Rolandt

We’re listening differently. More and more Sonos listeners are choosing curated radio stations and custom playlists over individual tracks. Less time spent searching for single songs, more time spent filling your home with a continual flow of music. So in response, we’ve evolved our Sonos App to make this new style of listening as fast and easy as possible.

Sonos made this a stealth update by syncing with the Apple keynote. This was a long beta until they got it right. You now just tap on what you want to hear and Sonos starts playing. You can still manage queues, but you probably will not do it often. I like the change, but I hardly ever resist change. YMMV.

I am always one or two cycles ahead. And I am currently enjoying two new features that have upgraded my experience tremendously. I never talk about unreleased software but I just want to say that I love how Sonos improves their products that are already out in the market. Their support is second to none.

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Amazon today unveiled the all-new Fire HD 8 with longer battery life and improved performance. The new Fire HD 8 has been designed from the ground up from Amazon to ensure it better caters to the multimedia demands of today’s consumers. Continue reading →

I’ve always been a goal-oriented person. I envision the end goal and then break things down and figure out how I will reach it. Essentially, if I don’t have an end goal in sight then I usually don’t start something. I’m a self-inflicted creature who does the work andkeeps my eye on the prize.

I never set out to fly 1, 000,000 miles with United Airlines. It just kind of happened while I was in the process of going somewhere. I’ve been on roads, trails, tracks, and the sea and in the air for most of my life capturing imagery with my cameras and immersing myself into other cultures in the world.

Before I knew it, I realized that I had flown over 950,000 miles with United – and that didn’t take into consideration the miles I had flown with their competition. I remember looking at my account and thinking – “what’s another 50,000 miles?” and deciding to finish the job and qualify for United’s Million Mile Premier status. I thought it would be a piece of cake.

The act of flying the last 50,000 miles actually was a piece of cake, but it came with incredible frustration when trying to decipher United’s rules and footnotes along with numerous exclusions and disclaimers. After spending hundreds of hours on the phone with countless United employees in an effort to clarify their rules before reserving and paying for a ticket, I eventually learned why I had been getting ambiguous and conflicting information. United airlines outsources many of the agents that answer their phone – even their premier desk lines! I found this out the hard way after spending a lot of time talking with someone who answered the United phone line only to be told that she/he can’t help me and that they would connect me with a United employee. Nine out of ten times – I got disconnected. Now when I call United, the first thing I do is ask if I am speaking with a United employee. I also understand now why I’ve been getting the conflicting information I have received.

Tip: Most likely if you call an airlines, it’s because you have a question that can’t easily be answered online. If so, ask if you are speaking with a United employee.

To be clear – This is not about outsourcing to a foreigner instead of hiring an American. This is about cost cutting efforts for United (as well as plenty of other companies) at their customer’s disservice. We live in a DIY yourself culture and I am more than capable of reserving an airline ticket online – but if I need help, I’d like the option of speaking with a person who can really help me rather than be sent down a phone tree or worse yet go through an online chat with a lot of time wasted ready cut and paste answers and links to more ambiguous information.

I could elaborate and cite numerous examples of how United Airlines simply doesn’t care about their loyal customers who fly their airlines. These days it seems they are more interested in their partnerships and making money on just about everything except aviation. Every step of the way, from making a reservation online, to checking in at the airport, I need to page through a half a dozen or more options on how I can spend more money with United. Check a bag? – more money. Want more legroom? More money. Need a car – a hotel? More money. Want to upgrade? More money. And if you are loyal Premier Gold Elite passenger like myself, you get to stand in line 2 to board your flight – along with other Premier Gold members as well as Premier Silver members, AND…………anyone who has a United Explorer credit card!

I completed my million miles when I flew to Prague, Czech, a fairytale city that I have dreamed of visiting. When booking my flight, I noticed that the miles that I flew on their partner’s legs, (Lufthansa from Germany to and from Czech) didn’t contribute to my Lifetime Miles account. I was told that even though Lufthansa was their Star Alliance partner and that United ticketed those flights and the ticket numbers began with “016” those miles would not count toward my lifetime total.

Tip: Only United or United Express flights on United aircrafts that have been ticketed by United count toward your total lifetime miles account.

I was also told that United couldn’t pre-assign me a seat on the Lufthansa and I found out later that neither could Lufthansa until I was at the airport. Even more aggravating was when I found out that I had to pay for the extra legroom seats designated as Economy + on the Lufthansa portions even though as a Premier Gold member I get those seats on the United legs for no extra charge. I asked a United agent what benefits I did get as a Gold Premier member when flying on one of their partner’s flights that had been ticketed by United?  The agent replied “You get your bags checked through”. Does that mean that the non-Elite passengers don’t get their bags checked through?

United Airlines’ slogan is “Fly the Friendly Skies”. The skies may be friendly and the journey is often priceless but United Airlines and their management have become callous, very impersonal and pretty much anything but friendly. In fact I believe that Peter Greenberg’s latest poll of US air carriers, listed United dead last.

I made my goal, but I no longer have the desire to be loyal to United because I get the distinct feeling that this company clearly doesn’t care about being loyal to me.

