Category: Internet
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Amazon’s Robot Bodega
Don’t miss this important piece from The Verge, which gives great context around this promotional video about Amazon Go, the robot bodega: As The Verge captures, there are no cashiers and no checkout lines: you grab what you want and just go. At the moment, there are human stockers at the Amazon Go beta in…
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First Thoughts on Amazon’s Echo and Alexa
Based in large part on my friend Jeff Minsky’s enthusiast endorsement, I bought the Amazon Echo device that comes with its voice-activated, Siri-like, AI digital helper named Alexa. “This is a no-brainer,” Jeff said. “If nothing else it’s a terrific wireless speaker for under $200, and it does so much more.” I unboxed Echo on Wednesday,…
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High Fidelity, Pillow Talk, The Music Man: on technology and on ideas that rhyme, but then don’t
Hey, this looks like a piece about old movies, and it starts out that way, but it’s also about how to think about technology. I even throw in a little Douglas Adams at the end. Ideas can rhyme like words do. When words rhyme, the rhyme helps us position ourselves inside a poem: we know…
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Michael Wolff’s Just-Released Book is a Puzzler
The dust-jacket of Television is the New Television: the Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age describes Wolff as a man with unparalleled access to powerful figures in media and the book as something that will change the reader’s thinking. Moreover, it frames Wolff as an archly bitchy writer with enemies who would…
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My 2014 in Books
I read a lot — magazines, two newspapers, email newsletters, and countless social-media-shared links I chase down digital rabbit holes. I’d never know anything, for example, without Jason Hirshhorn’s magnificent daily Media Redefined. But I’m lost without books. Actual books. Whether paper or digital, if I’m not reading at least two books then I get…