Category: Internet
-
My 2016 in Books
This is the third year that I’ve kept a running list of every book that I’ve completed for the first time and then shared that list here as the first thing I write on either the last day of the old year or the first of the new. You can see the 2015 list here…
-
Playing “Whack-a-Mole” with Apple News on my iPhone
I love my iPhone. The dangerous problem is that while sometimes I love it the way a writer loves a favorite pen while at other times I love it the way an alcoholic loves beer. Or like Brokeback Mountain. I wish I knew how to quit you, iPhone. Today, I had a lovers quarrel with…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…