Justin Kirk as Gideon Reeves in APB.

Fox

APB, which premieres Monday on Fox, tells the story of Gideon Reeves (Justin Kirk), a tech billionaire who takes over the 13th Precinct of the Chicago Police Department after seeing firsthand how ill-equipped the force is to fight crime. As part of his administration, Reeves gives the cops cool toys and technology, like protective body suits; stun guns with lethal and nonlethal settings; souped-up, bulletproof cars; and lots and lots of drones. In the real world, serious conversations are taking place about how law enforcement uses cutting-edge technology like Stingrays and predictive policing based on algorithms.

June Thomas is a Slate culture critic and editor of Outward, Slates LGBTQ section.

I spoke with co-showrunner Matt Nix, who also created the USA thriller Burn Notice, about the equipment Reeves hands to the cops, and the policy implications of privatizing policing.

June Thomas: In APB, an arrogant billionaire takes a job hes really not qualified for. I dont know if you expected the show to be quite so topical.

Mat Nix: Whatever do you mean!

It is based on reality, though, right?

Yeah, its inspired by a true story of a wealthy man in New Orleans who had been the victim of some burglaries. After battling with the city over police protection, he decided to fund a small police force within the police force that would patrol the center of town, and he made an app so you could report crimes. Its certainly not the same, but it did demonstrate that this was something that could really happen, and did really happenwhere someone decided to fund an upgrade to the police force.

Which of the technologies on the show are really possible?

In the pilot, there are drones that are weaponized with Tasers. That has never been done by a police force, but its done in the military. Those things exist right now. Although they look futuristic, there are no technical obstacles to making a drone that has a loudspeaker on it and a mic and can fire a Taser. We have weapons that have lethal and nonlethal settingsthats one place where we took a certain amount of license, in the sense that theres not currently a Taser bullet that carries enough charge to do that.

In guiding the technology in the show, the kinds of liberties we took were the practical liberties of how long something might take. For example, in the third episode, Gideon uses a chair from the aerospace division of his company that reads biofeedback from pilots to monitor their stress levels. He repurposes the monitors into an interrogation chair, which allows them to passively monitor the stress levels of the suspect. Are there seats in rockets and aircraft that monitor the stress level of the pilots? Absolutely, thats something that exists. Can you rip all that out of a chair and install it in an interrogation chair in the space of a few hours? That might be difficult. But everything is basically possible based on contemporary technology, and the license we take is that we allow ourselves to do it a little bit more quickly. Then again, one of the conceits of the show is that hes not limited by money.

The truth is: The major obstacle to the use of police drones in the real city of Chicago is the Federal Aviation Administration. They wont let you fly drones in certain areas, so thats another thing where were allowing that, off screen, somehow, Gideon has made his way through that bureaucracy and made it possibleor hes just paying fines all the time!

Lets talk about those policy restrictions. In the pilot, I dont remember much discussion of warrants. When the drones are out chasing the bad guys, theyre also doing some very intrusive surveillance.

Its definitely something we address more deeply as the series goes on. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, one thing thats clear is that hes a guy who is really frustrated with the nature of government, red tape, and bureaucratic obstacles. He was partially elected on a platform of cutting through those things. In the real world, well see if hes successful, but in the world of the show, one of the things that we explore is the idea of this guy who has been running his own business and has been able to do pretty much whatever he wanted suddenly being forced to realize that just because something is technically possible, that doesnt make it right

Lets talk about the equipment the 13th Precinct hasbody armor, special guns, powerful cars. Ive heard police departments complain that they cant compete with the materiel that criminals have. Isnt it just as much of a nightmare that the bad guys will get their hands on the kind of technology that Reeves makes available?

With regard to weaponry, it was a priority for us to not portray this as a militarized police force. This is a civilian police force with enhanced equipment. Its not that they are getting more powerful guns. They are getting more capable guns. Theyre getting guns that can fire Taser rounds when necessary and lethal rounds when necessary. Frankly, we might want criminals to get their hands on those kinds of guns.

Im not terribly worried about criminals getting their hands on algorithms.

A lot of what were exploring is the capabilities of big data and networking. We do it in a TV-friendly, graphics-on-a-screen kind of way, but a lot of it is data analysis. In the second episode, one of the big innovations is that the police are going to set up a perimeter, and Adathe computer scientistsays, Why dont we figure out the optimal path for people to drive through this area so that we always have units at the mathematically closest point to possible targets rather than just setting up a big circle? Thats math.

There are certain areas, like drones, where the question of an arms race between the police and the criminals is real. The cops have bulletproof cars with powerful engines, they have this body armor, and they have these gunsbut most of the show is just about being smarter. Im not terribly worried about criminals getting their hands on algorithms.

One other thing that we explore really in every episode is the limitations of the technology. We realized very early on is that the recipe for a very boring show is: Theres a problem, Gideon gets a toy, and the toy fixes the problem.Technology by itself doesnt solve anything. Its how its deployed.

When CSI was big, there were anecdotal reports that juries came to expect CSI-like forensic evidence, and if they werent provided it, they werent willing to bring a conviction. Are you worried that APB might lead cities or individual citizens to demand the kind of equipment and algorithms that the cops at the 13th Precinct have?