Filed under: Personal Stories, Story telling, Travel Tagged: aviation, customer care, frequent flyer, loyalty, Premier Gold Status, Travel, United Airlines

Josh Harris, the subject of 2009 documentary We Live in Public, was an early dot-com multimillionaire who founded the data projection company Jupiter Research in 1986, and “Internet TV” website Pseudo.com in 1993; nearly 20 years before the Bay Area mutated into a multiplying petri dish of startups and “disrupting” entered its common parlance. He was a brash yet eccentric figure who held lavish parties in downtown Manhattan where super-nerds and supermodels commingled, and sometimes dressed up as a clown for business parties. We Live in Public was named after Quiet: We Live in Public, Harris’s art project where 100 people agreed to live in an underground bunker in downtown Manhattan with their every move surveilled; a lurid mix of MTV’s The Real World and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Harris is one of the earliest examples of “internet fame,” a concept that is both glittering and mundane. Its roots lie in the so-called democratization of the web, where not everybody is famous for 15 minutes, but as Scottish artist Momus once suggested, everybody is famous to 15 people. It is a concept defined by its evanescence; to be internet famous is to capture the total coalescence of a cultural idea for a split second, before the culture moves on to find new representatives. Take Jennifer Ringley, the college student who broadcast her life 24/7 via her dorm room webcam in the mid 1990s; or Julia Allison who, in 2008, graced the cover of Wired magazine sitting coyly in a pair of strappy stiletto sandals next to bold script that read, “Get Internet Famous! (Even If You’re Nobody).” Allison was a dating columnist at Time Out New York, she but spent her off hours actively pursuing attention — including “leaking” that Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz used to be her babysitter — for which she received plenty of the currency she sought out: eyeballs. Her behavior quickly garnered its own heavily-populated tag on Gawker, and hating on Julia Allison became public sport. Yet she thrived on it all, and Allison and Gawker formed their own symbiotic mutualistic relationship, the way an oxpecker bird eats ticks off a rhino’s back.

Julia Allison wasn’t just famous for being famous. She was famous for courting fame, and for epitomizing the sort of fame she sought. She was the apotheosis of a microcelebrity, a term coined by Theresa Senft that describes the deploying of personality online “as if it were a branded good.” Instead of being a passive consumer of celebrity content, the internet allows us to become actively complicit in courting of our own fame. Allison’s was relatively modest fame, through relatively modest means. No matter how many times she made “Gawker Stalker,” it seemed unlikely that she’d ever be mauled by fans on the street, but at the height of her celebrity she received constant, immediate verification that she existed as an idea to other people. To those paying attention, Allison crystallized the potential of a new pastime — attention-seeking as a game, with “social media function[ing] as a giant scoreboard” — one that may not yield wealth or power, but can at least satisfy a craving, and provide a certain validation beyond what an immediate circle of family and friends can offer.

At the height of his fleeting but singular, niche celebrity, Josh Harris proclaimed: “Andy Warhol was wrong. Everybody doesn’t want only 15 minutes of fame, they want 15 minutes of fame every day.” But if the pleasures of being seen on Gawker are just as vivid as those of being vaulted onto a billboard in Times Square, so are the pains of being ignored.

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In 2006, when Allison was busy showing up to Gawker parties in a bustier covered in condoms, I was a 16-year-old more preoccupied with redecorating my Myspace profile and shoplifting Bad Religion CDs from Walmart than the bitchy hierarchy of who’s hot and who’s not on the internet. But I also had a proclivity for wearing skirts over jeans, and after reading about fashion blogs in my teen bible, Elle Girl magazine, I began to document my love of pairing together inexplicable outerwear online. I took grainy mirror pictures of my outfits using my parent’s low-res digital camera, and publicly fawned over the latest designer collections. I discovered a burgeoning community of friends from far away who loved doing the same; and, ever so slowly, my blog transitioned from an accessible diary to a public platform. I went from making friends to having fans.

IRL I led a pretty normal life; first as a high-school student, then as an undergraduate doing a degree in environmental studies and working part time in retail at American Apparel. Friends liked to send up my online hobby, nicknaming me “Teen Vogue.” But online, I was a somebody. People used my photos to make inspiration collages, drew fan art, and left dozens of fawning comments on each post. My blog garnered around a thousand unique visitors per day, and readers saw me as something between idol and potential pal. Interacting with the strangers who had miraculously found my blog became my favorite pastime. I was not only included, but revered, and as the positive affirmations piled up, they started to feel less like a random fluke and more of a confirmation of a secret suspicion I had always held: that I was special.

While not everyone wants to be famous, most people inhabit some degree of craving attention or adulation. Dr. John Maltby, a researcher at the University of Leicester, has linked an interest in fame to vulnerability, “neuroticism, low self-esteem and problematic attachments.” My online identity seemed the reverse of what I’d known throughout middle and high school — it was an oasis in a friendless desert. Like all kids herded into academic enrichment, I’d grown up hearing about my “potential,” and finally, that potential was being expressed, in a way that felt like both destiny and revenge.

Once the attention began to waver, however, I realized that what I had considered genuine hallmarks of my personality were little more than representative of a trend. I listened to Nirvana and the Breeders and Liz Phair incessantly, and my favorite television show was My So-Called Life. I wore vintage sunflower dresses paired with Doc Martens, unflattering mom jeans and plaid flannels. I had occupied a space somewhere in the middle of the fashion blog hierarchy, between the followed and the follower — not so big that I was invited to fashion weeks, but not nobody — and like Julia Allison, my popularity crested a trend that was much bigger than I could effect. My content was relevant; “I” was relevant content. My blog stood for the sensibility shared by those who commented. I was a harbinger of millennials obsessed with ’90s nostalgia, but when the pseudo-grunge revival was no longer cool, neither was I. According to Alice Marwick, one of the key attributes of microcelebrity is authenticity, but for me it truly was.

I walked away from blogging in 2012, for myriad reasons both personal and professional. Blogging had become big business: Recently, WWD reported that some top fashion and beauty influencers have the power to move tens of thousands of dollars worth of product in less than 24 hours, and I had little to no interest in becoming a shill. I had gained a little weight that manifested in my face, and I no longer liked the way I looked in pictures. The vacuous likes I relied on for validation eventually withdrew their support; my final post, announcing my departure from the blog world, drew zero comments. As much as I’d identified with the persona I had constructed online, I am not, I discovered, a blog.

