Wired Opinion

The information economy that we are currently building doesn’t really embrace capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism. Without the public road, and utterly unencumbered access to it, a child’s lemonade stand would never turn a profit. The real …

A single episode of Game of Thrones costs $6 million to make. A single episode of Mad Men costs approximately $2.3 million. $5M for Veronica Mars? You simply can’t Kickstart or raise that kind of money on Indiegogo … not …

Americans have grown so accustomed to hearing about the problem of “balancing privacy and security” that it sometimes feels as though the two are always and forever in conflict — that an initiative to improve security can’t possibly be very …

There’s an endless debate about whether file sharing is “stealing.” We eventually shouldn’t “pirate” files, but it’s premature to condemn people who do it today when those same people are not paid for their participation in very lucrative network schemes. …

The advertising industry claims this is a “nuclear first strike” against their industry. And so begins the arms race, whereby the digital cookies currently used to track user habits are blocked by the browsers — only to have the advertisers …

An entirely new platform for innovation awaits us, and if we can integrate commercial drones into airspace without preemptive, heavy-handed regulation, the consequences — and benefits — could be as revolutionary as the internet itself.

Transforming vice into virtue, Facebook Home ads are social engineering spectacles that use aesthetic tricks to disguise the profound ethical issues at stake. This isn’t an academic concern: Zuckerberg’s vision (as portrayed by the ads) is being widely embraced — …

What skeptics fail to realize is that the motivations of crowdfunding “investors” are different: These are not quant investors looking to maximize financial returns while minimizing risk and volatility. It’s more about cause than cash. When the JOBS Act rules …

Inventors, visionaries, engineers — whatever you want to call them — have to arrive at each level before they can even imagine a way to the next one … and then create it. That’s how Pixar and its first film …

This week on Footnotes, we’re talking about the greatest rivalry the field of paleontology has ever seen: Edward Drinker Cope vs. Othniel Marsh, two men with differing views on how exactly velociraptors painted their nails. Join us as we track …

The difference between the standard internet access that shapes our imagination and a fiber-to-the-home connection is as great as the difference between no electricity and an electrified life. But I don’t want Google serving the whole country, because we still …

Hours after Google announced Google Fiber in Austin — the second city in which Google Fiber will be rolled out — AT&T pretended it, too, will build a 1-gigabit network there. No one actually believes this is true. What you’re …

We’re living in the now, we no longer have a sense of future direction, and we have a completely new relationship to time. In this Wired Q&A between author of Present Shock Rushkoff and former editor in chief of cyberpunk …

Given that literary fame is so fickle, it might make more sense to anoint a work that’s mutable — an all-encompassing text that changes at the pace of society itself. Today there is such a work. And that is why, …

Why aren’t we all now talking to our phones … instead of squinting at them?

From frogs to perpetual darkness, we’re talking about God’s campaign against certain vegetables and a certain pharaoh. Say your prayers, kiddies, and don’t eat your vegetables.

Wired has been running a special series of expert opinions on “the patent fix,” including specific proposals for fixing the software patent problem. This is the final piece in the series, from the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents …

What if we could fix the patent problem by rethinking the assumption that infringement should always be penalized?

Much has already been discussed about the “Donglegate” incident, so rather than attempting to discern whether Adria Richards was in the right or the wrong, I’ve been thinking about why the issue blew up and what it reveals. Because it’s …

Cyber-savvy folks are arguing for such new etiquette rules because in an information-overloaded world, time-wasting communication is not just outdated — it’s rude. Living according to the gospel of technological efficiency and frictionless sharing is fine as a Silicon Valley …