Idea Channel

Although it's funding is nowhere NEAR the amount Hollywood invests in moviemaking each year, crowdfunding is a way better indicator of what the audience wants to see, the one area Hollywood has failed in time and time again. Will Kickstarter put an end to the Hollywood system?

A huge amount of viewers of the HBO series Game of Thrones (not us of course, no no no) are downloading the show illegally. But despite being the most pirated show of 2012, the Game of Thrones DVDs are top sellers, breaking HBO's own sales records!! Could it be that piracy is actually HELPING the show?!

We're willing to pay hundreds or thousands more for a specific brand name item, but sometimes it can be tempting to go the way of the knock-off for a fraction of the price. The counterfeit industry is huge and isn't going anywhere, and companies spend huge amounts to dissuade people from buying "fakes". But are knock-offs REALLY a negative for the brand?

Some experts have brought Minecraft into the classroom, allowing teachers to customize lessons and students to engage with concepts in new ways. And while educational games aren't new, Minecraft has some unique advantages that could usher in a new direction in education. In the future, students across the world may spend their class time punching trees.

A meteorite crashed into earth!!!! This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last, but it is the first time such an event was captured by SO MANY CAMERAS! But besides providing the world with some hilarious, frightening, and amazing footage, the dash cams also make us think about surveillance, and what role it will play in the future.

From Facebook to bank accounts, you always have some sort of online presence, whether you're actively engaging in front of a screen or not. Yet this is still a word we use to describe our engagement with the Internet. So we have to ask, is this online/offline distinction even worth making? Because we may need to re-evaluate the very word "ONLINE"...

Transhumanism is a scientific philosophy that says technology will solve all our human biological constraints and that immortality is right around the corner (well not RIGHT around the corner, but WAYYY closer). They envision a world of endlessly euphoric robo-humans that represent the next step in evolution. And while this sounds super awesome, we had to ask, will this really make us happy?!

If you've ever talked to a vinyl purist (or are one yourself) you know that people can be pretty passionate about what format is king when it comes to music. And based on how much people like to brag about what band they saw live and how many times, we clearly value the authenticity of the live performance above all else. So which is the most authentic, recorded music or live performance?

We all hate hipsters, right? They seem so smug and arrogant, with their ray bans and scarves and ironic t-shirts. Borrowing from other subcultures, (Handlebar mustaches and flannel shirts), hipsters reappropriate these fashion elements as their own. But don't we all do that? Our own fashion came from SOMEWHERE, and certainly has been refined. Do we all have a little bit of hipster blood in us?

Space, also known as The Final Frontier, has been in our collective dreams and fantasies for decades. Who WOULDN'T want to blast into space, experience zero gravity, or walk on the moon?! But with limited funding to NASA, the day that had been promised to us for years, seems no closer now than it did 30 years ago. BUT WAIT! Could private research and funding be the future of galactic exploration?