There’s pushback to the rollout of 5G infrastructure across America because it seems too fast, ugly, and potentially dangerous, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. They’re all legit issues. That rollout has been put on steroids, thanks to the FCC’s requirement that local governments approve new 5G Read more…
How is it that nobody at Microsoft has seen a movie in which AI super brains turn out to be a bad idea? Read the essay at A Cross of Silicon
Is monetizing the data, er, scraped from the rear ends of little pre-consumers really a must-have tech innovation? Read the essay at A Cross of Silicon
I want to believe that all of us will be itinerant, wandering poets in a future where all the work gets done by obedient robots…but there’s every reason to believe it’ll be somewhat less perfect. Read the essay at A Cross of Silicon
Humans are imperfect and emotionally unstable. So should we trust one another because of those shortcomings vs. the presumed perfection of technology? Read the essay at A Cross of Silicon
If we want to continue to make progress in society, we have to find new ways to empower people to own it. Read the essay at A Cross of Silicon
An op-ed in today’s New York Times entitled “Let’s Stop Fetishizing Privacy” was a lovingly blind paean to the glories of unrestricted and unrepentant technology. The last paragraph read like a challenge to those who might disagree with the author: “Progress is a messy business. Instead of trying to preserve what was, let’s realistically Read more…
Ever wonder why Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Home speak in female voices? Users find them “more cordial” and “sympathetic” than male voices, which enables us to see computers as “helpful” and “caring,” according to this story last year. This means they’re discernibly subservient and therefore contribute to sexism, according to Read more…
After reading the fact sheet on a client’s new product for the third time earlier this morning, I threw my hands in the air. I had no idea what they were talking about. The document was full of every conceivable buzzword, from deployment and integration to a half-dozen technologies and Read more…
A recent study of UK consumers found that “only 11% state that they enjoy advertising.” I’m surprised the number was so high. Advertising was never supposed to be entertaining; it was conceived as an interruption, or a necessary evil to be endured so that we could pay less for newspapers Read more…