There are new hints that the fabric of space-time may be made of "memory cells" that record the whole history of the universe. If true, it could explain the nature of dark matter and much more

On his office desk, Aleksandar Gavrilovic keeps two figurines: Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary, and Josip Broz Tito, the former communist leader of Yugoslavia. Gavrilovic is the founder of the video game company Gamechuck. Based out of a tiny office crammed with computers in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, the company is organized around equality: Each worker earns the same salary and shares the profits of the games they create. All decisions are reached through anonymous voting on Discord: The 17-person collective recently voted to shorten workdays from eight hours to six. "We wanted to show that you don't actually have to work like everyone else to be successful," said Gavrilovic. Gavrilovic's company is an outlier in the gaming industry, known for its grueling hours, high turnover rates, and worker discontent.

From car insurance quotes to which posts you see on social media, our online lives are guided by invisible, inscrutable algorithms. They help private companies and governments make decisions -- or automate them altogether -- using massive amounts of data. But despite how crucial they are to everyday life, most people don't understand how algorithms use their data to make decisions, which means serious problems can go undetected. The New Zealand government has a plan to address this problem with what officials are calling the world's first algorithm charter: a set of rules and principles for government agencies to follow when implementing algorithms that allow people to peek under the hood. By leading the way with responsible algorithm oversight, New Zealand hopes to set a model for other countries by demonstrating the value of transparency about how algorithms affect daily life.

When you think of trends that might be shaping the future, the first things that come to mind probably have something to do with technology: Robots taking over jobs. Technology is undoubtedly changing the way we live, and will continue to do so--probably at an accelerating rate--in the near and far future. But there are other trends impacting the course of our lives and societies, too. They're less obvious, and while many are tied to technology, some have nothing to do with it. For the past nine years, entrepreneur and author Rohit Bhargava has read hundreds of articles across all types of publications, tagged and categorized them by topic, funneled frequent topics into broader trends, analyzed those trends, narrowed them down to the most significant ones, and published a book about them as part of his'Non-Obvious' series.

NASA has announced a new round of funding for 18 futuristic projects that could help propel humans further into our solar system and beyond. Many of the ideas'sound like the stuff of science fiction,' the agency acknowledged, but they're not too crazy to one day become a reality. Among those that received funding are micro-probes that take after spiders to safely fly through the air, as well as a futuristic'smart suit' with self-healing skin to protect astronauts. Among those that were funded are micro-probes that take after spiders to safely fly through the air, as well as a futuristic'smart suit' with self-healing skin to protect astronauts (pictured) The cutting edge technologies are part of NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program, which awards applicants up to $500,000 to develop their ideas. There are 12 Phase I ideas, like the smart suit, which are awarded $125,000 over nine months.

In the first season of Crazy/Genius, The Atlantic's podcast on tech and culture, I asked experts to help me answer some of the hardest questions I could imagine. Would the U.S. economy be better off if the government broke up Amazon? Is smartphone use a behavioral addiction? And, seriously, where are all the aliens? In our upcoming season, the focus shifts from hard questions to radical answers, featuring a ragtag cast of scientists, tinkerers, and artists: a Harvard professor who's convinced that aging is just another curable disease; the chief engineer behind the world's most advanced self-driving car technology; climate scientists who study volcanic eruptions and see a lesson for slowing global warming; a startup couple developing the future of "meat" (it chirps); a concert pianist who plays duets with an algorithm, and whose work might be the future of creativity.

Innovation is good; financial innovation is bad. It gave us the global financial crisis, after all, along with multibillion-dollar bailouts for entities such as AIG Financial Products, which almost nobody had heard of before they suddenly turned out to pose a mortal threat to the entire economy. That said, there are two financial innovations that are generally considered to have been clearly positive for society. One is the ATM, for reasons which should be self-explanatory. The other is passive investing.