When you build software, you add little hooks into the code so that, as users open a window, tap a picture, upload a file, the code tattles on them, sending some of their data to another company's server. Log data is sowed; reports are reaped. This is known as “analytics” …
Read More »Dispatch from the Future: The Must-Have Gadgets and Gear of 2053
What will personal technology look like in 2053? Now that we have three decades of gear coverage under our belts, we cast our eyes 30 years into the future to answer that very question. We consulted with industry analysts, researchers, product designers, and computing experts. The tools of tomorrow will …
Read More »Watch This Guy Work, and You’ll Finally Understand the TikTok Era
We were on the patio of a middling Los Angeles taqueria when Ursus Magana tried to talk me out of writing this story. A hirsute fireplug of a man with a slew of anime tattoos, Magana wasn’t worried that I’d spill any awful secrets. In the months since I’d first …
Read More »My Kid Wants to Be an Influencer. Is That Bad?
“Whenever my 6-year-old daughter gets asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she says, ‘An influencer.’ The thought of it freaks me out. What should I do?” —Under the Influence Dear Under, Your question made me think about Diana Christensen, a main character in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 …
Read More »In the War Against Russia, Some Ukrainians Carry AK-47s. Andrey Liscovich Carries a Shopping List
In hindsight, zhenya Podtikov realized, he should have known that Ukraine’s first Vector drone was not long for this world. But when it arrived at an army base in Lviv, in April 2022, he couldn’t help admiring it. “I was just surprised that drone hardware could look so good,” he …
Read More »Sundar Pichai on Google’s AI, Microsoft’s AI, OpenAI, and … Did We Mention AI?
Earlier this month, Sundar Pichai was struggling to write a letter to Alphabet’s 180,000 employees. The 51-year-old CEO wanted to laud Google on its 25th birthday, which could have been easy enough. Alphabet’s stock market value was around $1.7 trillion. Its vast cloud-computing operation had turned its first profit. Its …
Read More »She Sacrificed Her Youth to Get the Tech Bros to Grow Up
When Patricia Moore was 26, she looked in the mirror and saw an 85-year-old woman. Crow’s feet clustered at her eyes, her back hunched, and silver hair gathered around her face. Another person might be horrified. Moore held a hand to her cheek, astonished and thrilled at the transformation. Back …
Read More »You Are Not Responsible for Your Own Online Privacy
In 2010, Mark Zuckerberg told the audience at a TechCrunch awards ceremony that young people—especially social media users—no longer cared about privacy. “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” he said. “That social norm is just something …
Read More »The World Is Going Blind. Taiwan Offers a Warning, and a Cure
Doing surgery on the back of the eye is a little like laying new carpet: You must begin by moving the furniture. Separate the muscles that hold the eyeball inside its socket; make a delicate cut in the conjunctiva, the mucous membrane that covers the eye. Only then can the …
Read More »