Over thirty years ago, Ian Dury concluded what many people already believed…that sex, drugs and rock & roll were all that a brain and body really needed for a happy life. Technology reporter Peter Nowak says Dury was not completely off-base. He analyzes the relationship between war photography and pornography, and looks at how the military has driven food technology.

Anticipating the future is a classic (and possibly uniquely) human pastime. For as long as humans have kept records of the past, we have also tried to predict our future...and in so doing, control our destiny. Why do we cling to these predictions? The end of the world, the end of humanity, even our future fortunes…why do we anticipate so much?

2010 may be coming to an end, but a whole new year of news and culture awaits in 2011. All week long, we'll be talking with big thinkers about what they’re anticipating …from new movies to world events. Today, our subject is science, and our guest is the one and only Dr. Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist, bestselling author, professor at the City University of New York, and host of “Science of the Impossible.”

In her new book, "The Man Who Invented the Computer," Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley introduces us to John Vincent Atanasoff, a physicist and mathematician who, in 1937, invented much of what we know as the modern-day computer. His creation became known as the Atanasoff-Berry Computer, also known as ABC: an invention largely overshadowed by other technological and engineering advancements. 

"Tron: Legacy" arrives in theaters today, and The Takeaway takes a trip down memory lane to 1982, when the original "Tron" debuted in theaters. The movie featured some glimpses of the future yet to come — such as hackers and cyberwars — and some that have yet to materialize — lightcycles, and ubiquitous, glowing spandex suits. But looking back 28 years, what (if anything) did it get right about technology? And what does the second film hold in store?

NASA has recently agreed to partner up with the Colorado Association for Manufacturing on an effort they hope will accomplish two goals: speed up the commercial rollout of space technologies, and, more importantly in this down economy, create jobs. The two groups hope to create 10,000 jobs in Colorado over the next five years because of this agreement. As a benefit, the partnership should allow more rapid prototyping, meaning new technology products could hit the market much sooner than before — 18 months, say, instead of five years.

A report issued yesterday by the FCC says that most of the connections sold to Americans as "broadband" are actually too slow to qualify for the name. Rick Karr is a correspondent for PBS's "Need to Know." He speaks with us about why American broadband connections are lagging so badly behind those found in the rest of the world.

The real world is catching up with the cyber-punk books of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson — books populated by information terrorists, online hackers and a “cyberspace” every bit as real as our own world. Yesterday, thousands of supporters of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange staged an online campaign to try and overwhelm the websites of companies including Amazon, PayPal and MasterCard.com, going so far as to swamp the credit card company’s website intermittently throughout the morning. Who are the players directing this online stampede, what are their methods and their motivations? 

This morning, we got a little window into the group that's attacked MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa servers from "Anonymous" member Gregg Housh. He says he didn't help in this attack, but did tell us how it all worked:

The people behind Operation Payback have come up with a fairly ingenious way to do it, where it’s as simple as downloading a small piece of software, entering one little web address into this software, and hitting a button — and you’ve joining what they’re calling a voluntary botnet. You don’t have to have any talent. You minimize the application and it’s sitting down in your system tray there, and you don’t even know it’s doing anything, and it’s off just joining in. And anytime they change their target, everyone who’s part of the voluntary botnet changes their target and goes after them.

In the run up to the arrest of Julian Assange, large companies, including Amazon, Visa and Paypal, refused to continue doing business with WikiLeaks, saying the site and its staff had violated various terms of service. Being dropped has meant WikiLeaks has had to change its online domain name, source its documents from a different web hosting company, and, accept donations via methods other than credit cards. Was this tightening of the noose business as usual or an unethical over-use of corporate power?

Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple saw a new competitor enter the e-book market yesterday. Google launched its own e-bookstore, boasting more than three million titles. While paper book purists will very likely continue scoffing at the idea of electronic books, independent bookstores across the country are joining forces with Google on this venture, in hopes that it could bring some benefit to their businesses.

A rocket carrying three satellites destined for Russia’s global positioning system, GLONASS, crashed into the Pacific Ocean yesterday. Russia has spent $2 billion developing its own equivalent to the U.S. GPS system and other countries are following suit, including China's COMPASS and the E.U.'s GALILEO. Why is it so important for countries like Russia to develop their own Global Positioning Systems? Why does Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin insist on his country's "satellite navigation sovereignty?"

Bradley Manning is a 23-year-old U.S. Army intelligence analyst from a small town in Oklahoma who has gained notoriety after being arrested on charges of leaking over 250,000 diplomatic cables to wikileaks.

Who is this young man, who is currently held in a Viriginia military base, awaiting trial, and why did he do what he did?

We review some of our best interviews about space exploration from the last year, including clips from: Matthew J. Holman, Smithsonian Astrophysicist and Lecturer at Harvard University; Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars; Jim Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; and Caroline Moore, who at 14-years-old, became the youngest person to discover a supernova. We also review our interview on the last flight of the space shuttle Atlantis, with Jerry Ross, a seven-time astronaut who has spent five missions aboard Atlantis, and Colonel William Pailes, who was aboard the very first Atlantis mission.

New "current cruisers," the first mass-marketed plug-in electric cars, will hit the market next month. For utility companies, their arrival is cause for both excitement and anxiety. Plugged into a socket, the Nissan Leafs and Chevrolet Volts can draw as much energy from the grid as a small house. Will the early adopters – and their neighborhoods – wind up in the dark?

It's a debate that's been around for as long as the Internet has been around: How do we keep the information superhighway open and beneficial for the public in a world that seems increasingly driven by corporations? The question has inspired plenty of debate about modern treatment of older principals, but author Tim Wu insists this debate isn’t new. He says it’s been around as long as communication structures have existed — from the telephone and radio to television.

You may not have caught this breaking news over the weekend, but on Friday Sony announced it was discontinuing the portable cassette player known to the world as the Walkman. In July 1979, the first Walkman rolled off the assembly line and into the hands of music fans who were suddenly free to take their mix tapes on the go. Three decades later, Sony thinks there's no longer a place for the device in an iPod world (at least in Japan, where it has been discontinued).

Do you remember the music you were listening to on your first portable player? Send us what was on your first Walkman mix tape and we'll relive the memories on the air.

The MIT Media Lab turns 25 today. We take a look back at the novel idea behind this multidisciplinary academic lab that harnessed (and continues to harness) the creative energy of the digital revolution to develop major innovations in art and design, IT and mass communications. The display behind e-book readers such as the Kindle and Nook, the innovation behind the wildly popular "Guitar Hero" video games, and the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative all came from the Media Lab.

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShip2 made its first successful launch and landing over the weekend, reaching 45,000 feet over the Mojave Desert and gliding back down to the surface. The space craft is being tested with hopes that it will be ready for commercial use by 2012, sending civilians willing to pay the hefty ticket price into space for the first time. We talk with Jim Meigs, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics, about the launch and what it means for the space tourism industry.

The big movie over the weekend was David Fincher's "Social Network," AKA "The Facebook Movie." And while its filmmakers took liberties with the facts to build a broad appeal, the story of Mark Zuckerberg's brainchild still resonates with tech entrepreneurs, as well as the mainstream audience that spent $23 million in the film's opening weekend. Takeaway digital editor Jim Colgan followed 300 such techies, who rented out their own movie theater in Midtown Manhattan, to find out why.