B. F. Skinner’s notorious theory of behavior modification was denounced by critics 50 years ago as a fascist, manipulative vehicle for government control. But Skinner’s ideas are making an unlikely comeback today, powered by smartphone apps that are transforming us into thinner, richer, all-around-better versions of ourselves. The only thing we have to give up? Free will.

From my cover story in the June 2012 issue of The Atlantic

My younger brother Dan gradually put on weight over a decade, reaching 230 pounds two years ago, at the age of 50. Given his 5-foot-6 frame, that put him 45 pounds above the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s threshold of obesity. Accompanying this dubious milestone were a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes and multiple indicators of creeping heart disease, all of which left him on a regimen of drugs aimed at lowering his newly significant risks of becoming seriously ill and of dying at an unnecessarily early age

He’d be in good company: a 2007 study by TheJournal of the American Medical Association found that each year, 160,000 Americans die early for reasons related to obesity, accounting for more than one in 20 deaths. The costs are not just bodily. Other studies have found that a person 70 or more pounds overweight racks up extra lifetime medical costs of as much as $30,000, a figure that varies with race and gender. And we seem to be just warming up: cardiologists who have looked at current childhood obesity rates…read more

How Jason Freedman (no relation) and 42Floors cooked up a killer business idea that could turn commercial real estate on its head.

From my article in the May issue of  Inc. Magazine

Jason Freedman hunches his shoulders against New York City’s December chill and walks faster, nudged both by the cold and by being late. He and David Woodworth, co-founders of an Internet company called 42Floors, both stand out a bit with their buoyant, vulnerable Californianess as they swim against the trudging, elbowing crowds.

Focused on the iPhone he clutches a foot in front of his face for navigational purposes, oblivious to how dorky and unsafe this seems on these streets, Freedman races on to the next stop in a two-day string of meetings, Woodworth trailing a few feet behind.

Freedman and Woodworth are several months into the creation of 42Floors, which aims to… read more

An introduction to the visionaries planning tomorrow’s high-tech, ultra-efficient, green, and even mood-altering spaces designed for much more than cooking.

From my article in the April 2012 issue of Gourmet Live

The kitchen of the future has a long past. At world fairs and trade shows going back more than a century, crowds have been tantalized with slick visions of the extraordinary ways we’d be preparing foods in the coming decades. In particular, notes Ruth Oldenziel, a professor of American and European history at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and coeditor of the book Cold War Kitchen, futuristic kitchens have long been used by marketers to excite us about new technologies. In the 1900s, it was the magic of natural-gas stoves, then in the 1920s and 1930s, the spread of electric and telephone utilities, then refrigeration in the 1940s, on through microwave ovens in the 1950s and even nuclear power in the Atomic Age kitchen (to say nothing of today’s quesadilla presses and single-serving coffeemakers). “In every generation, the kitchen of the future is a sort of passport photo for innovation,” says Oldenziel.

But lost in all the fuss over electromechanical, thermal, and radiative marvels, according to Oldenziel, was much discussion about changes…read more

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about two small businesses that were taking different approaches to employing Groupon-style social-network marketing as a way of drumming up business.

One of them, a restaurant called Acropolis in Needham, Mass., went with Living Social, whose service closely follows the Groupon model — meaning the coupon company sends the offer out to its large database of local consumers, takes a big chunk of the revenue that comes from selling the discount vouchers, and doesn’t share much customer information with the small business that buys the deal.

The other, the Urban Escape Day Spa in Golden, Colo., tried a new service called SaveLocal, which is offered by Constant Contact, a company best known for its e-mail marketing tools. With SaveLocal, there are some important differences…read more

Get out of your car and into your flying train, 
superclean superbus, and most impressive of all, your personal subway.

From my Impatient Futurist column in the the April issue of Discover

Despite my mania for all manner of irresponsible personal vehicles, I’m actually a public-transportation nut. A few of the reasons:
• I can read, check email, send text messages, or catch a few winks while I’m zipping to my destination
• I have built-in motivation for walking, given that I have to get to and from the bus or train stop
• I feel good that my ride isn’t fueled by the conversion of fossilized sea life into impending climate catastrophe
• I get to trade small talk and occasional newspaper sections with fellow transit riders.

But I know you have your very good reasons for being among the 98 percent of the population that shuns public transportation:
• You can read, check email, send text messages, or catch a few winks while you’re swerving into oncoming traffic and pedestrians
• You have built-in motivation for stopping at Wendy’s for celebration takeout, given that you haven’t had to walk more than nine consecutive steps the entire day
• You feel good about the copious burning of hydrocarbons, which is creating valuable new beachfront property
• You get to trade hand gestures and occasional gunfire with fellow traffic jammers.

Ok, go ahead and sneer at my bus through the windshield of your Range Rollover…read more

The rapid advancement of Google-style, statistical translation may help realize this long-time dream.

From my Impatient Futurist column in the the March issue of Discover

Those of us for whom Star Trek serves as a benchmark for technological progress can only bemoan the fact that hopes for faster-than-light travel to other galaxies seem to be receding at warp speed, given that we no longer even have faster-than-sound travel to France. But I would prefer to focus on the bright side: We’re rapidly closing in on the Universal Translator, which means that when I do finally arrive in France, I’ll be able to communicate as easily as if I were on Earth.

The Universal Translator, of course, was a handheld device that 
instantly converted Captain Kirk’s futuristically clipped English into the language of whichever vaguely humanoid alien was offering to buy him a blue drink. It is impossible to overemphasize…read more

From my article in the December 2011 issue of Inc. magazine

Phil Libin remembers the moment he left childhood behind. It was nearly four years ago, when the funding for his Internet start-up fell through. He was 35.

   It had all been so much fun until then. But at 3 a.m., out of cash and having waited in vain for a venture capitalist or angel or CEO or anyone at all to return his increasingly desperate calls, Libin knew that he would have to pull the plug on Evernote, a software application that helps people remember things. “I realized I was going to have to wake up tomorrow and lay off everyone in the company,” he says….read more

From my Impatient Futurist column in the the December 2011 issue of Discover

Teaching well is hard. I can cite my direct observations of the hundreds of victims of my occasional efforts over the years as a teacher of physics and writing. As I have stood lecturing brilliantly to a few dozen purportedly eager collegians, it has not escaped my attention that at any one time only three or four seem awake enough to keep up with their text messaging.
   Clearly the problem is not the content or presentation style of my lecturing, which, as I may have neglected to mention, is brilliant, or so I was once assured by a student who stayed after class to ask for a sixth extension on an assignment. Then again, from what I recall of my college days, I wasn’t exactly on the edge of my seat at my professors’ lectures, either. And most of my fellow lecturers don’t report much different. Could the problem be with the nature of lecturing itself?…read more

From my article in the January 2012 issue of Discover
(#8 of the top 100 science stories of 2011)

I was front row center when Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple Macintosh to the world in 1984 in 
Boston. While the crowd cheered and clapped 
and squealed, I was scratching my head. What did this pretty beige box offer that a hundred other computers didn’t already offer, besides a higher price, much less choice in software, and no 
compatibility with the rest of the world’s devices?…read more