 500 feet belowground, getting to know the men behind the invisible economy this country couldn’t live without.

Twenty-two years after being sent to prison for an unspeakable crime he did not commit, Calvin Willis walked out a free man, the 138th American exonerated by DNA evidence. He has won his freedom, yes, but how does a falsely accused man reclaim his life?

Once upon a time—1975, actually, in Cambodia—there was a regime so evil that it created an antisociety where torture was currency and music, books, and love were abolished. This regime ruled for four years and murdered nearly 2 million of its citizens, a quarter of the population. The perversion was so extreme, the acts so savage, that three decades later, the country still finds itself reeling.

Sure, we may elect a black president this month. And yeah, Oprah has all kinds of white ladies in her audience. But in real life, it seems the older you get, the less chance you have of being friends with someone who is not in your racial demographic. Can a nice white boy make some black friends if he puts his mind to it? Devin Friedman posts an ad on Craigslist to find out.

If you could see into your future, would you want to? If you could know whether you’re going to contract Alzheimer’s, or if you’re likely to battle cancer or die of heart disease, would you want to? Last summer Richard Powers decided he did and became one of nine people on earth to have his entire genome sequenced. Here, a glimpse into his—and your—future.

Colin Powell and his inner circle on the difficulty of being diplomatic in a “my way or the highway” administration.

He has fungo bats that are older than Derek Jeter. He has come as close to seeing it all as a baseball man can possibly come. Now he’s in his fifty-third consecutive season in the dugout, and life has never been sweeter.

There, in the toilet, was the absolute biggest piece of work I have ever seen.