Verizon and other internet providers are going to start rolling out 5G internet this year.
It will change how we get TV and internet in our homes.
Instead of drilling holes for cable everywhere, you’ll get a modem and a subscription to a streaming TV service.
They both allow us to stay in touch, but while email often attracts ire, text messaging is more popular than ever. Is the way we choose to communicate saying more than we might think?
Around 15 years ago, I was working at my part-time job at an electronics store at the mall. One of my colleagues asked me if I “use text messages.”
“I’m addicted,” she said wide-eyed. “They’re so much fun.”
At that time, most people were still using old feature phones with LED screens and plastic keypads. I don’t remember what the character limits were, but it was certainly fewer than a tweet, and it took about 12 years to finally type out what you wanted to say. They were slow, very expensive, and long enough to write about a quarter of a haiku. I genuinely thought it was a dumb, flash-in-the-pan gimmick that wouldn’t last long.
How wrong I was.
Continue reading… “Why we hate using email but love sending texts”
The tech could be used to increase the representation of women scientists on Wikipedia.
Quicksilver discovers scientists who should have Wikipedia articles about them and writes a first draft.
Plenty of prominent scientists have Wikipedia pages. But while checking to see if someone specific has a Wikipedia page is a quick Google search away, figuring out who should be on Wikipedia but isn’t—and then writing an entry for him or her—is much trickier.
Currently Senior Maverick at Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly helped launch the magazine and was its executive editor for its first seven years. He has written for The New York Times, The Economist, Science, TIME, and more, and is the bestselling author of The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. He recently sat down with Srinivas Rao on the Unmistakable Creative podcast to discuss the surprising changes that society can expect in the next 20 years.
Continue reading… “A world-leading technologist on what the year 2038 will look like”
No language in history has dominated the world quite like English does today. Is there any point in resisting? By Jacob Mikanowski
On 16 May, a lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg was in a New York cafe when he heard several members of staff speaking Spanish. He reacted with immediate fury, threatening to call US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and telling one employee: “Your staff is speaking Spanish to customers when they should be speaking English … This is America.” A video of the incident quickly went viral, drawing widespread scorn. The Yelp page for his law firm was flooded with one-star reviews, and Schlossberg was soon confronted with a “fiesta” protest in front of his Manhattan apartment building, which included a crowd-funded taco truck and mariachi band to serenade him on the way to work.
Continue reading… “Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet”
Portrait of a Warrior Asmat tribe in traditional headdress.
By definition, endangered languages are those that are facing extinction in the future. Several languages are not being used and are replaced by languages that are widely spoken in various countries and regions. If the trends are not reversed, the next century will see a few more of them becoming extinct.
Many older languages only have very few speakers since they are no longer taught or learned by younger people. When the last speakers of endangered languages die, the languages die with them, unless there are efforts to revive the language.
Continue reading… “Endangered Languages: Why do they face extinction?”
One of the best announcements that came out of this year’s Google I/O was a new Gmail feature called Smart Compose, which can autocomplete entire emails for you.
Unlike many of the other announcements from Google I/O, Gmail Smart Compose can actually be switched on and used right now. It’s all part of the new Gmail experience that Google has been rolling out to customers.
It’s time for engineers to hold themselves accountable.
In his essay, “Design’s Lost Generation,” Mike Monteiro describes how he shocked a crowd of designers at a San Francisco tech conference by suggesting design — like medicine, law, and even driving — should be regulated:
Continue reading… “Should software engineers care about ethics”
MIT researchers have developed a computer interface that can transcribe words that the user verbalizes internally but does not actually speak aloud.
The system consists of a wearable device and an associated computing system. Electrodes in the device pick up neuromuscular signals in the jaw and face that are triggered by internal verbalizations — saying words “in your head” — but are undetectable to the human eye. The signals are fed to a machine-learning system that has been trained to correlate particular signals with particular words.
Continue reading… “Computer system transcribes words users “speak silently””
If they make it through regulatory approvals and meet financial projections, the new satellites will create new industries
A new era of global communications is on the launch pad. Eleven companies have applied to the Federal Communications Commission and other telecom regulators to beam broadband internet from clouds of more than 15,000 new satellites. Not since the telegraph replaced the Pony Express has communication technology seen such a leap in capacity and promise.
Continue reading… “The new internet from space”
Machines are getting much better at the jobs we humans normally do.
As any translator will tell you, transforming the words from one language into another is a task that draws on an enormous reservoir of training, experience, and art.
For a brief moment, NASA found itself at the center of a digital misinformation campaign.
“After year in space, astronaut Scott Kelly no longer has same DNA as identical twin,” the headline of a story on the Today show’s website, published Thursday, declared. Seven percent of his DNA, the story says, “has not returned to normal since he returned from space.”
Continue reading… “How Did Astronaut DNA Become ‘Fake News’?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.