Five actors gathered in a room on Lafayette Street, in downtown Manhattan, to start rehearsing a new work for the Public Theatre, "Joan of Arc: Into the Fire." Written by David Byrne, formerly of the Talking Heads, the show recast the enduring, improbable story of Joan--a teen-age girl in medieval France who experienced divine visions, led an army to defeat an occupying power, and was burned at the stake for heresy--as a rock musical that spoke to the current political moment. It was early January, and, that morning, U.S. intelligence officials had arrived at Trump Tower to brief the President-elect, Donald Trump, on the findings of an investigation into the recent election, in which they had concluded that President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, had acted to insure the defeat of Hillary Clinton. Inauguration Day was looming, and the rehearsal room had a troubled mood that reflected more than the ordinary anxieties of creating a show. The actors arranged four tables into a rectangle and sat down with Alex Timbers, the director of "Joan of Arc." Timbers, who is thirty-eight, is tall and fine-featured. He wore a denim shirt and black jeans that hung off his lanky, slightly hunched frame. His hair is dark and thick, and he frequently runs a hand through it, like a Romantic poet on deadline. Despite the air of disquiet, Timbers, who talks like a cool high-school teacher--lots of vocal fry, the repeated use of "awesome"--addressed the cast with rousing enthusiasm. He explained that, though the show had been in development for two years, it remained a work in progress. "I don't think anything is sacred--we are going to be building this together," Timbers said to the actors, all of whom were men except for Jo Lampert, a thirty-one-year-old newcomer, who was to play Joan. Timbers presented a scale model of the stage design, which had been conceived by Chris Barreca. When built, the set would be black and austere, and filled with enormous L.E.D. screens. A staircase extended from wing to wing, and at center stage there was a vertiginous platform. The set was on a turntable, and as it revolved it represented everything from a cathedral to a prison tower.

Of all the prejudices of pundits, presentism is the strongest. It is the assumption that what is happening now is going to keep on happening, without anything happening to stop it. If the West has broken down the Berlin Wall and McDonald's opens in St. Petersburg, then history is over and Thomas Friedman is content. If, by a margin so small that in a voice vote you would have no idea who won, Brexit happens; or if, by a trick of an antique electoral system designed to give country people more power than city people, a Donald Trump is elected, then pluralist constitutional democracy is finished. The liberal millennium was upon us as the year 2000 dawned; fifteen years later, the autocratic apocalypse is at hand. You would think that people who think for a living would pause and reflect that whatever is happening usually does stop happening, and something else happens in its place; a baby who is crying now will stop crying sooner or later. Exhaustion, or a change of mood, or a passing sound, or a bright light, something, always happens next. But for the parents the wait can feel the same as forever, and for many pundits, too, now is the only time worth knowing, for now is when the baby is crying and now is when they're selling your books.

Will Roper plays video games like the future of the country depends on it, because, well, it kind of does. As director of the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office, Roper spends his days predicting how war will work in the not-so-distant future, and developing the technological capabilities that will enable the American military to lead the way. Because Silicon Valley's companies evolve so much faster than the bureaucracies of Washington can, Roper and the SCO draw inspiration from the private sector picking apart the genius of Pokémon Go. "I think they've solved one of the toughest challenges for warfare," Roper said of the app in a conversation with WIRED's Nick Thompson at South by Southwest Monday. "How do you take amazingly complex information and make it so integrated with the person interacting with it?" Roper envisions a day when soldiers will be able to drop a digital marker on the battlefield that future deployments and faraway units could also see, similar to how Pokémon Go enables millions of strangers to spot the same Jigglypuff in the middle of Times Square.

Among the startups funded in part by Intel Capital, the chipmaker's venture capital arm, are: Peloton Technology, a Silicon Valley startup in Mountain View, California, focused on automating heavy-duty trucks. Not all U.S. presidents are missed once they leave the White House. In Brexit's wake, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is calling for another vote. Bostic will be the first African-American and first openly gay man to head a regional Fed bank. The president reportedly wants to receive the Chinese premier at his Florida estate in April.

Messaging app Viber has introduced a new feature called'Secret Chats', designed to protect users from the prying eyes of CIA agents. It takes tips from Snapchat, with messages self-destructing after a specific amount of time, which users set themselves. Secret Chats also features screenshot restrictions. Only iOS users can capture screenshots of conversations, and Viber will notify users when this happens. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

The various pieces of technology that are in our lives could hand over our most personal information to hackers, the UK's most elite cyber security chiefs have warned. Smart phones, watches, televisions, and fitness trackers all collect information on their users that could be used to extort money from people or pose as them. An increasing amount of internet-connected deivces around the home allow hackers far more powerto use "aggressive" and "confrontational" tactics, according to a new report from the Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the National Crime Agency (NCA). It highlights the huge amount of personal information that those gadgets contain. Each of them has data including people's photos, personal messages and fitness information – which could be turned on their ownersm, according to the experts.

Swarms of robots scouring enemy terrain ahead of ground troops in'Iron Man' exoskeletons with built in weapons may sound like it is straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel, but Army experts believe this is actually a glimpse of war in 2025. The US Army has revealed a 30 page vision of the future of battle, described as a'mad scientist' concept. It says that while robots will play a vital role, humans will still be at the heart of battle - albeit heavily augmented by technology. According to the strategy, the Army envisions that, by 2025, ground troops will conduct foot patrols in with robots called'squad multipurpose equipment transport vehicles' that carry rucksacks and other equipment. Overhead, unmanned aircraft will serve as spotters to warn troops of nearby enemy forces.

NASA engineers are testing the high-power solar electric propulsion systems that could soon push exploration missions further into deep space. A stunning new image from the agency's Glenn Research Center shows a Hall thruster ahead of ground testing in a vacuum chamber. The device is said to have three times the power of existing systems, and the experiments in the vacuum chamber will put it to the test of a simulated space environment, allowing engineers to see how it performs. NASA engineers are testing the high-power solar electric propulsion systems that could soon push exploration missions further into deep space. A stunning new image from the agency's Glenn Research Center shows a Hall thruster ahead of ground testing in a vacuum chamber In the image, NASA engineer Dr Peter Peterson can be seen preparing the high-power thruster – a device that the agency says is'critical' in the future of deep space exploration.

The NHS is testing a new artificially intelligent chatbot app that it hopes will offer an alternative to the non-emergency 111 helpline. The bot will allow users to enter their symptoms and get advice immediately right on their smartphones. The idea is to offer the health advice service to ease the number of calls to 111, which may otherwise be resolved with a few simple answers from the app. The 111 helpline has been subject to criticism for unanswered calls, failing to identify serious conditions and inappropriate advice. This service is mostly manned by non medical professionals who often answer questions using a script anyway.

Stars and innovators from music, movies and technology have descended on Austin for the SXSW Conference and Festivals, which kicked off Friday and runs through March 19. This weekend, the event played host to the car of the future, a big rally and a speech from the former vice president of the United States. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, yet he is just as worried about the rise of fake news and massive hacks as the rest of us. Berners-Lee's concerns were the topic of several panels at SXSW that zeroed in on the future of the Internet. Berners-Lee said he believes these issues must be confronted "in order for the web to fulfill its true potential as a tool which serves all of humanity."