Voyager, Delyo the Outlaw and an Immortal Humanity
If you met an alien, how would you introduce today's humanity? The story of the Voyager project is incredible. It is the first and last large-scale attempt by our civilization to introduce itself: to gather everything most important that defines it and present it in a form that other species could decipher. And to do it with technology that today, almost half a century later, seems primitive to us. We all know about Valya Balkanska's song in space, but what else have you heard about Voyager, the space traveler drifting among the stars that may be the last witness to humanity's existence? And how exactly are aliens supposed to understand what we have to tell them? Liftoff!
122Sofia Opens the Door Between Generations
Eighteen-year-old Sofia Simeonova steps into the homes of her peers with her camera to show their most personal place—their own room. Her only condition is that it must not be tidied up for the photos, but look the way it does every day. “Almost every child subconsciously sees their room as the safest place. That is where they express their innermost thoughts and hopes most purely,” says Sofia. With her exhibition The Room in You, she quite literally opens the door between generations. So what does the most personal space of young people look like today?
123Luddites, Long May They Live
The Luddites were a British movement that rose up against the machines two centuries ago. Workers fighting for rights that had fallen victim to automation caused such chaos that Britain had to send more soldiers against them than against Napoleon's army. Technological progress is often frightening. Today, the Western world calls people who worry about the future brought by the supposedly limitless possibilities of computers “Luddites.” In that sense, we all are, or at least it is good to be, Luddites to some degree. What does the history of the skeptics' battle against technology look like, and was it always doomed? What changes if we look at it from the vantage point of today and the questions our time raises?
124WordPress: The Matt Who Set the Internet to Jazz
In 2003, 19-year-old Matt Mullenweg found out firsthand that necessity is the mother of invention. He was using a free blogging platform and needed a little help, but there was no one to give it. The result, born on April 1 and no joke at all, was WordPress, the open-source platform that lets anyone build a good-looking site with minimal effort. Today WordPress carries on its shoulders… a third of the world's web pages! But what does jazz have to do with any of it? This story from two decades ago is as meaningful as it is full of colorful details.
125Anna Around the World
The idea of digital nomadism isn't new, but it has never been as accessible as it is today. This inspiring story proves it. Anna is a traveler by spirit and by calling: she has set out to visit every country on the planet, has already been to more than a third of them, and travels not only for the meaning of it but for the stories of entrepreneurs she gathers along the way, so that they might help someone else.
126The Slack Revolution: A $27,700,000,000 Lesson
Stewart Butterfield is the man with the most reason to buy everyone a round for the way the pandemic changed our lives. Never heard of him? He's well worth knowing: the father of Slack has an instructive story that runs through the different eras of the internet to remind us that even when life is going well… sometimes the stunning success you've spent so long preparing for finally arrives. And do you know his secret? It lies in the conclusions he drew from the failure of one of his computer games, a full 30 years earlier…
127Geoffrey, the Man Who Gave the Computer a Brain
Neural networks, artificial intelligence… we repeat these terms every day without stopping to think how closely they are tied to the idea of software that mimics the human brain. That is no accident; the association is logical. The first person not only to think of it but to put it into practice is today's hero, one of the greatest scientists of our time. We owe Geoffrey Hinton a huge share of the progress we see today in the ever-so-topical field of artificial intelligence.
128The Flying Little Prince
Can you briefly tell the story of a man who fit everything into 112 small pages? Messages that have stirred children and adults for 70 years now, and that lose none of their power no matter how the years pass, how technology advances, how the world changes. Messages written in wartime that are worth rereading right now, when war is once again frightening and crushing us…
129The McAfee Who Refused to Go Quietly
He claimed to have 47 children and twice tried to become president of the United States. He said he would never kill himself, and that if such news ever appeared, it would mean the authorities had murdered him. Then that news appeared, and it turned out to be true. The creator of McAfee, the first mass-market antivirus program, John McAfee is a favorite figure for connoisseurs of powerful stories, and for conspiracy lovers too. His life was an endless party, more strangely bohemian than anyone else's in the world of Silicon Valley. A little Steve Jobs, a little Donald Trump and a little Mityo Pishtova, the swaggering braggart of Bulgarian popular lore, fused into an explosive alloy.