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Since Harris’s time, and even Allison’s, many more of us have acquired the resources to be known by name overnight, and many more of us have had the experience of being temporarily famous, or at least going viral. Celebrity is now a fairly common experience, a coming-of-age ordeal, though we aren’t necessarily equipped for the fallout. For those who come to depend on the attention, the fall from “grace” can be extremely painful. In a 2011 article published in the Journal of Popular Culture, K. Bryant Smalley and William D. McIntosh chart three categories of ways people deal with losing fame: clinging, reinvention, and downward spiral. The category a person falls into has to do with their relationship with their “core self,” which is separate from the public self that fame has constructed for them. People who manage to reinvent themselves — the little boy from The Shining grew up to become a biology teacher; Jennifer Ringley has said that she now enjoys a life mostly offline — have a strong core self, and are able to see themselves beyond the fame.

Clinging and downward spiral both stem from a loss of this core self. Clingers begin to see themselves as the person the public sees, and continue to attempt to drum up interest by doing the same thing over and over. Downward spiralers tend to experience conflict between the core and the public self, and seek escape, often in the form of an addiction. Those who become famous while children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable to the aftereffects of fame: because they are still developing a sense of self, “the public self imposed on them by fame could easily be adopted as the core self. Once that fame has faded, the young ex-celebrity is left with nothing but an artificial public self.”

Once my days of internet fame were over, I began to feel as if there was nothing left of me at all. I floated around the general population like a vaporous ghost, completely invisible but waiting to be noticed nonetheless. Being a marginally famous blogger was the only aspect of my life that I had assigned any value to whatsoever: Friends and family were all kindling in my selfish quest to become a person of note, and when it was all over I was completely alone. I watched my former peers rack up 10,000 Instagram followers and felt a remote bitterness some days; on others I was consumed by a seething, Voldemort-level jealousy. It didn’t help that the end of my blogging tenure coincided with the onset of my early 20s, a notoriously turbulent time of life that manifested for me as what I’ve yet to determine as normal or a bout of serious depression.

I don’t know how Julia Allison felt when her name ceased to be click-bait, but her post-fame behavior indicates, at the very least, an ongoing fondness for attention. In 2012, she attempted to orchestrate a return to the public eye, appearing on a reality show called Miss Advised as a so-called relationship expert, and blogging about the show every week for Elle. “I tried being microfamous,” she told the Observer. “That stuff is super empty. It would be really nice to try it in a different way.” The author of the profile noted that “one of the pitfalls of constructing your entire existence around being famous is that once you are a nobody, you might as well be dead.”

The specter of Julia Allison haunts the internet graveyard as a curiosity in the annals of internet culture, a superstar of Gawker’s heyday, and an icon of the micro-era she always belonged to; for those who care to search for her, Julia Allison remains a gif of Julia Allison. The outcome of internet celebrity is a forever-archive of your glorified self, but what matters more than search-engine hits is the self you identify with, and the sense that anyone cares whether it lives or dies.

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The stunt that Josh Harris is most remembered for was the beginning of his downfall. Harris spent millions of dollars on Quiet: We Live in Public, equipping it with a gun range and as much free food as the inhabitants could stomach. After the police busted the panopticon of bacchanalia, he turned the surveillance camera inwards and live-broadcast his relationship with live-in girlfriend Tanya Corrin for voyeuristic eyeballs. But less than a year later, the dotcom bubble burst, and along with all his funds, Harris lost the notoriety of being an internet pioneer. He slunk away from public life, moving to upstate New York to become an apple farmer.

When the documentary catches up with Harris during his Old MacDonald phase, it’s clear that the quiet life fits him about as well as an itchy, woolen grandpa sweater. He claims that the relationship with Tanya was staged, because distancing yourself from your vulnerability makes the world hurt less. It’s clear he still craves the adulation and glory he received in his former life, but he’s not getting it anymore, so he tries to suppress those needs in himself, but the longing to be loved still lurks in his eyes.

Post apple farm, he tries one last ditch at the public life, pitching a chat website to the founders of Myspace, which leads to incredibly cringeworthy footage of Myspace co-founder Chris DeWolfe saying “I’ve never heard of Josh Harris. I’m not familiar with him.” Harris left the startup business with his tail between his legs, eventually, taking his white savior complex to Ethiopia to coach basketball and start something called the African Entertainment Network. There’s nothing quite like realizing that the fans you thought were your friends have moved on and the only way for you to progress is to forget who you were entirely or to become who you knew you were all along. Both Harris and I are classic “clingers”; we keep trying to do the thing we were once good at getting attention for, but never quite manage to recapture the zeitgeist that crested us up, then dropped us off.

In the past six months, I’ve been recognized twice. Once in a movie theatre after a screening of Blade Runner, where a stranger approached me and said, “You look familiar. Where do I know you from? Didn’t you write a blog?” The other time I locked eyes with a stranger in a Cuban restaurant and watched her facial expression shift from confusion to recognition as she slowly came up to talk to me. My old blog interface was featured for a nanosecond in a British Vogue documentary hosted by Alexa Chung. While researching for this piece, I stumbled upon an entire hate thread dedicated to me on Get Off My Internets calling my ego a “house of cards” and my blog so obnoxious they “can’t even hate-read” the entries. (To paraphrase Rico Richie, “if you don’t have haters, then you ain’t poppin’.”) Sometimes I feel like I’m a batty old MGM star with electrical socket curls wandering aimlessly around the Hollywood lot yelling, “I used to be a star once” at no one in particular. On more practical days, I feel like a regular adult making a successful living in the gig economy.

Post blog existence, I felt like I was dead. I had to rebuild my entire conception of my identity back up from scratch. Most days I still feel like a wonky scarecrow leaking straw out of every orifice. Part of the trouble is that what I do for a living; writing, largely on the internet, is not that different than how I achieved microcelebrity in the first place. My core self hasn’t had the opportunity to shift entirely, the way it would have if say, I had become a fish biologist after being a fashion blogger. In order to move on, I’ve locked up the contents of my old blog so no one else can snoop through my formative years, and hope that eventually my work as a writer will eclipse my renown as a teenage fashion blogger.

