This Week's Awesome Stories From Around the Web (Through July 9th)

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Exclusive: Why Microsoft Is Betting Its Future on AI Casey Newton The Verge "Microsoft's historical instincts about where technology is going have been spot-on. But the company has a record of dropping the ball when it comes to acting on that instinct...The question looming over the company's efforts around AI is simple: Why should it it be different this time?" THE FUTURE: Why We Need to Pick Up Alvin Toffler's Torch Farhad Manjoo The New York Times "But even though these and bigger changes are just getting started -- here come artificial intelligence, gene editing, drones, better virtual reality and a battery-powered transportation system -- futurism has fallen out of favor. Even as the pace of technology keeps increasing, we haven't developed many good ways, as a society, to think about long-term change." Spiders, Slime, and Fungus Meg Miller Fast Company "A jacket grown from microbes. A chair made of the fungus mycelium. Perfume concocted from'designer' baker's yeast. As one-offs, these projects may seem far flung and wildly experimental, but together they point to a new movement within the design world...a field that marries the scientific know-how of biologists with the big-picture thinking of artists and designers."