Im not too worried that people will say, Why dont we have a billionaire?

This is coming no matter what. The question isnt Is this going to be portrayed in television? or Are people going to get used to the idea of police using drones? The answer to that, whether APB is on the air or not, is absolutely yes, The question is not whether its going to be portrayed on TV but how its going to be portrayed, and are we doing that responsibly. Are we presenting these things as easy answers? Are we presenting civil rightsquestions of due processas bureaucratic red tape to be brushed aside by people who know better? Or are we presenting those as real issues to be grappled with and balanced and dealt with? In the confines of a show that has a lot of action, where people crack wisewere not a documentarythat is something we try to be very conscious of and make sure that whenever we show these things that are coming, we acknowledge that theres another side to it. We always remind the audience that technology is only as good as the people behind it.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

This article is part of Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Interview with Matt Nix about his new Fox show APB. - Slate - Slate Magazine

Forbes

In This Year's Super Bowl Of Technology, Intel Led The Way With A Sky Full Of Drones Forbes While creatively, this year's crop of Super Bowl ads was lackluster, Super Bowl advertisers pushed the edge of the envelope technologically, trying out the newest technologieseither using or showcasing things like virtual reality and artificial ... Yes, those were drones in Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime showCBC.ca all 2,737 news articles »

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In This Year's Super Bowl Of Technology, Intel Led The Way With A Sky Full Of Drones - Forbes

Why it matters to you

According to Bill Nye, the social and technological future depends on you.

What will technology be like in 50 years? According to Bill Nye the Science Guy, were at a crossroads for energy technology and the direction will depend on how people want to shape the world, Futurism reports.

In Nyes weekly video series for Big Think, themechanical engineer, science educator, and television presenter responded to queries about science and technology. Recent questions have asked for Nyes opinion on the possibility of cold fusion and whether scientists today could create Frankensteins monster. The latest inquiry was about the future.

More:How much wind could a wind farm farm? Web tool estimates renewable potential

A young industrial engineering student at the University of Miami asked Nye if he could describe how he thinks the world will look like technologically and socially in the future. Sure that people 50 years ago wouldnt have imagined some of todays technology, the student asked, So can you give us an idea of what you think the world is going to be like in 50 years?

Nye started by stating that were at a turning point, a fork in the road. I very much hope in the next 50 years virtually all of our electricity, lets just start with 80 percent of our electricity, is made renewably from wind and solar, some geothermal, some tidal energy and we run the whole place renewably.

He also stated that its not hard to predict autonomous cars. There will be very few human-driven cars. Most automobiles in 50 years will be automatic, will be driverless. In the same way you get on a train at the airport and you go from one terminal to another, you trust that train to do that, it stays on the track.

Nye said, however, that he believes the future technological direction depends on millennials and Gen Xers. Either in the next decade or 15 years, the U.S. becomes the world leader in renewable technologies or the U.S. just continues to divide the rich and the poor and global climate change gets stronger and stronger the ocean gets bigger and bigger as it gets warmer and the quality of life for a lot of people goes down, Nye continued. Well see.

Concluding with an exhortation, Nye said, But man, youve given me a lot to think about. I want you to change the world. Go get em [] Lets go.

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Bill Nye forecasts next 50 years, says we're at a technological crossroad - Digital Trends

Last month, global leaders in business, government, media, and technology made their annual pilgrimage to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forums annual event. The tranquil mountains surrounding the city stood in sharp contrast to the swirling populist storm that is now transforming geopolitics. Indeed, the events long-held objectiveto improve the state of the world by promoting open borders, global cooperation, and free tradefelt strikingly at odds with the nativism and isolationism expressed in Brexit and the election of US president Donald Trump.

The new right-wing populists have many bogeymenimmigrants, refugees, and what they perceive to be corrupt and ineffective international institutions, to name a few. But look past these scapegoats, and a troubling reality emerges. It is not trade or immigration, but rapid technological progressturbocharged by globalizationthat has left many people behind. The truth is, the track record for the Internet is complicated at best. It has democratized access to information and transformed the way we communicate, but it has also led to the erosion of privacy. It has spurred the creation of Silicon Valley juggernauts, but failed to create broad-based prosperity.

The challenge that lies ahead is how to make globalization (and, ipso facto, technology) work for everyone, not just privileged few. The blockchain, a decentralized ledger that verifies and permanently records transactions, may help us achieve this goal. In fact, the democratizing potential of this technology could be key to ushering in a new era of globalism.

The blockchain was developed as the enabling technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It is capable of carrying not just information but also anything of value. Money, titles, deeds, votes, and intellectual property can be moved, stored, and managed securely and privately, as trust is not established by powerful intermediaries like banks and governments, but by consensus, cryptography, collaboration and clever code.

The decentralized blockchain empower individuals and local communities, creates opportunities and enables connection across borders without requiring users to sacrifice individual autonomy or privacy. Individuals can own their own identities and personal data, do transactions, and create and exchange value peer-to-peer.

