What it takes for good ideas to attract money.
Summer, 2001. Players install the boxed, retail software for an Electronic Arts game called Majestic. After signing up, the game sends players messages by phone, email, AIM, BlackBerry, and even fax—shards of a paranoia fiction story that plays out in real-time. The title goes on hiatus after the September 11 attacks—this was not the year for fourth-wall-breaking paranoia fiction entertainment. It… read more
What a Twitter fight between Clinton and Trump says about politics and politicking on the internet.
There’s politics, and there’s politicking. Politics relates to the process of governing and making policy. Politicking refers to the tactics needed to acquire or retain the power of politics itself. Politics is an esteemed term, while politicking is usually used in a derogatory way. And the two exist in tension. Today, Hillary Clinton posted a good tweet, responding to Donald… read more
The Freewrite, a “smart typewriter,” wants to liberate writers from their computers.
These days, I write with my fingertips. We all do. And so, anything that changes that sensation stands out. Today, instead of chiclet keys on an Apple laptop, I am clacking at the white, mechanical keys of the Freewrite, a “smart typewriter” made by Astrohaus. It’s the latest and most extreme entry in the distraction-free writing wars. The idea: by… read more
Companies once asked only their employees to feign heartfelt devotion to their products. Now their customers are expected to do so too.
Dining recently with friends, everything looked the way it always does. The menu boasted appealing but ordinary fare—antipasti and starters, wood-fired pizzas, freshly-made pastas, meaty mains. I noticed that a handful of the menu items were printed in red, and I asked the server why. “These are our signature dishes,” he explained. “They’re the ones that are most shared on… read more
Our telephone habits have changed, but so have the infrastructure and design of the handset.
One of the ironies of modern life is that everyone is glued to their phones, but nobody uses them as phones anymore. Not by choice, anyway. Phone calls—you know, where you put the thing up to your ear and speak to someone in real time—are becoming relics of a bygone era, the “phone” part of a smartphone turning vestigial as… read more
Smart devices turn every industry into the computer industry, and dupe consumers into thinking their lives are better for it in the process.
Atlanta turns yellow for two weeks in April. Streets, driveways, terraces, cars—everything cakes with pollen. It’s the trees that cause the worst of it. Pine, oak, sweet gum, sycamore, mulberry, hackberry, birch, willow. Prolific itching, sneezing, and car-washing ensue. Grilling season officially begins when the pollen subsides. This year’s was particularly grievous, and perhaps that’s why I was so eager… read more
The purpose (and the sorrow) of the worst kind of email—the passive-aggressive forward
Email is the worst, but some emails are worse than others. The worst emails are forwards. And the worst forwards? Not the jokes your uncle sends you from his AOL account, but the ones your boss or your coworkers send along from some obscure corner of Administrivistan. Most work emails are purely defensive missives. They seek to shift effort, hide… read more
As we march onwards towards wearables and alerts on our wrists, we're no longer shocked by technological progress, but rather exhausted by it.
It’s been seven years since the first launch of the iPhone. Before that, smartphones were a curiosity, mostly an affectation of would-be executives—Blackberry and Treo and so forth. Not even a decade ago, they were wild and feral. Today, smartphones are fully domesticated. Tigers made kittens, which we now pet ceaselessly. Over two-thirds of Americans own them, and they have… read more
The creator of Flappy Bird is back with a game offering the sublime agony that comes with mastering a craft—and still failing.
Many of the highest-performing professional athletes are also the most superstitious. Serena Williams bounces the tennis ball five time before her first serve, twice before the second. Michael Jordan wore his University of North Carolina basketball shorts under his Chicago Bulls uniform. Baseball hall of famer Wade Boggs bore a bounty of superstitions. Among them: He ate chicken before each… read more
Dr. Ian Bogost is an author and an award-winning game designer. He is Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, Director of Film & Media Studies, and Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bogost is also Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC, an independent game studio, and a Contributing Editor at… read more