Our transformation into device people has happened with unprecedented suddenness. The first touchscreen-operated iPhones went on sale in June 2007, followed by the first Android-powered phones the following year. Smartphones went from 10 percent to 40 percent market penetration faster than any other consumer technology in history. In the United States, adoption hit 50 percent only three years ago. Yet today, not carrying a smartphone indicates eccentricity, social marginalization, or old age.

What does it mean to shift overnight from a society in which people walk down the street looking around to one in which people walk down the street looking at machines? We wouldn’t be always clutching smartphones if we didn’t believe they made us safer, more productive, less bored, and were useful in all of the ways that a computer in your pocket can be useful. At the same time, smartphone owners describe feeling “frustrated” and “distracted.” In a 2015 Pew survey, 70 percent of respondents said their phones made them feel freer, while 30 percent said they felt like a leash. Nearly half of eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds said they used their phones to “avoid others around you.”

 

We Are Hopelessly Hooked by Jacob Weisberg | The New York Review of Books

[“Seven Swans Reimagined” is pretty uneven, like most tribute albums. But I’m loving DM Stith’s interpretation of Sufjan Stevens. -egg]

[Using drones to find ways of farming better. Pretty cool :). -egg]

Drones — a Soybean Grower’s Best Friend — aerial acuity — Medium

Here’s an enjoyable short story from the heady, optimistic early days of The Capital-S-Singularity in sci fi:

“The Gentle Seduction”

[Very cool, although I think it could be made even better with freer and more organic movement. -egg]

 

Babel Tower is the latest artwork by Shirin Abedinirad (previously) who has become known for her outdoor mirror installations designed to reflect landscapes and elements of architecture. This newest piece, a collaboration with interaction designer Gugo Torelli, adds a kinetic component to a stair-stepped ziggurat that simultaneously reflects elements of the sky, horizon, and ground while slowly rotating 360 degrees. She shares about the piece:

Babel Tower is an interactive installation that recontextualizes the spiritual architecture of the Babel Tower with modern materials, creating a union between ancient history and our present world; it is combing the past, present and offering a union for future. The top view of installation by reflecting the sky is connecting it to the earth, symbolizing the aim of Babel tower to reach for the heaven; The structural use of mirrors, serve as a reflective vessel for light, an integral feature of paradise.

You can see more views of the sculpture on her website, and watch a video of the piece in motion down below. (via Colossal Submissions)

 

Source: Babel Tower: A Kinetic Mirrored Ziggurat Reflects the Surrounding Iranian Landscape | Colossal

[This is probably the most effective use I’ve ever seen of the sort of 3d surface charts I was doing with sift.space. NYT rocking datavis as usual. -egg]

A 3-D View of a Chart That Predicts The Economic Future: The Yield Curve – The New York Times

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/06/us/politics/donald-trumps-campaign-billed-as-self-funded-risks-little-of-his-fortune.html?_r=0&referer=

[If you’re having trouble seeing it, here’s a much bigger version of the image. -egg]

I kept thinking it had something to do with the pigeon.

What’s wrong with this picture? / Boing Boing

Maybe this has happened to you.

Locked out of your car or home, you pull out your phone and type “locksmith” into Google. Up pops a list of names, the most promising of which appear beneath the paid ads, in space reserved for local service companies.

You might assume that the search engine’s algorithm has instantly sifted through the possibilities and presented those that are near you and that have earned good customer reviews. Some listings will certainly fit that description. But odds are good that your results include locksmiths that are not locksmiths at all.

They are call centers — often out of state, sometimes in a different country — that use a high-tech ruse to trick Google into presenting them as physical stores in your neighborhood. These operations, known as lead generators, or lead gens for short, keep a group of poorly trained subcontractors on call. After your details are forwarded, usually via text, one of those subcontractors jumps in a car and heads to your vehicle or home. That is when the trouble starts.

The goal of lead gens is to wrest as much money as possible from every customer, according to lawsuits. The typical approach is for a phone representative to offer an estimate in the range of $35 to $90. On site, the subcontractor demands three or four times that sum, often claiming that the work was more complicated than expected. Most consumers simply blanch and pay up, in part because they are eager to get into their homes or cars.

Fake Online Locksmiths May Be Out to Pick Your Pocket, Too