If you’ve got the latest iPhone (or if you’ve seen an ad for it), you know what Siri is. To whit: it’s a speech recognition interface that lets you control your phone by talking to it. You can tell it to set reminders, find songs, or look up nearby pizza places; it listens to, and … Continue reading
Category Archives: Technology
A Future Battery for Your Future Phone
So you’ve got the latest, greatest smartphone on the market. It downloads movies faster than you can watch them; takes photos at a higher resolution than the human eye can apprehend; connects to every bluetooth, wi-fi device and washing machine within seven miles; and does it all as smoothly as a stick of butter being … Continue reading
Robot, You’re Fired
If you’re a robot working as a cashier, the trend detailed in this Forbes article must be discouraging: According to a recent Food Marketing Institute study, fewer people are using self-checkouts at the grocery store. They accounted for 22% of all supermarket transactions in 2007, but have since declined to 16% of transactions in 2010. … Continue reading
Death of the Megabyte, part 2
We’re discussing the world-changing potential of effectively infinite data storage. If you’re just joining us, start with Part 1 to see how we got here. Here’s the question: Supposing we have a hard drive with enough capacity for anything we can imagine – what should we plug it into? There are many incredible possibilities; here … Continue reading
The Bookless Library
The traditional paper book is approaching the end of its nearly 600-year lifespan, soon to be usurped by its young electronic cousins. This will impact our world in a variety of ways, but it’s hard to think of any institution with more at stake than your friendly neighborhood library. Can it be saved? Should it? … Continue reading
Death of the Megabyte, part 1
My proverbial file drawer is bursting with revolutions to write about: artificial intelligence, thought-driven cars, and genetic monsters, to name a few. But where to begin? It seems inauspicious to inaugurate this blog with a downer like climate change, and as much as I’d like to lead off with an article about monkeys in space, … Continue reading
Cosmic Revolutions 