2006 March April Can We Know Everything Archives

_{Image source: Emily Allstot}

John Perry Barlow: Is Cyberspace Still Anti-Sovereign?

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in April 2006. Last week, John Perry Barlow—poet, Internet phlilosopher and activist, known for an eclectic resume and zest for life— died in his sleep after a period of ill health. California is reposting this story in light of that news. Ten years ago, when hyperbole was the […]

New Danger for Marbled Murrelet

Scarcer food could keep little bird on threatened species list The discovery that a rare and reclusive little seabird makes its nest high in the canopy of old growth trees was bad news for people cutting down trees for a living. Scientists and government regulators focused on the loss of that nesting habitat to explain the […]

Trick and Treat

Fooling a deadly virus could stop hepatitis C The virus that causes an often deadly form of hepatitis has long vexed scientists searching for a cure. An estimated 2.7 million Americans have chronic hepatitis C, and most of them will suffer irreparable liver damage. Spread by intravenous drug use and other contact with contaminated blood and […]

Copyrights and Wrongs

In theory, copyright protection should be straightforward: Writers and other creators are entitled to exclusive control over their intellectual property. But two Boalt graduates say in a new study published in Santa Clara Computer and High Technology Law Journal that digital-age battles over intellectual property rights are sometimes neither simple nor straightforward. Consider this gray […]

Mending Old Bones

Robert Ritchie starts with a basic question: "What does aging do to the structure of bone?" We know that the amount of bone diminishes with age, what he calls the quantity issue. But aging also degrades the inherent properties of bone, making it less tough and less resistant to fracture—a quality issue. A materials science […]

Super Sniffers

Tiny new electronic sensors outsmell our noses What you can’t smell can hurt you. That’s the idea behind electronic noses—sensors that detect harmful gases, such as ammonia or carbon monoxide, at much lower levels than the human nose can. Commercial e-noses have been used for years in the food industry, in hospitals, and on NASA space […]

Sufi Surprise

In 1884, on a beach located near my sister-in-law’s home in Dakar, Senegal, an itinerate fisherman named Seydina Limamou Laye discovered what he called the light of Mohammed buried in the sand, and declared himself reincarnated as the prophet. He later informed his followers that his son Issa was Jesus returned to earth. Slightly spooky […]

Season to Believe

Women’s new basketball coach Joanne Boyle restores winning attitude It is eloquent of her resiliency and steely resolve that Joanne Boyle says she’s tired of talking about the event that could have killed her, or at the least left her impaired forever. It’s not that she no longer recalls the surprise and suddenness of the searing pain […]

Year 4702: A Reunion Like No Other

Locke, California was a town like no other. Nestled behind levees 25 miles south of Sacramento, in its heyday from 1915 to 1952 America’s last rural all-Chinese town had a wild vitality. It boasted four restaurants, half a dozen markets, five whorehouses (staffed by white women), a Chinese school, two slaughterhouses, a flourmill, shipping wharves, […]

Open Source: A Double Bind

In so-called democratic systems, who can you trust? Once upon a time, in a land far away, a wizard gave to the people of her village a magic parchment. Although it was covered with written wisdom from top to bottom, anyone in the village could change the words or add their own ideas to the parchment, and […]

Mitch Kapor Loves Wikipedia

An interview with technology entrepreneur and internet visionary Mitch Kapor Mitch Kapor has been a commercial disc jockey, Transcendental Meditation teacher, mental health worker, and computer programmer. He bought an Apple II personal computer in 1978 and, four years later, founded Lotus Development Corp., creating software known as Lotus 1-2-3, which enabled personal computers to be deployed […]

The New Argonauts

Leaving Silicon Valley for the future of home A small but meaningful proportion of individuals who left their home countries for better lives abroad have reversed course, transforming a brain drain into a brain “circulation,” AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the School of Information Management and Systems,* writes in her new book, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in […]

Can We Know Everything?

Search Engines lead us into new information frontiers. But will we ever find what we’re really looking for? When my son was young, he trembled in fear and joy. Like all of us, he arrived incomplete, and the neurons in the limbic system of his toddler’s brain were still growing. The limbic system is the seat […]

Government versus Google

An analysis of what’s at stake in the controversial case. In January, Google splashed across the headlines when it opposed a Department of Justice demand for one million website addresses and one week of search queries. The government says it needs the data to argue its case before a federal court in Pennsylvania to revive the 1998 […]