A history of the divide between computing and language, and why we “define and regiment our lives, including our social lives and our perceptions of our selves, in ways that are conducive to what a computer can ‘understand.’”

Inside the hacker ecosystem.

The story of an opportunity missed.

How technological progress slowed from its 20th-century peak, why we’ve shifted from changing reality to simply simulating reality, and whether capitalism is the true culprit.

The game’s past, present, and future.

Shiva Ayyadurai told the world he invented email. Not everyone agreed.

Teaching Ted Kaczynski’s anti-technology ideas.

A profile of Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka Sabu, a hacker star of Anonymous and resident of a New York City housing project.

The autopsy of a once-dominant site.

An exposé of Internet Marketers.

From failure to Pixar, Steve Jobs’ “wilderness years.”

A profile of Mark Zuckerberg, savvy CEO.

On board the Perl Whirl 2000, a conference of hard-coding geeks on a luxury cruise ship.

How a lonely, self-taught hacker found his way into the private emails of movie stars – and into the underworld of the celebrity-skin business.

On the relationship between Stanford and Silicon Valley.

Jonathan Blow is both the video game industry’s most cynical critic and its most ambitious game developer. As he finishes his indescribable game-opus, a trip inside the head of a videogame auteur.

A history of the cell phone ringtone.

Many recent hip-hop songs make terrific ringtones because they already sound like ringtones. The polyphonic and master-tone versions of “Goodies,” by Ciara, for example, are nearly identical. Ringtones, it turns out, are inherently pop: musical expression distilled to one urgent, representative hook. As ringtones become part of our environment, they could push pop music toward new levels of concision, repetition, and catchiness.

From Tetris to Angry Birds, an examination of “stupid games.”

An Iowa dad’s surprisingly short path from commentor to screenwriter.

After years of avoiding the uncomfortable truths about how his gadgets are made, a Mac fanboy travels to Foxconn to see for himself.

Update 3/16/12: This American Life retracted this story today after it was revealed to have “contained significant fabrications.”

A report from Austin, Texas as it turns into a dot-com hotspot.

The beginnings of the best-selling video game, from a chapter of David Kushner’s new book on the subject.

In which the author’s wife attempts to break the world record in Tetris.

The artist discusses her latest record, Biophilia, science and music education. 

Up until she developed a vocal-cord nodule a few years ago, Björk made a point of not investigating how that instrument worked. “With arrangements and lyrics,” she says, squinting over her coffee, “I work more with the left side of my brain. But my voice has always been very right brain. I didn’t try to analyze it at all. I didn’t even know until I started all this voice work, two years ago, what my range was. I didn’t want to let the academic side into that—I worried the mystery would go.”

When computer science legend Jim Gray disappeared, his friends and colleagues – including Bill Gates and Larry Ellison – used every technological tool at their disposal to try to find him.