THE Global Tech ISSUE

Inventors and inventions around the world. Fascinating, inspiring, and 70% Silicon Valley-free

Horace Clemmons is in his 70s, lives in the woods in Alabama, and is trying to build tractors in Cuba. Larry Page, the billionaire co-founder of Google, is in his 40s and spends his free time trying to build cars that fly. They couldn’t be more different: Deep South, West Coast; overalls, hoodies. But they’re both inventors with a deep curiosity about the world and a relentless ambition to improve it —something everyone in the Global Tech Issue shares, from an ex-convict with an idea for an undersea turbine generator to a group of young Egyptians trying to build a culture of makers post-Tahrir Square. Some of these thinkers and tinkerers work in highly funded corporate labs; some in academia. And many of them, of course, started out in that time-honored place, the garage.