In the future, we may own much less and share much more. And if we do, it will all be down to big data. In the last century, owning things was the marker of the middle class. Those who had more ...

In his book The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos offers a masterfully simple definition: “An algorithm is,” Domingos writes, “a sequence of instructions telling a computer what to do.” ...

In a notable example of the latter, 56-year-old mechanic Walter Vollmer was incorrectly targeted by the Federal Parent Locator Service and issued a child-support bill for the sum of $206,000.