If the blockchain becomes more widely used, billions of marginalized people will have a better chance of entering the global economy through financial inclusion and the strengthening of property rights. Wealth for the worlds poorest will no longer be tied down by the limits of cash in the grey economy, as more people will have the means to make payments, store value and access credit globally. Rather than trying to solve the problem of growing social inequality through redistribution alone, we can change the way wealthand opportunityis pre-distributed in the first place. Farmers can connect to global supply chains. Musicians can get fairly compensated for the content they create. We can build a true sharing economy where the creators of value actually share in the wealth these new platforms create. The list goes on.

In this regard, the promise of blockchain technology is heartening. It includes significantly lowered transaction costs, and broader financial access for individuals and companies; strengthened financial and social stability through greater economic participation; stronger economic activity; and the enhancement of appropriate transparency, security, and privacy. Among other things, these transformations could usher in a halcyon age of entrepreneurship, as small companies anywhere in the world can have all the capabilities of big companies without the corresponding liabilities, such as deadening bureaucracy or legacy culture.

At the same time, the blockchain is not a panacea for the worlds problems. And of course we see the irony in positing that this new technology could help us address our social and economic issues, when previous technologies have fallen short of the mark. Ultimately, technology alone does not create prosperitypeople do. Leadership and stewardship will be required to ensure that blockchain technology meets its positive promise. Our firm belief is that this calls for continued commitment to global cooperation, not disengagement.

Now, more than ever, we need global institutions and organizations like the World Economic Forum to work together to ensure this better future. Collectively, our organization is made up of volunteers from disparate backgrounds, united by the common goal of helping to steward this important global resource in the right direction. We believe that in order for blockchain technology to impact the world in a constructive way, all the communities we represent must take positive action, and we must do so with a sense of urgency. Too often in the past, policymakers and the business community have treated goals like financial inclusion, or enabling individuals to have greater agency over personal data, as good to have rather than a must.

This is folly. Without concerted and focused effort, there is a danger this powerful new technology will fail to deliver on its promise. Leaders of the old paradigm might try to stop it. Governments may try to crush it. Perhaps the greatest risk is that the technology will never make it to prime-time, as competing fiefdoms inside the nascent blockchain community advance their own narrow self-interest at the expense of the ecosystem as a whole. None of this is meant to dissuade us from pursuing the technology, but rather to highlight the challenges that we will need to plan for and overcomevia inclusive, meritocratic and bottom-up multi-stakeholder governance.

The members of our group intend to bring this focus to our work together, and to reach out to others in our respective communities to join us. The world is in the throws of great change, and we intend to do our part to ensure that our contribution to that change is positive. The time is now and we need your help. Please join us.

The signatories below are members of the World Economic Forums Global Futures Council on Blockchain, which was formally announced at Forums signal event held at Davos, Switzerland in January, 2017. We are a diverse group of stakeholders that includes regulators, businesspeople, investors, academics, entrepreneurs, and representatives of open-source communities.

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Globalization failed too many people. Here's the technology that could help it work for everyone - Quartz

If you're too lazy to pick up a remote control someday your problem will be solved.

Dozens of companies are working on technology that will allow humans to control computers, prosthetic limbs and televisions using only their brain.

One such company is Freer Logic and Changhong Electric Company. I stumbled across their exhibit at CES this year and it kind of blew my mind.

"This is a neuro-bio monitor technology," developer Peter Freer told me. He had a man sitting on a couch in front of a television as I walked by. On screen was a driving simulator that the man was controlling. He didn't have a remote control in his hand, Freer said he was using his brain to move the car down the road.

"It's the first time in history we've been able to monitor brain activity from a distance without touching it," he said.

Brain and mind control technology is relatively new but almost all of that technology requires a person to strap on a headband. Freer Logic's sensors were built in a headrest and if you're head is close enough to it, around 1 foot or less, the sensors can tell whether you're paying attention to something or not.

"We can monitor his brain state without every touching him," Freer said.

As I watched the man use the simulator he merely focused on the screen to make the video play with the car driving down a road. When Peter and I talked, the man became distracted from the simulator. As he did the video stopped.

Freer said the company is developing the technology further and is working with automobile manufacturers and their OEMs to implement it in vehicles for safety.

"We can develop a drowsiness algorithm so we can detect when truck drivers or people driving their cars get drowsy before their eyes start to droop," Free said.

Seeing this technology in action is, well, mind-blowing but it's almost here for consumers.

Last week it was reported that Netflix has been talking with developers about brain controlled technology that would allow its customers to search for a movie by just thinking of it.

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What the Tech: Neuro-Bio Monitor Technology - KFDX

David Pogue, Times Technology Columnist, Leaves for Yahoo |

After writing about personal technology for The Times for 13 years, David Pogue will start a consumer technology Web site at Yahoo. Read more

How will people remember 2013? As the year of the government shutdown? The year the N.S.A. revealed that the enemy is us? The year Miley Cyrus absolutely, positively stopped playing an adorable child actress?

In consumer tech, we may remember this as the year Bluetooth speakers finally outnumbered insects on the earth. Every company and its brother has been cranking out compact, colorful, battery-powered wireless speakers.