Josh Harris may no longer be a regular talking head on CNN, but his name lives on, as both a distinctive pioneer at the crossroads of technology and entertainment, and as the subject of a fascinating documentary. Josh Harris lives, too. There’s no need for screaming fans or obsessive followers. All we need is to look in the mirror and remind ourselves we exist.

“If there’s a single thread that runs through nearly every piece of Apple hardware, it’s conviction, the sense that its designers believed with every fiber of their being that the form factor they delivered was the result of countless correct choices that, in totality, add up to the best and only choice for giving shape to that particular product.”

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Khoi Vinh, cited by Farhad Manjoo in What’s Really Missing From the New iPhone: Cutting-Edge Design

Is that still true? Was it ever true for Apple’s software?

Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch has proposed that immigrants be subject to a test for their adherence to what she calls Canadian values.  "It's not intolerant to believe in a set of values we expect everyone to share," she says. There are two things we could talk about: what those values actually are, and whether we should screen for them.

Her intent is to protect Canada from what she has in the past called "barbaric cultural practices". She now regrets that wording. I would too. But one wonders whether her current formulation reflects the same sentiment as her previous formulation. "People who believe women are property, that they can be beaten, bought or sold, or believe that gays and lesbians should be stoned to death because of who they love, don't share our Canadian values," she said on CBC this morning.

What, then, does Leitch believe are actually Canadian values? She says she wants to have this debate: "I believe in a unified Canadian identity." Take the following items as a starting point (quoted form the broadcast):

• hard work and equality of opportunity - I want everyone to know ... if they work hard, they actually can get ahead (especially our young people);

• generosity - Canada is a place where hard work and generosity can come together;

• freedom - a Canadian identity that permits freedom and tolerance that allows each and every one of us to pursue our best lives and our best selves;

• equality - equality of rights, equality of women;

• tolerance - it is a Canadian value to respect religion other than those that you might follow yourself, to respect other cultures, to respect sexual orientation that's different from your own.

I have to confess that I am a bit sceptical about testing immigrants for their adherence to a set of values that would be rejected by most members of her own party.

And in fact, I believe there is an interpretation of each of these principles which is close-minded, narrow, and expressed in code to people who are concerned about immigration and the assimilation of people from different cultures.

Consider 'hard work', for example. The emphasis here is on people who contribute to the economy, and those who might not - children, the elderly, refugees, socialists - have the wrong 'values'.

Or consider 'tolerance'. The point here is suggests that some cultures are more pro-tolerance than others. The reference is to the well-known differentiation between men and women in Islamic society, and of their sanctions against homosexuality of any kind.

When we view the record of her own party on each of these points - hard work, generosity, freedom, equality, tolerance - it is a record of failure. And, indeed, the very act of judging people according to whether they share the right values is more typical of the Conservative mindset.

In Canada, if there is any unifying principle, it is the principle that people are free to adhere to whatever set of values they want. Canadian society isn't about forging a single identity. It is not about creating a unity of purpose.

In Canada, we expect the following: peace, order and good government.

These aren't values per se. These are principles of law, of the structuring of society. It is to these we will expect immigrants to adhere, and the proof of this will be in the doing, not some sort of morality test.

• Peace: violent acts are prohibited by law, and will be penalized. We construe violence fairly widely, so as to exclude most forms of harm. The basis of tolerance, as a governmental policy, is that factionalism and sectarian conflict destabilize society as a whole, and create conditions inhospitable to a good and full life.

• Order: people are expected to behave in a way which enables the smooth function of society. This includes things like taking your turn in line, driving in a single lane on the highway, not cheating on tests, and a host of other behaviours, mostly enforced through social sanction, that allow that others' interests are as important as your own.

• Good government: we do not believe in survival of the fittest; we expect government, which represents our ability to work collectively, to be proactive, to support essential social functions such as policing, health and education, and to ensure the general security and prosperity of all Canadians.

On these principles it is arguable that Leitch's Conservative Party fails as well. The Conservative Party picks sides in cultural and religious disputes. It engages in lawless and disorderly behaviour - everything from questionable election practices to sending people to be tortured in Syria. And it prefers a disengagement of government from civil society, rather than proactive engagement to ensure the security and well-being of all.

If Leitch really believed in equality of opportunity, she would support much more progressive taxation, pro-union policies to ensure quality wages and working conditions, generous support for the poor and disadvantaged, much greater support for aboriginal communities, and equality of access to legal representation, education and health care. But she appears to support none of these things.

If Leitch really believed in generosity, and especially of the responsibility of the rich to help the poor, she would support more open borders to refugees, a significant increase in international aid, support for United Nations agencies such as UNESCO and UNICEF, and a taxation and royalty regime which recognizes the principle that the wealth of society is to be shared among all its citizens. But there's no sign of support for this.

If Leitch believed in freedom and tolerance, she would respect the desire of people to live more simply, to pursue philosophical or artistic lifestyles, and to travel freely. She would ensure that everyone had access to legal, cultural, health and educational resources regardless of means. And she would support people who adopt causes other than their own personal welfare: the defense of the environment, for example, the pursuit of science, or public advocacy. But there is no sign of support for these.

If Leitch believed in equality, she ensure wage parity, she would support the right of any person to marry anyone, and she would support the right of a woman to choose what's right for her own body. She would prohibit discrimination (even in the private sector, and even by insurance companies) based on age, gender, culture, skin colour, language, or genetics. She would revise laws that favour people of means and ensure all people equal access to government services. But of these measures, not a whiff of support.

And if Leitch believed in tolerance she would not characterize other cultures as "barbaric", she would not generalize their practices with allegations of "stoning", she would not require that immigrants to Canada "assimilate", and she would not find it necessary to implements a "values test" for new Canadians.

So let's be very clear about what Leitch wants with her values test.

She wants a country where people must work hard in order to get by, and where society is structured such that some people "get ahead" and other people are left behind.

