Can we survive technology?

We live in a world of unending progress. But technological advancement poses as many difficult questions as it answers.

Editor's note: Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our Future Issue, we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of MORE

How to find happiness through failure

In The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, journalist Oliver Burkeman presents a bracing alternative to conventional self-help books.

By Emma Whitford, contributor

FORTUNE -- The introduction to a self-help book is almost always a spoiler: In the chapters that follow, you, the reader, will learn how to get a promotion, make a better first impression, save your marriage, or lower your cholesterol. This will lead to happiness.

The MORE

Automakers are worried about driverless cars

Automated vehicle technology is advancing rapidly. But some automakers fret the public and regulators aren't ready yet.

By Doron Levin, contributor

FORTUNE -- Technology that will allow cars to operate with minimal input from human drivers is being demonstrated more openly by a few automakers, notably Audi, Toyota's Lexus and Mercedes-Benz. The technology will be available in a few years, they say.

Automakers worry, however, that consumers and regulators may balk at giving MORE

High court weighs future of a class-action "hellhole"

Using procedural sleights-of-hand to keep big corporate defendants trapped in congenial Arkansas courts, local law firms have extracted almost $400 million in fees over seven years in one small, rural county. Can the defendants stage a breakout?

By Roger Parloff

FORTUNE -- On Monday, in the case known as Standard Fire Insurance v. Knowles, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear argument on what might, at first glance, look like a dry MORE