And no wonder: these things really are awesome. Every time some company offers a new tablet, laptop or phone, you can bet that it has a better, sharper, brighter screen but what about the sound? Its stuck in 2004: tinny and weak. A Bluetooth speaker neatly remedies that enormous quality difference between audio and visual.

The Jawbone Jambox was one of the earliest hits. Its a sharp-edged rectangular box, $150, that comes in a choice of colors. It pumps out surprisingly loud, clear sound for its size, which is 6 by 1.6 by 2.8 inches.

Then came the Big Jambox, a shoebox-size $300 version with big enough sound for a backyard.

And now comes the Jambox Mini, at $180.

I love this thing. Its actually not all that mini; in fact, its about as long and tall as the original (6.1 by 2.3 inches) but it looks like someone sliced the original in half with a saber. Readmore

Back in March, T-Mobile burned every possible bridge it had with the other cellphone carriers. As I wrote then, it eliminated the two-year contract; you can now quit T-Mobile whenever you like.

It also became the first carrier to eliminate the infuriating 15-second recording of voicemail instructions every time you try to leave a message a waste of your time and your callers airtime.

And T-Mobile also ended the Great Cellphone Subsidy Con. Thats where you buy a $600 phone (like the iPhone) for $200, with the understanding that youll pay the cellphone company the rest over your two-year contract yet after youve repaid it, your monthly bill doesnt drop!

T-Mobile was basically prancing around, demonstrating that Emperors Verizon, Sprint and AT&T have no clothes.

I was pleasantly surprised shocked, really since those con games have been baked into the American cellphone carriers business plans for years. And we, the American sheep, just assumed that we had to accept them.

Apparently, lots of other people were pleasantly surprised, too. The company says that in the second quarter of 2013, it signed up 685,000 new customers more than Verizon, AT&T and Sprint combined.

Well, on Wednesday, T-Mobile did it again. It announced an even bigger shocker: Starting next month, it will eliminate the sky-high, nosebleed, ridiculous, usurious international roaming charges that have terrified and enraged overseas travelers for years. Readmore

If its October, that must mean the holiday buying season has begun and that means Amazon will offer a new color tablet.

Its the Kindle Fire HDX. It costs $230, and its terrific. The battery goes for about 11 hours, or 17 in a power-saving, reading-only mode. The stereo speakers sound great. The plastic case weighs less than the prior version and has narrower margins around the screen. Theres a mediocre camera on the front for video chatting (not on the back on the 7-inch model). The one big misfire was putting the power and volume keys on the back; youll spend the first week hitting the Off button by mistake while trying to turn it up the sound.

The X in HDX is a reference to the screens clarity. It packs in 323 tiny dots per inch, making it sharper than high definition, and making the iPad Minis 163 dots per inch look coarse.

The HDXs screen really is spectacular, if infuriatingly reflective. The trouble is, you can see the new sharpness only when youre looking at source material with resolution that high. The type in books and magazines looks razor-sharp, but most of the 150,000 TV shows and videos in Amazons catalog dont look any clearer. Movies are also the wrong shape for the screen; you see black bands above and below. Readmore

Well, that didnt take long. Only a couple of days after Apples iPhone 5s went on sale, somebody managed to fool its fingerprint sensor.

The headlines and blog comments were predictable and instantaneous: Oooooh, Apple blew it! The star feature of its new phone is worthless!

Ill admit it: I love that darned sensor. You unlock your phone dozens of times a day. Each time is a few seconds of tedium and looking down at it, over and over and over, to enter your password. Its a drag.

And then there are the 50 percent of iPhone users who dont even bother with a password. If youre among them, then your phone and your life are susceptible to snooping should you lose your phone, find it stolen or leave it on your desk while you get coffee.

On the iPhone 5s, you wake the phone by pressing the Home button and then just leave your finger on it for half a second, and boom: it unlocks.

But should we be concerned, then, that the hackers exploits render the fingerprint reader useless?

Not at all. For three giant reasons. Readmore

Updated to clarify how to access the Spotlight search screen.

The big Apple news this week might seem to be the new iPhones. But truth be told, the bigger news is iOS 7.

This is the free software update for iPhones (iPhone 4 and later), iPads (iPad 2 and later) and iPod Touches (fifth generation). Its a radical, huge redesign. Its master architect was Jonathan Ive, the Apple designer who has brought us astonishing hardware designs for many years; now, for the first time, hes been put in charge of a whole software universe.

The look of iOS 7 is sparse, white almost plain in spots. No more fake leather, fake woodgrain, fake green felt, fake yellow note paper. Its all blue Helvetica Neue against white.

The complete absence of graphic embellishments makes it especially utilitarian in both senses of the word. Thats good, because whatever button or function you need is easier to find; its bad, because, well, it can look a little boring.

Then again, the new look is primarily visible at the Home screen, where a jarringly different color palette greets you on the Apple app icons, and on the options screen. The rest of the time, youll be using your regular apps, many of which will look no different than before.

The look of iOS 7 may grab you or not. But once the fuss about the visuals dies down, something even more important comes into focus: the work thats been done on making iOS better. The longer you spend with the new OS, the more youre grateful for the fixing and de-annoyifying on display. Readmore

Technology and air travel have always gone hand in hand, and theyre only getting more intertwined. From security at the airport to the rules about using electronics in flight to the final resting place of the planes toilet contents, airplanes and tech are a constant source of conflict, passion and questions.