She wants a country where supporting and caring for the well-being of others is optional, characterized as "generosity" rather than as social responsibility, where people are the recipients of support as charity rather than as their civil right.

She wants a country where people are 'free' to trample over each other, where they are free to exercise bias and prejudice, where they are not under constraint of 'political correctness', and where community organization and collectivism are prohibited from protecting people from these abuses.

She wants a country where 'equality' prevails and where, therefore, differences in individual conditions and circumstances are not accommodated at all.

And she want a country in which her own religion and culture are afforded special privileges, under the heading of 'religious tolerance', but where the practices of others can be classified as "barbaric" and therefore prohibited.

I disagree with all of these. I find these values to be fundamentally at odds with Canadian society. But I would not prohibit her entry as an immigrant on that basis, nor even prevent her support for and defense of these values in a public forum.

Kellie Leitch's values are not Canadian values, and the ultimate proof of this is that she would even consider the possibility that there would be a values test for new Canadians. Or for people, generally, at all.

Today during Apple's keynote event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, the Cupertino company announced the latest iteration on their most successful product. Despite rumors of a mostly laid back upgrade year, the iPhone 7 did not disappoint. While only minor changes have been made to the enclosure, there are significant upgrades to almost every other aspect of Apple's flagship iPhone.

Design

While the general dimensions of both the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus have remained the same, the camera footprint on both devices has increased. This means that most cases for the previous iPhones will likely no longer fit, unless they happened to leave a lot of extra space around the camera.

That said, the design of both phones have changed in more minor details as well. The cameras on both devices now include a slight taper leading up to the lenses, and the antennas on the devices have been redesigned so that the lines across the backs of the devices are no longer visible.

The Home button has been completely redesigned as well, although there are no visual indications of this from looking at it. The new home button is a solid-state button, meaning it is no longer mechanical. This will certainly make it much more durable than previous versions with their moving parts, and definitely helps with water resistance. It also means that the feedback felt from pressing the button is now tied to the iPhone's Taptic engine, allowing you to configure how sensitive you want your Home button to be. The general idea sounds very similar to that of Apple's Force Touch trackpads, which do not actually move, but use haptic feedback to make it feel like they've moved. We'll see when the hands-on reviews start dropping whether Apple has succeeded with this goal.

Finally, with the iPhone 7 Apple is introducing two brand new colors for iPhones: Black and Jet Black. Black is the replacement for Space Gray, which is no longer an option for the newest iPhones. It is a black matte finish with a black Apple logo in the middle. The Jet Black color is a highly polished glossy black, harkening back to the shiny black glass of the iPhone 4 and 4S models. The Apple logo in the center of the Jet Black model is a dark gray.

Besides the new colors, new camera on the Plus models, and the modest design tweaks, it will be hard to easily spot a new iPhone 7 from an older 6 or 6S. This is the first time Apple has dubbed an iPhone with a completely new number without a full redesign of its exterior, but there are certainly many other changes to this device that make the digit change seem warranted.

Cameras

Both models of iPhone 7 include a brand new 12-megapixel camera with a larger ƒ/1.8 aperture and 6-element lens. Furthermore, for the first time the smaller 4.7-inch model has received the Optical Image Stabilization capability, which has been reserved for the larger model since the iPhone 6 series. Both cameras also can capture a wider color range, allowing for more vibrant and detailed color to be captured, and both include a new Image Signal Processor, which can process over 100 billion operations on a photo within 25 milliseconds.

Besides the back camera, both new iPhones also come with an upgraded 7-megapixel FaceTime camera on the front, which includes the wide color capture that's new in the back cameras as well. The True Tone flash has been upgraded as well, now sporting four LEDs rather than the previous two, resulting in a 50% brighter flash. Apple has also added a sensor that detects the flickering of artificial lights and tries to compensate for it in photos and videos (if you're not aware of this flickering, try taking a slo-mo video of an artificial light and you'll see it).

For the iPhone 7 Plus, alongside the wide-angle camera specified above is a second camera, which has a 12-megapixel telephoto lens. Together, the wide-angle and telephoto cameras in the iPhone 7 Plus are capable of 2x optical zoom, and 10x digital zoom, while still maintaining the quality of the captured photo.

The final feature of the iPhone 7 Plus' camera is the ability to perform an effect called "bokeh", which is a photography term for images where the foreground is sharply in focus while the background is greatly blurred. The Bokeh effect is extremely difficult to achieve for smartphone-sized cameras, but Apple has managed it, sort of, with their new dual-lens system.

I say sort of because the feature will be fairly limited when it is rolled out, and it is only achieved via a combination of hardware and software working together. At its introduction, this feature will only be available via a special "portrait mode" in the iOS Camera app on iPhone 7 Plus. In portrait mode, a combination of hardware and software will use facial recognition to determine a person, or people, to focus on in the foreground. It will then defocus the background based on its knowledge of the subjects of the picture. The biggest limitation here is that the feature only works on human subjects (at least based on the information we have about it from the keynote). That means you can't get the bokeh effect on subjects such as flowers or other inanimate objects, only on literal portraits you're taking of people. Furthermore, in portrait mode, Live Photos are disabled, and you can't take video using the effect.

All in all, the new bokeh effect may be extremely impressive technology to be included in the tiny camera of a smartphone, but it is also extremely limited technology at this time. It will be very exciting to watch Apple evolve and mature it, as they most certainly will in future generations, but for now its implementation remains a bit underwhelming. I expect it will be particularly so for people who do not understand the technical hurdles that the system is overcoming.

The final note about the bokeh effect is that the ability is not yet ready for prime time. It will not be included in the software for the iPhone 7 Plus at launch, but will instead be added at some point "later this year."

Water Resistance

Another headline feature of the iPhone 7 is that it is finally officially water resistant. Note the difference here between water proof and resistant. The actual water resistance rating is IP67 under the EIC standard 60529. In normal terms, that means the iPhone 7 is certified to not break down to a depth of about 1 meter of water, and only for 30 minutes at that depth.

