Wired Opinion

Why are some mass shooters more likely to kill themselves? If we go beyond the armchair psychology and diagnostic labels in the coverage of this horrific tragedy, the data from past rampage shootings may partially reveal some motivations.

When a corporate vendor “deprecates” an API we’ve built on, it’s really hard to shrug it off. So why not declare API’s like Flickr’s a National Historic Landmark? That’s how neighborhoods in the physical world protect their character from corporate …

Whereas businesses once purchased servers from these big three to store and transport their digital goods, they’re now choosing to make their own servers and data centers. The server industry is being disrupted, and three key trends have evolved as …

Creative Commons isn’t just some arbitrary legalese: it was a way the world could build on creatives’ work. Re-use it. Re-mix it. It’s what made the web a place where individuals were not just creators, but part of communities that …

Godzilla appears to sink back into the sea to leave a battered Tokyo in peace, but he’s merely snoozing, dreaming happy dreams of future destruction. It’s worth keeping Godzilla in mind as we scan reports of the ITU’s new telecom …

The new era will not be measured by the number of users, devices, or connections. What is changing the world, profoundly, is the value those connections make possible.

Believing that human trafficking is worsened by the internet’s anonymity, the sponsors of California’s Proposition 35 thought they had a simple solution to combatting the problem: require convicted traffickers to register as sex offenders. But in its zeal to restrict …

While our government representatives in Dubai discuss global internet access, it’s worth considering some of the access limitations on our own soil. Internet access is still very expensive compared to the rest of the developed world – a third of …

Wired hired writer Quinn Norton in the fall of 2011 to embed herself among activists in the Occupy movement, and report back on what she witnessed. Throughout the past year, Norton filed a number of stories about the people behind …

This week we’re talking about the hallucinations of the producers at Animal Planet, as well as certain hybrid animals that may at first appear to be hallucinations, but are in fact real for everyone, including the producers at Animal Planet.

It’s been fashionable in military circles to talk about cyberspace as a “fifth domain” for warfare, along with land, space, air and sea. But there’s a sixth and arguably more important warfighting domain emerging: the human brain.

The Internet of Things is the long-prophesied phenomenon of everyday devices talking to one another—and us—online, creating new behaviors and efficiencies. It turned out to be vaporware. Until the past few years, that is, when the landscape shifted: and it’s …

But this is what we should be debating – which videogames make the cut? – not whether there should be videogames in the MoMA collection at all.

Requiring content providers to establish bilateral relationships with all of the network operators that comprise the global Internet simply cannot be made to scale … because every Internet user is a potential content provider.

How ribbon farms – or rather the lack thereof in much of the United States – shaped attitudes toward modern transportation, and continue to shape our psychology as a nation today.

Behind closed doors, decisions will be made next week that could threaten the global, open internet. This isn’t a sky-is-falling cry: There could be very real consequences both in how we use the internet and how it’s governed. A relatively …

Vendors, governments and the information security industry have incentives to protect their interests over their users’. Not all the players will act ethically, or capably. So who should the hacker disclose to?

Disclosing a flaw in a widely used system without making someone at least a little angry requires a delicate touch. But Andrew Auernheimer, a.k.a. “Weev,” a 26-year-old finder of security vulnerabilities, is anything but delicate. Because computer science has yet …

Some of us have pledged our allegiance to Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, or Facebook: These vendors are becoming our lords, and we are becoming their vassals. In this “feudal” model of computing, we give up a certain amount of control. …

Opinion “sketch” commentary on Black Friday… and what shopping could (should?) look like in the future