If youd like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smiths new book, Cockpit Confidential. Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the books format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the Ask the Pilot column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

But as a frequent flyer, Id much rather have the book, which is a far more comprehensive book of questions and answers about airplanes, airports, airlines and the psychology of flying. Here are some excerpts factoids that every flier should know: Readmore

Tuesday morning, Apple caught up to its own rumor mill. It took the wraps off the two new iPhones that everyone had already predicted: the iPhone 5C and the iPhone 5S, which will be available on Sept. 20.

The 5C is the budget model. Its basically last years iPhone 5 but with a plastic body (lacquered for extra shininess!), available in five colors. It will be $100 with a two-year contract.

The more exciting new phone is the iPhone 5S. It looks almost identical to the iPhone 5, except that its available in black, white or a classy-looking coppery gold. Its priced the same as last years model, too: $200, $300 and $400 for the models with 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes of storage.

Inside, though, theres a new processor, which Apple says is twice as fast as before. Its also the cellphone worlds first 64-bit processor, according to the company, which is an especially attractive feature for game makers; it can load in new scenes five times faster than the previous chip. Readmore

Everybody loves to hate e-mail. It eats up too much time, its used improperly, its filled up with junk. Entire careers have been launched around the premise of getting your in-box to zero.

I dont agree. E-mail is the hub of life. Its correspondence, collaboration, ideas, news, warnings and congratulations. Its a to-do list, Rolodex and record of past projects. Sure, I try to keep the roar of junk mail to a minimum (I use a program called SpamSieve, and I never, ever enter my primary e-mail address into a form on the Web). But otherwise, e-mail is a pretty great medium.

Maybe, instead of killing it off, the world should be working on making it more useful. A new, free app for iPad and iPhone, bizarrely called PeeqPeeq, is a good start. Readmore

By now, perhaps youve heard: Microsoft just bought Nokias cellphone division for $7.2 billion.

When I mentioned the news last night on Twitter (Im @pogue), my followers were hilariously unimpressed:

Its all snarky but true. What on earth was Steve Ballmer, the departing Microsoft chief, thinking? What is the point of this deal? Readmore

When Im filming a TV series, like the shows I host for PBS, I have to fly a lot. Over the last four years, Ive honed the art of efficient air travel to a sparkling shine.

I could publish my accumulated wisdom in a small book and sell literally dozens of copies. But no: I selflessly offer them to you here, for free.

* Check in with the airline app. If you have your airlines free app on your phone, you can check in ahead of time, even the night before, and save yourself the worry of getting to the airport an hour before the flight.

At that point, the app can also display the bar code representing your boarding pass. No paper. Just set your phone face down on the little T.S.A. scanner, and youre through. Not all airlines have the bar code scanners, but the app will let you know ahead of time. Readmore

From todays mailbag:

Dear Mr. Pogue:

Three years ago, my husband suffered an accident and is now a quadriplegic. He can never be alone without a reliable fully voice-activated phone.

As you pointed out in your column this week, with Android, you have to swipe the screen to reach the mike button, and with the first iteration of Siri, you also had to push the home button all impossible for a quad to do. We bought a Blue Ant device a few years back, which worked nicely (sometimes) with his old HTC. When the phone was last updated, that was the end of a beautiful relationship. I spent hours with both Blue Ant and HTC, and both blamed the other and neither had a solution.

So what do you suggest?

While youre at it: The command to terminate a call doesnt exist yet. When your call goes into voice mail, you cant hang up by a voice command; you must physically terminate the call. We have discussed this problem with multiple brain trusts and no one has the solution yet.

My reply:

Unfortunately, Im afraid I havent done any research on this problem in particular. But the Moto X, as I mentioned in my review, is listening for voice commands all the time you dont have to touch it to start issuing commands.

Among the many Android apps, perhaps theres one that lets you hang up with a voice command?

Ill ask my blog readers. Maybe they know of some solutions!

Moments of Steven A. Ballmer from conferences, commercials and interviews over the years that he was Microsofts chief executive.

By now, youve probably heard: Steven A. Ballmer will soon be stepping down as chief executive of Microsoft.

Its supposedly a voluntary retirement, but that holds about as much credibility as a public officials leaving a job to spend more time with family. Microsoft has been flailing, and many prominent voices have been calling for Mr. Ballmer to step aside.

Many of the factors in his departure stock price, internal politics, shareholder pressure, public relations arent my area of expertise. Im a tech critic, a reviewer of products. But even from my particular angle of examination, Mr. Ballmers time as the head of Microsoft has been baffling. Readmore

I get lots and lots of e-mail. I reply to as much as I can but certain categories, Ill tell you right now, I cant answer. What should I buy? questions, Solve my technical problems questions or Endorse my book, app or product requests. I hope its obvious that theres no way I could answer all of those.

Im increasingly convinced, however, that there should be a consumer technology complaint columnist. Many of my correspondents write to complain about problems theyre having with some product, company or service, and theyd like me to shame the perpetrators by writing about them.