Obviously, this is a far cry from being truly water proof, but it does mean that you should no longer need to worry about a glass of water being knocked onto your iPhone, dropping it into a toilet or a pool (depending on the depth of the pool), using it while walking through the rain, etc. One important thing to note though is that Apple still advises against plugging in a wet iPhone to charge. If your iPhone 7 does get wet, shake it out and give it a while to dry out before connecting it to power. That said, a wet iPhone 7 should only be wet in the port and speaker areas, not throughout the entire phone, so it should dry out significantly quicker than you may be used to from previous generations. The days of leaving your iPhone in a bowl of rice should thankfully be over.

The iPhone may still be a couple years out from being being certified for use by scuba divers, or being dropped into a deep lake, but the important thing to know right now is that you are finally clear to snap some underwater selfies without sealing your iPhone in a plastic bag.

Stereo Speakers

The new iPhone lineup for the first time includes a set of stereo speakers, one located at the bottom and one located at the top. The speakers are not only two times louder than the old iPhone speakers, but they work together to offer higher dynamic range and higher quality sound.

There's not much else to say about the iPhone's speakers except that this is an extremely welcome change. The iPhone has been in need of a speaker upgrade for years, and the stereo system on the iPhone 7 seems to be as good as anything we could have hoped for.

iPhone, Sans Headphone Jack

Apple spent a surprising amount of time addressing the removal of the headphone jack during the keynote. I won't go into all of it, but more or less it could all be summed up to "wireless is the future". Apple truly believes that the way forward is the removal of wires, so it's taking a bold step in this direction by removing the most ubiquitous port in technology's history. Whether or not this is the right move, I'll leave up to you.

For the iPhone 7, Apple has taken the least controversial route possible here. While they will certainly take a huge amount of heat for removing the port at all, they have tried to compromise at least a little bit by including a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter in the box for all new iPhones 7. This means that any peripherals you currently use that plug in through the headphone port will still work, you just have to connect them via the adapter and through the Lightning port. The obvious downside here: you won't be able to charge your iPhone while using the port (at least not without some other kind of adapter that allows both, but Apple is not currently offering one of these).

Another piece of the puzzle: for the headphones that ship with your iPhone, Apple is including a set of new Lightning connected EarPods in the place of their previous analog EarPods. These too will prevent you from charging while you listen to audio from your device, a seemingly important use case which Apple didn't mention in its discussion of technology's future. Probably because they're hoping everyone will purchase the last new product which was announced this morning.

AirPods

Yes, as the rumors (sort of) predicted, Apple is also releasing a new line of entirely wireless headphones. Dubbed "AirPods", these new devices consist of a charging case and two completely independent headphones, one for each ear. The AirPod exterior design is almost exactly what would happen if you sliced the ends off of your current Apple EarPod headphones. On the interior, however, the devices are really quite impressive.

Apple's AirPods are Bluetooth connected headphones, but on the interior they include a brand new Apple-designed "W1" chip. The W1 is used to facilitate the interaction between the AirPods and a variety of connected devices, providing high quality sound, long battery life, and automatic setup of connections.

The "long battery life" is absolutely a relative term here. AirPods have long battery life relative to other objects small enough to fit in your ear which also need to facilitate a constant Bluetooth connection and stream audio without latency. In real-world terms, Apple sets the battery life for their AirPods at 5 hours per full charge. The battery charging case that comes with them holds a charge as well, and is capable of giving the AirPods a full 24 hours of playback time. However, this means that each time the AirPods run out of power they need to be recharged via the battery case before they'll be ready to keep going.

I was hoping for the same quick-charging capabilities that we've seen from the likes of the Apple Pencil or the Magic Keyboard and Trackpads, where mere seconds of charging results in an appreciable amount of use. We didn't quite get that, but for devices that charge inductively rather than via a hardwired connection, it's not too bad at all. According to Apple, placing the AirPods in their charging case for 15 minutes will result in a 3-hour charge.

If your AirPods die in the middle of something, 15 minutes is quite a long while to wait before picking back up where you left off. (I suppose you could do a shorter time to get less than 3 hours, but anything more than 1 or 2 minutes is already extremely disruptive in such a situation, so the distinction doesn't seem particularly important.) That said, if you keep in mind that at some point between each three-hour block of usage (or five-hour after a full charge) you need to find some time to drop the AirPods back into their case for a bit, it seems like it won't be too big of a problem. Throughout everyday life I think the AirPods will work fine with these specifications, it's only in more intensive tests, such as long airplane rides, when the battery limitations of the devices might become particularly aggravating.

The charging case itself charges via a Lightning port at the bottom. While it holds enough charge to keep the AirPods going for 24 hours, Apple doesn't mention how long the charging case itself will hold that charge. It seems like the safest bet will be to charge it nightly (at least if you use your headphones regularly each day), so that's yet another device to add to the constantly increasing number of electronics that we have to charge up every day.

Battery life aside, one of the other big aspects that Apple touched upon was the idea of seamlessly transitioning between devices that you want to play audio from. There's a lot to stand up to here, as an analog headphone can switch sources by simply swapping the plug from a phone to a Mac, or other device. For the AirPods, once they're initially paired to each of your devices, you'll be able to set the source to play through them straight from Control Center on iOS 10 or watchOS 3, or from the Volume menu in macOS Sierra. Not too bad, assuming every device you want to play from is made by Apple.

Speaking of pairing, Apple has made the pairing process for AirPods extremely simple, at least for pairing them with the iPhone 7. To pair a set of AirPods, simply hold them close to the iPhone and a view will show up asking you to confirm the connection. One tap and it's done.

This looks like a fantastic workflow to facilitate the usually fiddly process of connecting Bluetooth devices. The only caveat is that it's likely something special that happens between the iPhone 7 and the AirPods. This means that connecting a set of AirPods to any other devices besides an iPhone 7 will probably fall back to the standard Bluetooth device pairing process. Once paired though, swapping input sources between different Apple devices should hopefully be as easy as Apple claims it to be.

