Biodiversity is a hot topic at the moment, but what is it? Put simply, biodiversity helps regulate climate, air, soil and pretty much all of the good things we need for life. But a drop in global biodiversity is putting our ability to produce food at risk. Insects are dying off at record rates — an

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Hip Hop Caucus are using the power of hip hop culture to activate people across America and around the world to be an active part of the civic process and make change happen in their own communities. Hip hop, the Caucus don’t stop – not until everyone feels able to take action and have their voice

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The things NASA want to do next are “really, really hard”. That’s why Steve Rader – NASA’s Deputy Manager for the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation – appreciates the way the space agency harnesses people power and diversity. We circumnavigated the mighty Saturn V rocket with the crowdsourcing evangelist to find out about NASA’s current challenges – and The Martian.

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An anonymous pirate radio DJ in Nairobi, ‘electro-modern’ remixes in Costa Rica, slum kids with cameras in Argentina and miraculous videos from the streets of San Francisco; this week’s #CultureFutures collection is an audiovisual treat. Over the past few months we’ve been digging deep into the joyful world of virtual reality, comic book artists, filmmakers, photographers,

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In the 1980s, sci-fi prophet William Gibson coined the term ‘cyberspace’ to describe a consensual hallucination created by millions of computers that we can jack into. By 2003 the visionary had warned: “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Even though we are optimists at the Atlas, we’re also big fans of dystopian

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Every year Sónar+D forms a key part of the stamina-pushing Sónar Festival, one of Europe’s biggest and most forward-thinking dance music events. If you have ever wondered what the D stands for, it all becomes clear when you look at it like this… SónaR+D. While festivalgoers rave outside, its lab space acts as a node between the innovation, creative and

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A lot of staring at screens happens at Mobile World Congress – whether tapping away at your own rapidly depreciating handset, ogling smarter ones, deciphering the agenda, or (in my case) simply trying to download the app that gets you a free coffee. ‘Mobile Is Everything’. The clue is in the slogan, but Barcelona’s MWC isn’t just about mobiles. Amid

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From a Noah’s Ark of seeds and American Idol for rural farmers to 3D printing prosthetics in conflict zones and igloo orphanages on skis, this year has seen hundreds of projects mapped on the Atlas from Syria to the North Pole. We’re celebrating the end of 2015 and looking to the future by ranking our favourite 16.  So get your

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The virtual reality storyteller and documentary producer, who has realised the visions of Terry Gilliam, Chris Milk, Spike Jonze, Robert Redford and Beastie Boys, takes us on a 360-degree trip through her top 5 Atlas projects – from the holo world to the reality of dog poop.   1. Microsoft HoloLens “Imagine a virtual world

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We’re big fans of simple tech that makes things better. While mobile Internet rapidly becomes a primary source of knowledge, not everyone is connected. But SMS, the default messaging tool in parts of the developing world, still only requires simple feature phones. Last weekend the millennial ‘Short Message Service’ (it used to be very short!) turned

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