All About That Apple Life
A sector-by-sector breakdown of all the ways Apple is sneaking into your daily life, work, and play.
Social (Media) Clubs
Digital social dynamics make their way into the real world.
The Scarlet 'A,' for Ashley
With Ashley Madison, the threat of hacking turns public.
Finding Friendship on the Internet
A new report shows online friendship is becoming the mainstream for teenagers.
A Third Way for Temporary Workers
In settling the problem of the contract worker, we may find that we have to entirely re-define our country's structure of employment.
Why Google's Deep Dream Is Future Kitsch
It's easy to discuss Deep Dream as an independent creature. But like all kitsch, it comes straight back to its creators.
Remember When We Were Pirates?
The launch of Apple Music is yet another nail in the coffin of online music piracy. Is that a good thing?
How AirBnB Threatens Urban Creative Space
The end result of an AirBnB'd neighborhood is not a profitable artist collective; it's an international bedroom community of "post-tourist" upwardly mobile workers.
Reddit and the Online Community Crisis
Abuse is rampant on Reddit. Are invitation-only forums the solution?
Anxiety Games: For When a Little Distraction Is Good—or Even Necessary
There’s a lot of comfort to be found in virtual worlds.
Seamless for Marijuana Isn’t Just a Stoner’s Dream Come True
It’s not just customers who are benefiting from the Silicon Valley-style normalization of the marijuana market.
Want to Invest in Your City? Try the New Kickstarter for Municipal Bonds
By bringing some Silicon Valley-style innovation to a dusty, through increasingly popular, sector, Neighborly hopes to make supporting local infrastructure projects both cool and profitable.
The Hubris of Venture Capital
It’s venture capital firms, not necessarily start-ups, that are lighting money on fire in pursuit of the next unicorn investment.
Algorithms Aren’t Killing Creative Culture
Algorithms are fundamentally uncreative. Every set of crunched numbers, every calculated outcome, needs an equal and perhaps opposite human component to bring it to life.
The Apple Watch’s Distraction Problem
Distraction is a necessary method for dealing with the competing stimuli of everyday life. But only the right kind of distraction, which Apple’s newest product fails to provide.
Europe’s Smartphone Detox
Smartphone penetration in Spain is similar to that in the United States, but nobody over there seems to be talking about addiction to technology. They are talking though—to each other, in person.
What Will We Do With Virtual Reality?
It’s not just for gaming. Cheap and accessible virtual reality will soon change how we look at just about everything, and this group of novelists, artists, and designers are leading the way.
Apple Wants the Computer to Disappear
The persistent materiality of technology keeps getting in our way.
Mounting a Critique of Online Identity, in Person
Physically co-present with the sociologist Nathan Jurgenson during a break from his battle to dismantle the artificial barrier we’ve raised between life online and in the outside world.
How Technology Is Changing Our View of Ancient Languages
The Perseus Project is on a mission to make classical texts accessible to all.
Does Technology Need to Be a Luxury?
The unfortunate future is likely to be a consumer technology market that splits along class lines.
Present Addiction: Our Need to Feel Connected, Right Now, All the Time
The Age of Earthquakes is a kind of philosophical Anarchist Cookbook for the online era, when we are in touch with everyone at once all the time, or at least like to feel that we are.
Making the On-Demand Economy Work for Workers
Managed by Q’s success shows that it’s possible to create an on-demand product while serving both employees and clients rather than shorting the former for the benefit of the latter (we’re looking at you, Uber, Lyft, and all the rest).
Paranoid Technology for Paranoid Times
A new entry in the sousveillance market, Alibi is a smartphone app that can constantly record audio and video of your surroundings—and surrounders.
Why Are We Blaming Technology for Our Lack of Focus?
We complain that we’ve become addicted to glowing screens, but it’s less the screens themselves than what's behind them that’s the big draw.
A Financial Start-Up That Provides the Illusion of a Salary
Even, a new company that hopes to provide some peace of mind to hourly workers and freelancers, is a paranoiac technology for a time of justifiable economic paranoia.
Who’s Afraid of Robot Culture?
Fear not the machines of the future. We can—and should—use the tools we’ve been developing to be both more critical and more creative.
How to Fix Online Intimacy
We need better ways to control how vulnerable we make ourselves online, treating our virtual selves more like our physical ones rather than less.
How Ambient Intimacy Became So Overwhelming
Social media allows us to connect with people on a level we wouldn’t otherwise have access to—but we may have gone too far.
5 Technology Trends to Watch Out for in 2015
Next year may finally be the year we stop using cash completely and leave the large social networks we’ve grown accustomed to behind (think Facebook and Twitter) as we seek out safer alternatives.
What Was the Job?
This was the year the job broke, the year we accepted a re-interpretation of its fundamental bargain and bought in to the push to get us to all work for ourselves rather than each other.
The Platform Is the Product
YouTube, Uber, Google, Amazon—they all have at least one thing in common: You, the consumer, are up for sale. They’re just building the means of reaching as many of you as possible.
Cyber Shopping Isn't Just for Monday
Even Black Friday sales are falling as more people shift their retail habits to online. Physical stores still have advantages, but we're quickly finding ways to replace them with virtual substitutes.
Why Is National Security Agency Reform Stalling?
Privacy has a branding problem. And until we address that, your personal data is going to be up for grabs.
The FBI’s Dangerous Misrepresentation of Encryption Law
The FBI no more deserves a direct line to your data than it deserves to intercept your mail at the post office. But it doesn’t want you to know that.
Can Tech Companies Solve Their Temporary Labor Problem?
Some companies are moving away from the 1099 economy, recognizing that relying on temporary contract workers is bad for businesses, employees, and clients alike.
How Safe Is Apple Pay?
Walmart and Best Buy’s Apple Pay alternative has already been hacked. Your mobile wallet could be next.
The Halloween Industrial Complex
The scariest thing about Halloween might be just how seriously we take it. For this week’s holiday, Americans of all ages will spend more than $5 billion on disposable costumes and bite-size candy.
Will the End of a Tax Loophole Kill Off Irish Business?
U.S. technology giants have constructed international offices in Dublin in order to take advantage of favorable tax policies that are now changing. But Ireland might have enough other draws to keep them there even when costs climb.
'Looking' at Art in the Smartphone Age
Technology is a great way to activate gallery space, but it shouldn’t take it over.
Everyone Agrees: CEOs Should Be Paid Less
A lot less. A survey of citizens from 50 countries found that the ideal ratio between CEO and unskilled worker pay would be 4.6:1. In the United States, it's a staggering 351:1.
Would You Like a Subscription With Your Coffee?
A new app hopes to unite local coffee shops while helping you find a cheap cup of good coffee.
The Dangerous Rise of the Temporary Technology Worker
In the 1099 economy, we all work for commission, hoping to find enough opportunities to piece together a part-time salary on full-time work.
Welcome to the Economy Economy
With the recent introduction of Apple Pay, the Silicon Valley giant is promising to remake how we interact with money. Could iCoin be next?
Why Women Earn Less as Mothers and Men More as Fathers
For women, becoming a parent means you can expect to earn even less over your lifetime—unless you’re Marissa Mayer.
Old Privacy Laws Need a Serious Update
An 80-year-old ruling that has become a pillar of privacy law in the United States doesn’t hold up in the Internet age.