AirPods do more than just play audio. Each pod also includes a microphone, so they can pick up audio input from your voice as well. This means you can take calls on your AirPods, as well as interact with Siri through them. Siri is activated by a double tap on one of the AirPods while it is in your ear. Once activated, the AirPods use accelerometers to tell when you are talking, and when you are it enables a pair of beam-forming microphones to focus in on your voice. This process supposedly filters out background noise so that your words come through much clearer than with previous normal headphone microphones.

The AirPods do not support a tapping interface for playback controls, but do make clever use of their ability to detect whether they are in your ears. With this, when you remove the AirPods they will pause playback, and this happens even if you only remove one AirPod. This way, if you need to have a conversation with someone, just pull one AirPod out of one ear while you're talking. When you're finished and want to listen to whatever audio was playing again, simply replacing the AirPod will automatically start playback again.

While I do wish there was some way to handle skipping forward or backward, for me I already automatically remove one headphone anytime I'm going to have a brief conversation with someone. I do this particularly frequently when ordering food somewhere, and I always pausing my audio first, then remove the headphone. Later, I replace the headphone and restart my music from the playback control. Combining these actions into one seems like a fantastic move, and I look forward to finding out how well it works in practice (this will mainly be a question of responsiveness).

Sadly, I'll be looking forward to that for quite a bit longer than the release date of the iPhone 7. AirPods, which will be sold separately from the iPhone for $159, are not going to be released until late October of this year. That means we've got a few months to wait until we can see firsthand how well Apple's newest foray into headphones will work in our everyday lives.

Performance and Battery Life

The final aspect of the iPhone 7 is, of course, the performance and battery life section. Surprisingly, there is more news this year for battery life than "it matches the battery life of last year's iPhone." In fact, the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 is going to be packed with a full 2 hours of extra battery life, on average. Besides the leap in battery life of the iPhone 6 Plus two years ago (not surprising given its larger enclosure), this is the first real jump forward in iPhone battery life since its introduction. According to the comparisons on Apple's website, this change now places the iPhone 7 at approximately the same battery life expectations that Apple makes for last year's iPhone 6S Plus model.

For this year's iPhone 7 Plus, there has also been a battery boost, although only of 1 hour, on average. Every hour counts, so that's great news too. Overall, the smaller model has now closed the gap on the larger model to only 1 hour of battery life between them. Great news for those still holding out from joining the Plus Club.

On the performance front, it's no surprise that the iPhone 7 makes huge leaps once again. Within it lies Apple's brand new A10 Fusion chip, which is faster and more efficient than any previous iPhone to date. The A10 Fusion chip is designed with four cores, two used for high performance and two used for high efficiency. This allows the chip to dynamically change between high performance when it's needed, and energy efficiency when it's not. That in turn contributes to the extra hours of battery life on the iPhone 7, but does lead me to wonder whether those battery life claims hold up under heavy usage, or if keeping the high performance cores running more than "average" will negate any supposed gains. Once again we'll need to wait for some reviewers to get their hands on the devices to know this for sure. Regardless, under standard everyday use, it sounds like the new A10 Fusion's intelligence could be a big boon for battery.

On the graphics front, the A10 Fusion chip has made significant improvements as well. It runs up to 3 times faster Graphics than the iPhone 6, and significantly faster than the iPhone 6S as well.

Finally, capacity. And here we can all let out a collective sigh of release, because with this year's iPhone lineup Apple has finally said goodbye to the 16 GB base configuration. Apple's iPhones now start at 32 GB for the base model, then jumping to 128 GB for the mid range model, and topping out at a huge 256 GB on the high end. Each jump is, as usual, separated by $100 each.

Also of significant note here, is that Apple has even increased the low end of capacity on last year's iPhone models. Both the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus start at a baseline of 32 GB, along with the option for a single price bump to a max of 128 GB. The only iPhone left out of the capacity bumps is the iPhone SE, which remains available at the capacities of either 16 GB or 64 GB.

Wrap Up

All things considered, the iPhone 7 surprised me with its impressive repertoire of improvements. For a year that wasn't expected to blow anyone away, the sheer number of changes have revealed an overall extremely appealing product. Maybe Apple has been saving the low hanging fruit upgrades like increased battery life and stereo speakers for a year like this with neither breakthrough new tech like Touch ID or 3D Touch, nor a brand new design like previous full digit turnovers. Regardless, looking at the phone as a whole, I find myself very impressed and excited. New colors always help, too.

The iPhone 7 will be available for preorder starting at 12:01 AM PDT on September 9, and will ship the next week on September 16. The 4.7-inch model will start at $649 (or $32.41/month) for the 32 GB model, and increase by $100 increments (or about $4.16/month) for the 128 GB and 256 GB models. The 5.5-inch iPhone 7 Plus will start at $769 (or $37.41/month) and increase by $100 increments (still about $4.16/month) for the 128 GB and 256 GB models. The Jet Black color for both iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus is only available at the 128 GB tier or higher.

You can also follow all of the MacStories coverage of today's Apple's keynote through our September 7 Keynote hub, or subscribe to the dedicated September 7 Keynote RSS feed.

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When you paste text from IE into OneNote, it automatically references the source URL at the bottom.

Back when I worked for Mozilla, I’d occasionally drop into Campus North, home of the Ignite100 startup accelerator, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I even ran an event there, a Maker Party, back in 2014.

Today, after a discussion with Phil Veal, I realised that a good way to increase my ‘serendipity surface’ would be to commit to basing myself somewhere else for one day per week. That’s why from next week, I’ll be spending every Monday based in Campus North.

The fees are reasonable, the wifi is fast, and the company is always terrific. If you’re in Newcastle on a Monday, please do ping me and I’ll take you for a coffee!

