Tech people love stories about breakthrough innovations—gadgets or technologies that emerge suddenly and take over, like the iPhone or Twitter. Indeed, there’s a whole industry of pundits, investors, and websites trying feverishly to predict the Next New Big Thing. The assumption is that breakthroughs are inherently surprising, so it takes special genius to spot one coming.

But that’s not how innovation really works, if you ask Bill Buxton. A pioneer in computer graphics who is now a principal researcher at Microsoft, he thinks paradigm-busting inventions are easy to see ...

By now, you’ve probably heard about the campaign to convince Sesame Workshop that iconic Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie get married. The idea, begun as a Change.org petition by Illinois activist Lair Scott, has sparked a great deal of debate, about both Bert and Ernie and the portrayal of LGBT characters in the media.

While there is definitely a legitimate topic for debate, the original idea is just wrong, and the reasons for that have nothing whatever to do with anyone’s views on the rights or societal acceptance of LGBT people. In handy list form, then, here are my top five reasons w...