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This is the Modem World: The connected cyclist's dilemma
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. The number of health-tracking gadgets and apps is officially out of control. Fitbit just announced its Force activity-tracking watch. Apple integrated Nike+ and activity sensors into its latest smartphone. Jawbone, while initially a Bluetooth headset maker, is now pushing the Up. Nike FuelBand. BodyMedia Link. Pebble. Pear Pro. I can keep going. Heck, Garmin, which has been making fitness-related GPS devices for years, is on a roll, and I should know because I spent hundreds on a Garmin 810 a couple months ago.
This is the Modem World: Everything is over-designed -- everything
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I had a conversation with a friend today about the upcoming PS4 birth. We're both crazy excited about getting the new console come November. I mean, what's better than a brand-new box of electronics delivered via UPS on a sick day? Seriously, what's better? I'll wait.
This is the Modem World: The warm embrace of the machine
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. My glasses are about 5 years old. I realized last week that it's probably high time to replace them. Besides, I needed a new contacts prescription and, for all I know, my eyes have completely changed in those short five years. It's also important to mention that my glasses look like they're about 5 years old, so yeah, it was time. I pulled up Yelp and sought out an optometrist in the area who accepted my form of vision insurance. I made my appointment online. I received an email confirmation shortly after. The day before the appointment, I received a robo-call reminding me of the time and location.
This is the Modem World: Hyperloop, we can do this
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. So Elon Musk revealed his vision to build a roller coaster between LA and San Francisco. The reaction, at least so far, has been positive and dreamy. At first, Musk said he wasn't going to build it, but clearly as a reaction to the love we've thrown his way, he plans to build a "demonstration article." Can we please, please make this happen?
This is the Modem World: The day Google died
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. One day, Google will not be the technology giant that it is today. Consider the following: In 1968, the Pontiac GTO was Motor Trend's Car of the Year. Today, Pontiac is a historical footnote of General Motors. In 1981, IBM launched the PC, which became the de facto standard of personal computers, spawning hundreds of PC clones and dominating the computing market to this day. In 2005, the IBM PC business was acquired by Lenovo, and the IBM PC is no more.
This is the Modem World: The sinister side of the '80s BBS
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. Some of the following, for legal reasons, may or may not be fictional. My first modem was a 300-baud Apple-Cat II. It was an expansion card for the Apple II and simply plugged into a phone line. It was, simply put, a bad-ass piece of technology that turned me into a total digital delinquent. While my parents thought I was innocently learning to code BBSes (bulletin board systems) I was actually learning how to get things for free and paving the way for software pirates, phone phreaks and straight-up frauds of the future. The Apple-Cat II could connect to other Apple-Cat IIs at 1200 baud, which made file transfers pretty quick for the time. This meant we could trade entire games in about an hour. We'd log into bulletin board systems, share lists of things we had and set up times to dial one another to trade games. Usually a barter would take place -- your Aztec for my Hard Hat Mack. It was a lot like trading baseball cards, I imagine.
This is the Modem World: Social networking makes us feel alone
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I was listening to someone, somewhere, on something -- not really sure where, and it doesn't matter -- but someone said that they'd rather be alone than have friends who make them feel alone. It's probably been said by many people in many different ways, but for some reason, that saying has attached itself to me as I engage in my twice-daily social networking while comparing it to what I'm actually doing in my downtime that doesn't qualify as "work." Social networks make us feel alone. I'm not claiming to be the first to notice this, but now that there's a social network for pictures, for videos, for 140-character updates, for business networking, for food, for our pets...
This is the Modem World: We know too much
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I was enjoying a post-wedding celebration in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo just a few days ago, late-night ramen that turned into later-night karaoke until we were kicked out of the place around 4 AM. A good night, to be sure. As I was collecting my things, I checked my iPhone for the best route home -- I am perpetually lost in Los Angeles as it's a city that has no compass. It suggested a jaunt through Hollywood and on to La Cienega. In an effort to keep myself from sounding like an episode of SNL's "The Californians," I'll leave it at that.
This is the Modem World: Four ways to fix e-commerce and shipping companies
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I'm going out of my head right now. I came home hoping to find my cool new Santa Cruz mountain biking jersey all wrapped in plastic thanks to UPS via Chainlove.com, my crazy-discounted gear site of choice. We're not talking anything expensive -- I think the thing cost me $20, but I was psyched to have a team jersey from my favorite bike company. I'm a bike dork, what can I say? I should have been skeptical when I tracked my package from the office to learn that it had been left at my "front door" at exactly 2:00 PM. While it's possible the driver hit the 2 PM mark on the head, it's unlikely that he or she left anything at my "front door" given that it's three stories or 76 stairs -- my mom counts and complains every time she visits -- above the street. In fact, every single delivery I've ever received here was tossed over my little wooden fence. But in my head, everything was fine. The jersey was waiting for me, my future as a Santa Cruz team member assured. Victory was mine.
This is the Modem World: Seven levels of nerd hierarchy
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I have a confession to make. I love /r/cringe, the sub-Reddit dedicated to those moments usually caught on video that make us feel better about our lots in life when we can watch a 30-second chunk of happenstance and walk away thinking, "I am at least one level of dork above that person." Back in the day you were either a nerd... or not. There were no levels of dorkiness like we have today. You were into computers and Dungeons & Dragons or you weren't: that was pretty much it. You were grouped into a subculture that enjoyed all things electronic, idolized Brian Tochi, knew who Steve Wozniak was and could explain why Weird Science was not a nerd revenge film, but actually a celebration of giving up the machine for love and conformity shrouded in a Hughesian attempt to finally give the dweebs a chance to get some. Still a cool movie, though, and a righteous theme song.