Here are the sorts of things people write about:

Q.

Ive been an enthusiastic user on my iPhone of CoPilot, a GPS navigation program. Recently I noticed that one of the modules for giving text directions would pop off, leaving me with just the map. I decided to re-download the app, now updated. I quickly found out that the new version would not work with my older iOS 5.1 operating system and required iOS 6.

I do not argue that they have a need to update their version in tandem with Apple. But to not support old-time users with the ability to re-install a previous version, is rude and a poor encouragement to brand loyalty.

A.

Alas, the rapid appearance of new versions is simply the cost of playing the software game. As Im fond of saying, buying a software program is more like paying membership dues than buying a vase and owning it. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way the world works. Readmore

A few weeks back, I wrote about special lenses that were developed to give doctors a clearer view of veins and vasculature, bruising, cyanosis, pallor, rashes, erythema, and other variations in blood O2 level, and concentration, especially in bright light.

But these lenses turned out to have an unintended side effect: they may cure red-green colorblindness.

Im severely red-green colorblind, so I was eager to try these $300 lenses. Turns out they didnt help me; the company said that my colorblindness is too severe. They have helped many others, though (their Amazon reviews makes that clear).

After my column appeared, I heard from another company that makes color-enhancing glasses this time, specifically for red-green colorblind folks. The companys called EnChroma, and the EnChroma Cx sunglasses are a heartbeat-skipping $600 a pair.

Our lenses are specifically designed to address color blindness, the company wrote to me, and utilize a 100+ layer dielectric coating we engineered for this precise purpose by keeping the physiology of the eyes of colorblind people in mind.

I asked to try out a pair. (You can, too: theres a 30-day money-back guarantee.) Readmore

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Technology - Pogue's Posts Blog - The New York Times

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The airline did not describe the source of the problem, which forced the grounding of domestic flights for two and a half hours, but said it was not the result of a hack.

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

As A.I. applications become more sophisticated, the music that companies like Jukedeck produce has started wading into the commercial domain of actual musicians.

By ALEX MARSHALL

The Taiwanese company, which makes iPhones for Apple, has plans for a $7 billion American investment.

By REUTERS

A review of important developments in the tech industry.

By MIKE ISAAC and SAPNA MAHESHWARI

The chip makers technology is at heart of the smartphone revolution. But as the companys influence grows, it is gaining unwanted antitrust attention.

By QUENTIN HARDY

Amit Singhal, a 15-year Google veteran, said he was joining Uber, a coup for a company that has publicly stated its intention to chase Google in autonomous-vehicle research.

By MIKE ISAAC and DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

Most smartphones can store a visual history of your travels based on your GPS data, but you can turn it off.

How to keep up with the events on television, online and on mobile devices, and a security to-do list if you are there.

By PUI-WING TAM

The quirkily personal Instagram accounts of taste-making specialists have become the soft power of todays traders.

By SCOTT REYBURN

The highway agency found that while Teslas Autopilot feature didnt prevent a crash in Florida, the system performed as it was intended.

By NEAL E. BOUDETTE

Gov. Andrew Cuomos proposed budget is now calling the embattled initiative, which created just 408 jobs in two years, the Excelsior Business Program.

By VIVIAN YEE

Mike Isaac live-tweeted Mark Zuckerbergs testimony at a federal court last week until it almost got him booted from the courtroom.

By MIKE ISAAC

On its own, the debacle of Samsungs exploding smartphones was bad. What it seems to say about the state of South Korean industry may be worse.

By QUENTIN HARDY

The Swedish authorities arrested three men on suspicion of rape and urged people with access to images showing the episode to make them available to the police.

The internet company reported positive numbers in its most recent quarterly report, but it is still dealing with the aftermath of two major data breaches.

By VINDU GOEL

A reader asks about the now-ubiquitous cloud. Quentin Hardy, The Timess deputy technology editor, considers the question.

By QUENTIN HARDY

Snapchat is known for its fun and ephemeral messaging service, but what its recent move shows is that it wants to rule the trust industry.

By QUENTIN HARDY

Sprint bought a third of the service, which has struggled in a field dominated by streaming giants like Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora.

By BEN SISARIO

A countrywide, top-down corporate culture stifles South Korean innovation and may have contributed to the companys problems, critics say.

By CHOE SANG-HUN and PAUL MOZUR

The company said it would form an outside advisory group and focus on quality assurance but offered little insight into the breakdowns that caused it to fail to identify the phones problems.

By PAUL MOZUR

The airline did not describe the source of the problem, which forced the grounding of domestic flights for two and a half hours, but said it was not the result of a hack.

By NIRAJ CHOKSHI

As A.I. applications become more sophisticated, the music that companies like Jukedeck produce has started wading into the commercial domain of actual musicians.

By ALEX MARSHALL

The Taiwanese company, which makes iPhones for Apple, has plans for a $7 billion American investment.

By REUTERS

A review of important developments in the tech industry.

By MIKE ISAAC and SAPNA MAHESHWARI

The chip makers technology is at heart of the smartphone revolution. But as the companys influence grows, it is gaining unwanted antitrust attention.

