smart

Research studies by Betsy Sparrow of Columbia University "support a growing belief that people are using the Internet as a personal memory bank: the so-called Google effect." Yes, the awareness that we can look things up easily later makes our memories worse. But when it comes to retrieving that online data, she notes, "We're remarkably efficient."

Bubbles, riots, and mass hysteria aside, "the crowd" can sometimes be very smart. Studies show that groups can make far more intelligent decisions collectively than individual experts do alone. But how smart a group can get appears to hinge on the number of women it includes.

Under the radar, a little company called Quora has started to go ballistic. It aims to create a social watering hole where interesting, sophisticated questions are asked, and intelligent answers are provided, without spam, trolls, stupidity or flame wars.

President Barack Obama announced today that he is pushing out $3.4 billion in stimulus spending to fund the development and construction of the much vaunted "smart grid." Significant portions of the funding will go toward subsidizing so-called smart electrical meters for large utilities. Utilities...

The deal we predicted yesterday has come to pass: Apple (AAPL) has announced a deal with China Unicom, China's second-largest cell-phone company, to resell iPhones. But this deal is not nearly as sweet as Apple's deal with AT&T (T): China Unicom will buy iPhones at a wholesale rate, then resell...