Jessica Alba, riding a police hover drone.
Among tech journalists, BlackBerry is considered to be “old-fashioned, lame, commoditized technology,” as Mike Butcher, the blogger and digital adviser in London puts it. But BBM is private, decentralized, blindingly fast, and—most important—ubiquitous. My colleague Robert Capps has called this phenomenon the Good Enough Revolution (issue 17.09), though I doubt he [continued...]
Bill Wasik, Wired magazine, December 2011, #Riot: Self-Organized, Hyper-Networked Revolts—Coming to a City Near You
LinklogRecently, while waiting at a bus stop, I noticed something on the poster for a particular brand of beer. Or rather the absence of something. The lack, in 2010, of a promotional url; Just an icon. That Zuckerberg prosperity-sigil in the corner. A glyph, perhaps, invisible to eyes beyond a certain age? Imagined cultural-presbyopia. The [...]
There’s this fantastic bit in the movie Enemy of the State (1998) where armed NSA agents (on an unsanctioned operation) break into the office of a paranoid communications specialist, Brill (played by Gene Hackman), to retrieve a computer disk that has inadvertently come into the possession of a lawyer, Robert Clayton Dean (played by Will [...]
Every work of fiction exists in its own fictive world, its own diegesis. Not just the science fiction worlds with their technological advances, or the comic book worlds in which New York’s skyline includes the Baxter Building, flying cars, flying men. Even the everyday, ordinary, real-world stuff. Even if the movie never shows you a US [...]
You know when you go to buy a track on the iTunes store and, without warning, iTunes demands that you again read through many pages of legalise before it’ll deign to serve you. Is that something you’d class as an elegant user experience? For all the times I’ve confirmed that I’ve “read and understood” these [...]
Hello, I’m excited by the introduction of large touchscreen tablet devices aimed at consumer markets. Are you, or anyone you know on the internet, also excited by this? Anyone? After all, if you’re reading this, it’s probably on a laptop or desktop with a decent enough screen. Not as light as an iPad, I’d imagine. [...]
I’ve avoided getting worked up about the Digital Economy Bill. My income currently depends on people buying music online – I kinda feel I’m obliged to be utterly humourless about how people act with regard to music piracy in the real world. But. The most troubling thing about the “disconnection” section of the bill is [...]
I remember, back in 2008, stepping out of Oxford Circus station and seeing that the Evening Standard news-stand had been updated. A sort of proto-Blade Runner makeover, sandwich boards replaced by updating monitor screens, electronic card payment. It struck me as a moment of overlap, newsprint and ubiquitous infotech, like that point in time that [...]
As I’ve pointed out previously: a good benchmark of a technology’s ease-of-use is whether you can use it while holding a conversation. My normal mode is to complain about all software/hardware, but I thought I’d share a couple of examples where tasks could actually be completed mid-VOIP conversation. “I need a good photo of myself [...]
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