By QUENTIN HARDY

Amit Singhal, a 15-year Google veteran, said he was joining Uber, a coup for a company that has publicly stated its intention to chase Google in autonomous-vehicle research.

By MIKE ISAAC and DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

Most smartphones can store a visual history of your travels based on your GPS data, but you can turn it off.

How to keep up with the events on television, online and on mobile devices, and a security to-do list if you are there.

By PUI-WING TAM

The quirkily personal Instagram accounts of taste-making specialists have become the soft power of todays traders.

By SCOTT REYBURN

The highway agency found that while Teslas Autopilot feature didnt prevent a crash in Florida, the system performed as it was intended.

By NEAL E. BOUDETTE

Gov. Andrew Cuomos proposed budget is now calling the embattled initiative, which created just 408 jobs in two years, the Excelsior Business Program.

By VIVIAN YEE

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Technology News - The New York Times

Global information technology research and communications analysis for the business world.

Computer Business Review magazine and the CBRonline.com web site provide the most targeted offline and online platforms to reach Europe's business technology elite.

Computer Business Review magazine was launched in 1993 with the aim of bridging the gap between the traditional technical IT press and the business press sectors. Computer Business Review is now widely regarded throughout Europe as The Economist of the IT industry.

Computer Business Review magazine and CBRonline.com are part of Progressive Trade Media, a leading publishing and research company.

CBRonline.com is a quality technology website, delivering a wide variety of daily news, reports and analysis on the global technology industry. The website delivers a wide range of content which is updated throughout every business day, attracting users from the corporate technology market.

Whether planning an integrated campaign with print media, or solely targeting an online audience, Computer Business Review magazine and CBRonline.com are able to offer you market-leading opportunities to reach your target audience.

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Computer Business Review - Computer Business Review

The National Education Technology Plan is the flagship educational technology policy document for the United States. The Plan articulates a vision of equity, active use, and collaborative leadership to make everywhere, all-the-time learning possible. While acknowledging the continuing need to provide greater equity of access to technology itself, the plan goes further to call upon all involved in American education to ensure equity of access to transformational learning experiences enabled by technology. The principles and examples provided in this document align to the Activities to Support the Effective Use of Technology (Title IV A) of Every Student Succeeds Act as authorized by Congress in December 2015.

In order to keep pace with the changes we are seeing in schools, districts, and states on an almost daily basis, we are updating the NETP more often. Feedback from our stakeholders indicates that the previous five year update cycle was not frequent enough. In response, with this 2017 update, we commence a pattern of yearly, smaller scale updates to the NETP.

Excerpt from:

National Education Technology Plan - Office of Educational ...

PwC Global 100 Software Leaders - France 2016

In addition to viewing the ranking of the top 100 digital companies in France, this publication features a series of articles and interviews with industry players on the key disruptive trends impacting the digital sector today.

Global Technology Scorecard is a PwC analysis and benchmark of top technology companies. The Scorecard cross-compares company quarterly and annual performance and revenues. We also offer a deeper dive into data through our online charting tool allowing you to get up close to raw statistics and manipulate which companies you'd like to compare and benchmark against.

The third quarter of 2016 has given a strong push to the Indian private equity (PE) space, seeing overall investment of 4.3 billion USD in 131 deals.

In the first half of 2016, private equity and venture capital investment in the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) industry maintained the strong momentum of H2 2015. Total TMT deal value and volume accounted for 55% and 39% of overall industry investment, respectively.

The globalisation of the software industry creates emerging-market stars

A closer look at autonomous vehicles, in-car technology, car sharing and ride sharing.

PwC's quarterly report providing analysis of and trends in technology IPOs around the world.

A quarterly look at trends in the Technology deals market.

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Technology: Industries: PwC

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Technology Forum - reddit.com

4 tips for getting onto Shark Tank

Hands-on with Samsung's radical new laundry pair

The future of intimacy is remote-controlled orgasms

Facebook taps Campbell Brown as liaison to news media

Giant iceberg set to break off of Antarctica

Samsung's new QLED TVs might be most colorful TVs ever made

TVs will never have another 'a-ha' moment, and that's OK

I have flawless skin, says this smart beauty mirror

T-Mobile CEO: Sprint merger isn't off table

At CES, Whirlpool rebrands as a tech company

At CES 2017, the frenzy over self-driving cars is palpable

Reviewed.com's Editors' Choice Award Winners at CES 2017

A look at GoPro's Karma drone

High-tech, futuristic cars unveiled at CES 2017

Reviewed.com CES Editors' Choice Winners

Tim Cook's pay slides following down year for Apple

What's it like to attend CES? Video tour

Yahoo Finance tweets out the worst typo

View original post here:

Technology and Electronics Reviews - USATODAY.com

Information technology (IT) is the application of computers to store, study, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data,[1] or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise.[2] IT is considered a subset of information and communications technology (ICT). In 2012, Zuppo proposed an ICT hierarchy where each hierarchy level "contain some degree of commonality in that they are related to technologies that facilitate the transfer of information and various types of electronically mediated communications."[3]

The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several industries are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, and e-commerce.[4][a]

Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000BC,[6] but the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.[7]

Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000BC 1450AD), mechanical (14501840), electromechanical (18401940), electronic (1940present),[6] and moreover, IT as a service. This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic), which began in about 1940.