130Sundar Pichai, the Millionaire Who Grew Up Poor
Do you know the name of Google's boss? And if you happen to have heard it, do you know his story? Sundar Pichai was born in India exactly 50 years ago, grew up far from luxury and first got access to a computer only after leaving to study in the United States, then boldly climbed the ladder to the top of one of today's biggest companies while staying out of the spotlight his peers enjoy. What else is worth knowing about him?
131Brandon Sanderson: The Writer as a Startup
The most successful Kickstarter project in history turned out to be… four novels?! Brandon Sanderson set out to raise $1 million and got… $41 million! Then he gave part of it away to other literary projects. How did one writer set off such a financial tsunami? What is the secret behind one of the most popular fantasy authors of our time? And what does the magical story of a man who wrote tens of thousands of pages before publishers trusted him look like?
132A Prestigious Award and a Record for Digital Stories
Digital Stories won the Technology and Innovation category at the Web Report 2022 awards. This is perhaps the most respected journalism prize in the country, because it is awarded through a transparent process by an impressive jury. The awards were presented for the fifth time. This year we also set a record of sorts, winning this distinguished honor for the third time!
133Raya's Forest
What would you buy if you had some savings? A home, a car, or… a plot of land on which to grow a forest? What does paradise look like for Raya Ubenova? Probably like a forest. After years of caring about the environment and looking for a way to help, she decided it was time for something more serious. Today she is the creator of 20 decares of… baby forest!
134When the Orchestra, the Band and the DJ Start Playing…
Would you like to hear a song with a catchy melody, performed at the same time by a symphony orchestra, a rock band, a DJ and three singers, one for each of these styles? And what if you could add or mute every performer and every group of instruments? Wouldn’t the result be remarkably interesting? A thought-provoking metaphor for how easy it is to find the shared melody and build on it, even when at first glance we seem impossibly different. It is a fascinating digital experiment created by the composer Alexander Kostov, and it is worth hearing and seeing…
135Trifon and the Engineering Revolution
Trifon Stefanov will soon finish a master's degree at the university where Xi Jinping also studied. Before that, he learned engineering in Japan. And this young man of the exact sciences dreams of changing the world through an economic model that has been in development in Bulgaria for years. What might this engineering revolution in the economy, the one Trifon believes in, look like?
136And Yet… Who Really Is Elon Musk?
You may even be tired of seeing his name in the news. He is the undisputed superstar of our time, and just about everyone has tried their hand at portraying his endlessly curious persona. And yet, let us try to peer into the heart of all the major contradictions that Elon Musk holds within himself. We will look further back into his story in search of his true face: where his road begins, what his remarkable successes are… and his failures. What does he promise us for the future? In today’s public space, torn apart by extreme contradictions, the nuances are increasingly lost. And it is precisely in them that the key lies.
137One Quail Does Make a Spring
Did you know that COVID-19 may well have emerged partly because of the destruction of animal habitats? The connections in nature are fascinating and unexpected. That is exactly what ecologist Aleksandar Petrov wants to show us through his project Padpadak Daily. He also wants to help us, by popularizing the natural sciences, remember how vital the world around us is to every one of us.
138“My Future Reached Out Its Hand…”
The Cybernet was boundlessly amazed. Its three antennas stood up straight and bent into marks of wonder: “What is feeling?!” In 1969 the poet Dobri Zhotev told, in verse, of his meeting with the Cybernet, and today his reflections sound more than timely. The poet's story is as fascinating and instructive as his poems.
139Horned Joe and the New Journalism
$200,000,000. That, it turns out, is what the notorious Joe Rogan got for his deal with Spotify. The creator of the most successful podcast certainly paved the way for the whole genre. He is everyone’s favorite figure in the battle between anti-vaxxers and vaxxers, the “modern” and the “backward,” left and right, all those who envy him, are outraged by him or simply admire a strong persona. So who, in the end, is this seemingly simple-minded muscleman who has gathered so many eyeballs… and millions? How did it get to the point where even the White House grew indignant with his employers because of him? And how is his story connected to the future of journalism?
140Draw Me… a T-Shirt
Narisuvai Mi (“Draw Me”) is a charming platform that can definitely help you stand out. Its founders bring together talented artists who hand-paint T-shirts, and for an affordable price you can order one made entirely to your own design, unlike anyone else's. One more thing: you still have a chance to win one of these original T-shirts with the Digital Stories logo. Here's how.
