According to Google, its latest quantum computing chip, Willow, is capable of solving a complex computation problem in just 5 minutes that would take the world’s fastest supercomputer 10 septillion years to solve.

For most of us, there is a soundtrack to our lives. Songs from our childhoods, our weddings, or the background for the big and small events, parties, and road trips that shape us. Music is inherently ephemeral, and often only made available to archaeologists via ancient instruments or illustrations, but archaeological investigations from a former commune in Northern California have provided an exciting opportunity to explore the “sonic debris” from the mid-20th century.

In the academy award winning Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, Timothèe Chalamet, (portraying Bob Dylan) suggests that to truly create something new, you have to destroy the past. The British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch referred to this as “killing your darlings.” David Lowery of the band Cracker sings, in Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) “What the world needs now is another folk-singer like I need a hole in my head.” The idea is that to create truly original art, literature, music, or cultural movements, you must forget the past.

The drumbeat to cancel all federal funding for public media has continued in Washington and significant new steps have been taken to make this outcome a reality. Here’s an update on where we stand.

In recent weeks the Trump administration has taken several steps that cast an ominous shadow on public broadcasting and may forebode future actions that attempt to weaken the role public radio and television stations play in communities across the country.

As we look to the year ahead, we expect a great deal of uncertainty. Following the November election, the incoming Trump administration has announced the formation of a committee called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The charge of this committee, according to the administration, is to reduce the size of government and save money by improving efficiency and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. Who could be against that?

Underground History recently participated in an international effort to promote “RealArchaeology.” This coordinated media blitz was done in response to the rise of pseudoarchaeology and scientific conspiracy theories, as well as to amplify resources where real archaeological content was being produced and shared, and to both pre- and de-bunk false stories and theories that are circulating. Archaeologists certainly aren’t the only ones on the firing lines in what is becoming an increasingly post-truth era, but there are real concerns, and consequences, when false historical narratives gain traction.

As a technologist, I cannot help but see the world through the lenses I’ve crafted over years of reading, writing, and thinking about technology and its impacts on society, culture, and humanity. I’ll be the first to admit that this can taint one’s view of the world. Sometimes it can lead to insights, other times to myopia.

Vast deposits of environmental and archaeological knowledge have been frozen in time—until now.

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