The Future of Everything

Earthquakes come in species, says Greg Beroza, professor of geophysics at Stanford and an expert in seismology. There are, of course, the well-known sudden shocks, but there are also “slow earthquakes” that transpire imperceptibly in contrast to the obvious temblors, but which can measure 7 on the Richter Scale or more — a major quake by any standard. Beroza knows about slow and other species of e...

Like clockwork, every time a large natural disaster hits and wipes out billions in built infrastructure, public officials, developers and private citizens cry, “never again.” And every time, equally like clockwork, very little gets done, says Stanford civil engineer Anne Kiremidjian, one of the world’s foremost authorities on constructing buildings that can withstand major natural disasters. She s...

While Alzheimer’s disease has cut short too many lives and devastated more families than can be counted, its root causes and effective treatments have eluded researchers for decades. But, says Stanford bioengineer Annelise Barron, new science indicates that many Alzheimer’s cases are coincident with viral or bacterial infections in the brain, pointing to possible new approaches to treatment or pre...

While climate change is likely to bring rising sea levels, more frequent and stronger storms, as well as vanishing glaciers and coral reefs, experts say there are other lurking impacts that could have a more lasting effect on human behavior and health. Marshall Burke is a professor of Earth System Science and a fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies who says that r...

Riana Pfefferkorn is a digital security expert and Cryptography Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. She says that we are living in the “Golden Age of Surveillance,” in which the growing ubiquity of data-rich smart devices has produced a fundamental tension between the rights of users to protect their personal data and the needs of law enforcement to investigate or prevent serio...

While well-known mapping apps have transformed the daily commute through better information, Stanford electrical engineer Balaji Prabhakar is exploring ways to digitally incentivize people to improve their driving habits. He calls it “nudging,” and says that small shifts in commute times — just 20 minutes earlier or later — can make a considerable impact on the day’s congestion in highly trafficke...

Professor David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, says that artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping the landscape of medical care, but the underlying algorithms and the overarching challenges of how to employ the data are begetting new and vexing ethical questions. Magnus explains that concerns begin with who designs, builds and pays for the algorith...

Am I saving enough for retirement? Will I outlive my money? Can I count on Social Security? These are but a few of the nagging questions most every American grapples with when contemplating retirement. Gopi Shah Goda of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) says that the migration from once ubiquitous and relatively secure pension programs to today’s self-directed retirement...

While cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum gather the lion’s share of headlines, few know that these “killer apps” are just the first generation of products based on a relatively new ledger-like technology called blockchain. Founder of the Center for Blockchain Research at Stanford, Dan Boneh says that blockchain is generating a swell of excitement among coders and computer scientists not witness...

Over the last three-quarters of a century, global corporations have lost sight of their broader role in society and now are focused almost exclusively on serving their shareholders. That reality has had dire consequences for the workers of the world who are, quite literally, dying for a job, says guest Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business....

Sarah Billington began her career in civil engineering studying concrete, a remarkable material that has literally shaped the world as we know it. Concrete is one of the most-consumed materials on Earth — second only to water, but this one material alone is also responsible for 6 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That cold realization and a dispiriting morning meeting spent in...

Populism can be a powerful force in a democratic society. But according to Anna Grzymala-Busse, a Stanford professor of political science and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, once in power populists often implement authoritarian policies that threaten the very foundations of democracy itself. Grzymala-Busse says that the antidote to authoritarianism is to de...

From Bitcoin theft to the embarrassing revelations in the Sony Pictures hacking to the recent assault on the U.S. election, the threats of international cyberattack are growing in both number and consequence. As our technology steadily becomes more cloud based, these threats will only grow and could be soon be directed at fundamental institutions we all trust and rely upon, including the electrica...

Beginning in the 1980s, medical doctors started treating pain with increasing amounts of opioid medications. That shift was driven in part by an effort by the profession to be more humane to those in serious pain, but also by misinformation and aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry, which wrongly convinced doctors that their drugs were both safe and not addictive. According to Anna L...

When Stanford’s Martha Crenshaw, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and an expert on terrorism, is asked if she thinks terrorism is evolving, growing more widespread, violent and shocking by the year, she has one response: It’s complicated. She says that many of those trends are true, but they are driven both by the intense motivation of the terrorists and by t...

It may not be widely known, but before he launched Apple, Steve Jobs lived for a year on a commune. The fact that he became one of the wealthiest capitalists in America, however, should not surprise anyone who knows anything about the antecedents of Silicon Valley, says Stanford’s Fred Turner, professor of communication and history. The truth is that there is a strong countercultural thread runnin...

Can an expectant mother’s exposure to air pollutants or even extreme temperatures impact her unborn child’s earning potential 30 years later? Can paid family leave improve workforce attachment for new mothers? According to Maya Rossin-Slater, economist and an assistant professor of health research and policy at Stanford School of Medicine, the answer to these and other questions is “yes.” She says...

From Oculus Rift to Samsung VR, the era of virtual reality is right around the corner, if not already upon us. But what are the psychological impacts of VR and what are the best uses of this much-hyped technology — the “killer apps,” as they say? Jeremy Bailenson is a professor of communication at Stanford and author of the new book, Experience on Demand. He has been studying virtual reality and i...

Much has been made of the use of personal data gathered from social media and other channels to target voters during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, but what reasonable expectations should we have in age of ubiquitous and “free” connectivity? That question is the research focus of Stanford’s Michal Kosinski, a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business. Kosinski h...

As the global population approaches 10 billion and the effects of climate change continue to alter familiar agricultural patterns, the world is already witnessing a transformation in how and where it gets its food. Even diets are changing as people move away from traditional animal proteins, like beef and pork, to fish and vegetable sources. Stanford’s Roz Naylor, the director of the Center on Foo...

It’s been said that sewers were one of the major advances in human history and the Clean Water Act of 1972 was one of the most successful environmental laws ever enacted in this country. Despite it all, America’s current waste treatment infrastructure is aging rapidly and poorly equipped for the needs of the 21st century and beyond. Such is the estimation of Stanford civil and environmental engine...

The bacteria of the human digestive system have been likened to tiny factories that ingest raw materials — food — and processing them into finished products — nutrients — that our bodies can absorb and use. In fact, many of the complex carbohydrates and proteins critical for life cannot be absorbed unless first digested by bacteria. Yes, we may all be stardust, but not, it seems, before we are mic...

While billions scroll their merry ways through Facebook and Twitter each day, behind the scenes are legions of reviewers scanning photos and video to prevent graphic content from making the newsfeeds of unsuspecting users. Elsewhere, the faceless armies of the gig economy are making movies, building homes, driving Uber and working piecemeal to caption innumerable images for people too busy to do i...

One of the tradeoffs of modern medicine is that technology that allows physicians to save more lives also drives them closer than ever to the frontlines so they can administer care as quickly as possible. They do so at great personal risk, says Stanford pediatrician Paul Wise. Wise began his career caring for children during Guatemala’s brutal decades-long civil war and recently returned from serv...

As the digital world grows, the sheer amount of video and audio in our lives has become overwhelming. It is easy to shoot and record, but few have the patience to endure the tedium of editing all that content into cogent stories. But, says Maneesh Agrawala, Forest Baskett professor of computer science, all that is about to change. Agrawala is director of the Brown Center for Media Innovation at St...