This is the Modem World: The console war is over... sorta
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. It seems, at least according to the editorial and social rhetoric I've read over the past few days, that the console war has ended before a single unit has sold, and the Sony PlayStation 4 has won. Meanwhile, after a series of questionable announcements and policies, Microsoft's Xbox One is a battered warrior before it's had a chance to make an appearance. It is, of course, silly to predict or even recognize this, but I'm going to do so anyway. Why? It's worth mentioning why gamers have -- at least for now -- turned their backs to Microsoft. The issues are numerous, and they all point to features and functionalities that hardcore gamers don't want, don't get or simply don't like. Average consumers haven't chimed in yet -- they will do so at the register this fall once they've asked the likes of you and me what to get -- but here's a very quick look at what troubles the Xbox One and how the PlayStation 4 appears to be doing things right.
This is the Modem World: So what's next?
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I just spent a week in Japan, where I attended my first Japanese wedding in Tokyo. It was lovely, different and the same all at once. I've been coming here almost annually since 1998, and while most things have remained the same, I've watched Japan's pace of consumer technology innovation take a seeming nosedive in recent years. I have no solid evidence to prove this -- just some observations. When I first visited Tokyo in 1998, Japanese mobile phones were years ahead of their American and European equivalents. Japanese mobiles were lightweight, had high-resolution -- for the time -- color screens, allowed internet access and some even had video cameras that supported real-time video chat.
This is the Modem World: Some questions about the new Xbox One
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. Now that Microsoft has given its quick reveal of the new Xbox One game console / set-top box, we have a pretty good idea of what we should be expecting once the machine comes out. We know how it'll be controlled; we know what games we'll be playing on it; and we know how it will keep us connected and entertained. But we don't know if people will use all these new things. Are we ready to look at our game consoles as more than a game console? Are we already there? I mean, we all use Netflix on our machines, right? May as well let them run our TV viewing too, right? Right?
This is the Modem World: The Great Computer Cold War of 1982
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I've known my friend Jeff since I was 2 years old. He was one year ahead of me in school, but in everything else -- little league, school, girls -- we were extremely competitive. We both had two sisters and looked to one another as brothers and yardsticks for prepubescent success. He was better at baseball and I usually had better luck with the ladies. Being better at baseball helped him with the ladies and having a way with the girls made the baseball thing kind of irrelevant. In short, I was better. I saw Jeff last week, and as we reminisced about the good old days of baseball and babes, he reminded me of what he called The Great Computer Cold War of 1982. "The great what?" I asked him.
This is the Modem World: Why don't I crash?
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. My first computer was a Commodore VIC-20. It raged with 3.5K of RAM, a high-speed cassette deck, and built-in BASIC. I used to copy game programs string-by-string from the back of COMPUTE! magazine -- tens of thousands of lines of code -- and small errors were not an option. One syntax error and the program wouldn't work. When I did make those errors, I'd go back, line by line, and check for differences. There was nothing -- at the time -- more annoying than seeing hours of code crash because of one bad POKE statement. That digital fastidiousness has stuck with me since. I keep all my computers' files in order, keep operating systems updated, backup constantly to a remote storage device and quickly go after a machine that's behaving strangely. The net result, and I may be tempting fate, is that I have never had a computer completely fail in the thirty years I've been using them.
This is the Modem World: Nothing is new. It's been done before.
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. It's funny how things come back around. When I was growing up in the '80s, music was looking back at the '50s and '60s and re-creating it into some of the best bands the world has seen. Paul Weller wouldn't have become the songwriter he is had he not grown up on the Beatles. Likewise, Paul McCartney wouldn't have become the genius that he is had he not been raised on Little Richard. And now, bands are looking back at the '80s and re-doing that explosive era -- with both good and bad results that I will not go into here lest I make new enemies. Culture is cyclical, and we're beginning to see that technology is bound to follow that same rinse-and-repeat formula.
This is the Modem World: When tech can't save us from road rage
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. So I'm driving home the other night after a decent day of work, looking forward to a little run, some dinner and maybe a movie. Taking my normal north-south route along Crescent Heights, I listen to Tame Impala to calm the nerves and enter another mental state. I'm at one of those intersections in which two lanes become one because of a parked car in the right lane ahead. I, being in the right lane, gun it a bit at the start in order to get some distance from the guy on my left. He's having none of this, apparently. Turns out my car is faster, though, and I edge him out. I see him wave his arms frantically, shaking them and then applauding.
This is the Modem World: When we Google too much
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. Our cat Mischa is ill, and I am sad. But sadness is only one of the things I am feeling. Because of technology and the internet, I am angry, frustrated and a little bit freaked out. Here's why.
This is the Modem World: Why are we still texting?
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. "Just text me..." How many times have you told someone that? Say you're meeting a friend somewhere: What's the first thing you do when you get there? You text him or her to announce your arrival. Why? Because that's how you're trained. You don't email, call or use some other protocol. And you know what? You're paying for that text even though you already have a data plan, unless you're grandfathered into one of the better unlimited plans of the 20th century. Truth is, SMS texts are perhaps the most lucrative service that providers offer -- more so than data or voice plans, and they want us to keep using the outdated technology whether we need to or not.
This is the Modem World: The dark side of Google Glass
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. I want to be excited about Google Glass -- I really do. I saw Robocop as a kid and dreamed that, one day, I too could walk around with a HUD that would feed me information on call, receive messages and record the world around me. But now that years have passed and I've witnessed humanity worship the smartphone, make prevalent voice-controlled navigation and perfect self-mounted, POV digital video cameras, I'm not so sure that Google Glass is going to be good for us as a society. There is a dark side to what appears to be a wonderful coming together of complementary technology, and I'm here to poop this party.