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick.[8] The Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered to be the earliest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism. Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century, and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.

Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. Colossus, developed during the Second World War to decrypt German messages was the first electronic digital computer. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring. The first recognisably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.[13]

The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison the first transistorised computer, developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.[14]

Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a long strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes, a technology now obsolete. Electronic data storage, which is used in modern computers, dates from World War II, when a form of delay line memory was developed to remove the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of which was the mercury delay line. The first random-access digital storage device was the Williams tube, based on a standard cathode ray tube,[17] but the information stored in it and delay line memory was volatile in that it had to be continuously refreshed, and thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of non-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum, invented in 1932[18] and used in the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.[19]

IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956, as a component of their 305 RAMAC computer system. Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs. Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. As of 2007 almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally:[22] 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007,[23] doubling roughly every 3 years.[24]

Database management systems emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. One of the earliest such systems was IBM's Information Management System (IMS), which is still widely deployed more than 40 years later.[26] IMS stores data hierarchically, but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables, rows and columns. The first commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS) was available from Oracle in 1980.

All database management systems consist of a number of components that together allow the data they store to be accessed simultaneously by many users while maintaining its integrity. A characteristic of all databases is that the structure of the data they contain is defined and stored separately from the data itself, in a database schema.

The extensible markup language (XML) has become a popular format for data representation in recent years. Although XML data can be stored in normal file systems, it is commonly held in relational databases to take advantage of their "robust implementation verified by years of both theoretical and practical effort". As an evolution of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), XML's text-based structure offers the advantage of being both machine and human-readable.

The relational database model introduced a programming-language independent Structured Query Language (SQL), based on relational algebra.

The terms "data" and "information" are not synonymous. Anything stored is data, but it only becomes information when it is organized and presented meaningfully. Most of the world's digital data is unstructured, and stored in a variety of different physical formats[b] even within a single organization. Data warehouses began to be developed in the 1980s to integrate these disparate stores. They typically contain data extracted from various sources, including external sources such as the Internet, organized in such a way as to facilitate decision support systems (DSS).

Data transmission has three aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception. It can be broadly categorized as broadcasting, in which information is transmitted unidirectionally downstream, or telecommunications, with bidirectional upstream and downstream channels.[23]

XML has been increasingly employed as a means of data interchange since the early 2000s, particularly for machine-oriented interactions such as those involved in web-oriented protocols such as SOAP, describing "data-in-transit rather than... data-at-rest". One of the challenges of such usage is converting data from relational databases into XML Document Object Model (DOM) structures.

Hilbert and Lopez identify the exponential pace of technological change (a kind of Moore's law): machines' application-specific capacity to compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986 and 2007; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; the world's storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled every 12.3 years.[23]

Massive amounts of data are stored worldwide every day, but unless it can be analysed and presented effectively it essentially resides in what have been called data tombs: "data archives that are seldom visited". To address that issue, the field of data mining "the process of discovering interesting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data" emerged in the late 1980s.

In an academic context, the Association for Computing Machinery defines IT as "undergraduate degree programs that prepare students to meet the computer technology needs of business, government, healthcare, schools, and other kinds of organizations.... IT specialists assume responsibility for selecting hardware and software products appropriate for an organization, integrating those products with organizational needs and infrastructure, and installing, customizing, and maintaining those applications for the organizations computer users."[39]

In a business context, the Information Technology Association of America has defined information technology as "the study, design, development, application, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems". The responsibilities of those working in the field include network administration, software development and installation, and the planning and management of an organization's technology life cycle, by which hardware and software are maintained, upgraded and replaced.

The business value of information technology lies in the automation of business processes, provision of information for decision making, connecting businesses with their customers, and the provision of productivity tools to increase efficiency.

Employment distribution of computer systems design and related services, 2011[42]

Employment in the computer systems and design related services industry, in thousands, 1990-2011[42]

Occupational growth and wages in computer systems design and related services, 2010-2020[42]

Projected percent change in employment in selected occupations in computer systems design and related services, 2010-2020[42]

Projected average annual percent change in output and employment in selected industries, 2010-2020[42]

The field of information ethics was established by mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s. Some of the ethical issues associated with the use of information technology include:

See original here:

Information technology - Wikipedia

Try to tell this to the champions of technology who predicted the paperless office and who now predict the networked world.

Technology at this level uncouples the past from the present.

Understanding the degree of necessity of the technology in the first place is where the focus should be.

The Ministry of Science and Technology had sent up a lengthy one.

He couldn't duplicate the weaponthe technology required lies so far beyond this age.

Music is acquiring a technology as confusing and as extensive as bacteriology.

Patents may be consulted evenings and Sundays by arrangement with the technology librarian, Room 115.

From this time the success of schools of technology was assured.

Technology is no cure for this paranoia; in fact, it may enhance the paranoia: it turns us into prisoners of our own device.

Down the stretch Allan gained on a Technology runner, but failed to pass him.

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Technology Synonyms, Technology Antonyms | Thesaurus.com