Deep in the heart of Appalachia, modern science and America's bucolic past meet at a unique crossroad of scientific discovery and luddite lifestyles. The Quiet Zone, by journalist Stephen Kurczy, is the story of a sleepy small town that hosts the Green Bank radio telescope. But the presence of this installation comes at a price: due to the telescope's exceeding sensitivity, virtually every device and appliance that emits radio waves, Wi-Fi signals, or microwave radiation is banned for square miles around. That means that Green Bank, West Virginia has about as much tech today as it did in the 1950's (maybe even a little less) -- and some people very much like it that way. In the excerpt below, Pocahontas County attorney, Robert Martin, recounts the challenges of attempting to modernize the region without loosing a horde of gentrifiers upon it as well.

On Saturday morning, I used an app on my phone to unlock a vehicle from Gig, a car sharing startup, and set off for a Valentine's Day weekend trip to northern California with my partner. By late Sunday afternoon, we were sitting on the side of a remote highway, a software issue on our smart car rendering it unusable. It was getting dark, we had no way of getting home, and I was contemplating the limits of the sharing economy and the ultimate costs of convenience. Gig is a company that rents a fleet of hybrid Toyota Priuses and electric Chevrolet Bolts in the Bay Area and Sacramento to 65,000 users, according to a spokesman for the company. It is part of a growing field of car-sharing services – including Zipcar, the now-defunct Share Now, and recently Uber and Lyft – that allow users to rent standardized vehicles on the go.

The latest appeal of unmanned aircraft is that they can be deployed in a variety of disaster-ravaged locations. An unmanned drone is prepared to take off March 8 at Woodbine Municipal Airport in South Jersey carrying a "femtocell" that Verizon can fly into an area that loses cellular coverage during a natural or other emergency. CAPE MAY COUNTY, N.J.-- Cell service get clobbered by a hurricane? The rash of devastating storms that knocked out power and phone service to millions in the U.S. last year laid bare how vulnerable those technological lifelines are to extreme weather. Some companies are trying to use one of this decade's coolest developments -- remote-controlled drones -- as a temporary fix.