Once gone, only distant owl calls interrupt the sound of wind rushing through the treetops.

BBC: Poland's wild woods

In 1960 a metal-coated plastic balloon 100ft across sent up by America's space agency was used by Bell to bounce telephone calls to distant destinations in the United States.

ECONOMIST: John Pierce

For example, if a mobile account opened in Shanghai, and sparingly used for local calls, begins making numerous calls from Beijing to a few numbers in a distant western province, then it is likely that a phone thief is calling friends back home.

ECONOMIST: Computing

All of this will be thrust on us by something that Kurzweil calls the Singularity, a theorized point in time in the not-so-distant future when machines become vastly superior to humans in every way, aka the emergence of true artificial intelligence.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

It is paradise without a passport (if you are an American) and it calls my name on every cold winter's day walking around New York's distant archipelago cousin, where I live and work.

BBC: This is Hawaii week