Transportation

8 articles
  • false story_HERO

    Why Do We Get Transported by Stories We Know Aren’t True?

    In Jasper Fforde’s lighthearted “Thursday Next” series of books, people can use a “prose portal” to enter the world of a book, to change the plot or kidnap a character. The prose portal is an imaginative metaphor for a familiar experience: feeling taken away by a narrative, sucked into a good book so that we […]
  • Mayersohn_HERO

    The Combustion Engine Refuses to Die

    Internal combustion is surviving by adapting.
  • Keim_HERO

    Did Cars Save Our Cities From Horses?

    Debating a modern parable about waste and technology.
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    The Secret Life of Everything: Where Your Stuff Comes From

     At this stage of the early 21st century, when transparency has evolved from buzzword to business principle, when it’s possible to track anything just about anywhere, you might think it would be a simple matter to choose some everyday product—a cup of coffee, say, or a pen—and trace the paths taken by its parts and […]
  • Article Recirculation Lead Image

    Watching Our Every Move—From Space

    Should extraterrestrials be looking down at Earth from space, they would know a few things about us humans. They would know our routines are dictated by the sun. They would see that we tend to congregate and build near water. But perhaps most of all, they would know that we move. Today’s world is an […]
  • flying car

    Hyperloop or Hype: Can Elon Musk’s Wild Transport Idea Work?

    How would you like to get around in a vehicle that “never crashes, that’s at least twice as fast as a plane, that’s solar powered, and that leaves right when you arrive, so there is no waiting for a departure time”? Sounds a little too good to be true, but that is precisely what serial […]

  • Young Man Reading

    Why Do We Get Transported by Stories We Know Are False?

    In Jasper Fforde’s lighthearted “Thursday Next” series of books, people can use a “prose portal” to enter the world of a book, to change the plot or kidnap a character. The prose portal is an imaginative metaphor for a familiar experience: feeling taken away by a narrative, sucked into a good book so that we […]

  • reading

    Why People Love to Get Lost in Books

    In the huge range of different human cultural inclinations, one of the most widespread is a fondness for stories. We just love to get lost in a good book or movie. When we do, we tend to ignore where we are and become completely absorbed in the story. Psychologists call this “transportation,” and have conducted […]