The definition of an 'operating system' is bound to evolve with customer demands and technological possibilities.
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Like the 'test tube babies' born of in vitro fertilization, cloned children need not be identifiable, much less freaks or outcasts.
There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the argument goes, as clever programmers circumvent controls.
For designers, the rigidity of an alphabet presents a never-ending artistic challenge: How do you do something new and still preserve the letters' essential forms?
'CSI' has not only remained a top-rated show through seven seasons; it has had real-world consequences. Police and prosecutors complain of a 'CSI' effect' that leads juries to demand more physical evidence than they used to expect. College officials ...
Storage problems make neon signs the most ephemeral of commercial arts.
Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.
Just as producers often give consumers things they want but didn't think to ask for, consumers sometimes come up with surprising uses for new inventions. When a new product appears, it can uncover dissatisfactions and desires no one knew were there.
The Internet's abundance - of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority - creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telli...
When credit is cheaper to use and easier to arrange, people do use more of it.
Dialysis does not make patients well. It simply postpones their deaths.
The evergreen story of people in debt becomes even sexier in an economic downturn, when debts inevitably get harder to pay.
The whole point of movie glamour was - and is - escape.
The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.
Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.
As a general rule, durable-goods production tends to be the most volatile sector of the economy. Since people usually have a stock of durables in use, when times get tight, they put off new purchases. What seem like small cutbacks to the end buyer tr...
As borrowers, we may feel guilty about running up debt, anxious about making payments, and resentful of the constraints that old obligations (and old credit records) impose on our current choices. We may find it too easy to buy things we may later re...
In a media culture, we not only judge strangers by how they look but by the images of how they look. So we want attractive pictures of our heroes and repulsive images of our enemies.
Bill Clinton has done some incredibly reckless, irresponsible things as president. But his campaign to expand Medicare entitlements has to rank among the worst.
Our eyes and brains pretty consistently like some human forms better than others. Shown photos of strangers, even babies look longer at the faces adults rank the best-looking.
