Technology & Innovation — March 6, 2014

Did We Need to Know Who Invented Bitcoin?

Newsweek is receiving heat over luring and then outing the founder of Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto hasn’t held a “real” job in years, he got into financial problems years ago which may have inspired his idea for Bitcoin, he’s unsurprisingly a Libertarian, and he’s an avid collector of model trains, which is how the reporter hooked him into a discussion by email.

But did we have to know all of that? Bitcoin’s allure is that it’s an unrestricted currency, a symbol of resistance to “the system.” Yes, its growing popularity raises some concerns, as Daniel Altman has explained here on Big Think. But it seems strange to associate a fiercely independent global movement to a single individual who reportedly tried–unsuccessfully–to remain private. Though he may be worth an estimated $400 million, Nakamoto was “caught” living a modest lifestyle in California. Maybe we should have left him alone.

Do you think Newsweek went too far?

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

▸

7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Was Harold Ramis a Republican?!

So here’s an absolutely humorless article from the somewhat humorless liberal Salon that accuses the seemingly philosophic filmmaker Harold Ramis of having been a semi-closeted (well he’s loud and proud in Ghostbusters) […]