Image via Paul Lancaster

If you press both buttons on Apple Watch simultaneously, it will take a screenshot and place it in the camera roll on your iPhone. That no longer works unless you enable it in the Watch app on your iPhone.

Google released version 2.0.0 of Google Photos today to integrate better with other Google products and to give customers greater control over their photos.

In June, Google released Motion Stills an app that can turn Live Photos into GIFs or movies and does an amazing job eliminating camera shake. Version 2.0.0 brings that same functionality to Google Photos. From the menu, choose ‘Save as video’ and Google Photos will save a video version of your Live Photo.

It is also easier to upload your videos to YouTube. Select a video, tap share, pick the ‘YouTube’ icon from the share sheet. Google Photos will prepare the file and send it to the YouTube app where you can edit it further before posting if you like.

Finally, Google added a couple of user-friendly features to Google Photos. The first is the ability to sort photos in albums either chronologically or by recently added. The second is the ability to change the thumbnail used in the ‘People’ view to a photo of your own choosing.

As we saw from the introduction of the iPhone 7 yesterday, photography and the apps surrounding it continue to be some of the most competitive areas in mobile computing. With Google Photos 2.0.0, Google continues to refine its approach to photo management and tie it more closely with its video products.

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by Clint

Last night Igor, Scott, and I headed over to Bacon Ridge after work for a quick ride.  Every time I go out there, I'm impressed by how well maintained the trails are.  Eroded sections are patched with sand and rock for drainage, branches are neatly clipped, and trash is nowhere to be found.

Logs on blogs.

The local trail crew is looking to expand the trails at Bacon Ridge this fall.  I've been talking to some of the folks involved with making this happen.  The land is owned by the county, but it's up to a land trust to approve trail expansion.  They make sure the natural environment is protected and regulations are obeyed.

A video posted by Igor Shteynbuk (@igorshteynbuk) on Sep 7, 2016 at 3:29pm PDT

Ultimately, the expansion of the trail system is dependent on the condition of current trails and how they affect the land.  It's a good reminder that we affect the land as riders.  When you enjoy this sort of activity, it's easy to care about the environment.  Do so and we can gain more access and eventually create more trails!
Since you sat through my micro rant.  Here's a teaser for a new stem.  It's being tested now.

Try the more element-based approach instead of your traditional histogram or boxplot. Read More

Yesterday morning during their keynote event, Apple introduced the first ever hardware update to the Apple Watch. The Apple Watch Series 2 retains the same basic body design as predecessor. While it is thicker by 0.9mm, the internal components have received a significant refresh in power as well as capabilities. With the Series 2, Apple seems to be repositioning the Watch to be more directed toward health and fitness rather than an all purpose device, and the choices of hardware upgrades reflect this idea as much as the keynote highlighted it.

Repositioning

I'll discuss this first because the change is stark, and important for understanding where the Watch is headed. The Apple Watch is not the same watch that we were introduced to in September two years ago. That watch had extremely lofty goals of high fashion and technological marvel. It sold as an aluminum "Apple Watch Sport" for health and fitness, a stainless steel "Apple Watch" for those who did not place fitness capabilities first, and a $10,000 or more gold "Apple Watch Edition" for those who could afford the expense for nothing more than luxury. That is a very, very different watch from the one that was announced at yesterday's keynote.

The Apple Watch Series 2 has dropped the "Sport" moniker. Now the standard and the sport watches are both just "Apple Watch", but with the choice of either aluminum or stainless steel. That would place them on even ground now, except that the vast majority of Apple's marketing for the Apple Watch shows nothing other than aluminum models. In fact, the stainless steel Apple Watch only makes a single appearance on the home page for the Apple Watch on Apple.com: on the image of the special, "fashionable," Hermès model.

As for the Apple Watch Edition, I hope there weren't any wealthy people holding out to buy a gold Series 2, because the days of $10,000+ Apple Watches seem to be over (although I'm sure this will make the resale market for originals boom). In the new lineup, the Apple Watch Edition is no longer gold, but instead a pearly white ceramic. The ceramic is specially engineered by Apple, and is apparently four times stronger than steel. This makes the ceramic model extremely scratch and tarnish resistant. Supposedly, each individual ceramic enclosure that Apple makes requires such a delicate amount of workmanship that it takes multiple days to create.

The price for all this? A mere (mere used only in comparison to last year's Edition models) $1,249. Apple has entirely dumped the super high end of the fashion market.

The final nail in the coffin of the original Apple Watch marketing is the new tagline: "The Ultimate Device For A Healthy Life."

The days of the high-end, all-purpose Apple Watch are over. Long live the mass market fitness device Apple Watch!

The Apple Watch Nike+

With the Series 2, Apple Watch is all about health and fitness. This goes much deeper than the promotion of the Sport edition to a modifier-less title. The headline features of the new Apple Watch are almost all fitness related, and the keynote highlights were as well. Even the game that was given stage time at the event, Pokémon Go for Apple Watch, is tangentially related to fitness. With this in mind, it's no surprise that this year's new branded Apple Watch does not come from another fashion mogul like Hermès, but instead belongs to the sports and fitness superpower Nike.

The new Nike-branded Apple Watch consists of a custom watch face available only to buyers of the watch, and a custom band. The band is basically a standard Sport band in construction, but includes distinctive holes throughout the surface, the interiors of which are a different color than the surrounding area. The result stands out, and I actually quite like it.

The band is available in four different colors, which vary the scheme between light and dark gray and a neon yellow-green (Nike calls the color "Volt"). The watch face mirrors these colors, and is available in several different styles, all which incorporate Nike's distinctive font and logo. The Apple Watch Nike+ also includes a permanent complication along the bottom of the display for the Nike+ Run Club app, which I assume comes preinstalled on the devices since the Complication can't be removed.

The Apple Watch Nike+ will not be shipping at the same time as the other models of Apple Watch. It is listed for availability in "late October."

GPS

To be the fitness powerhouse that the Series 2 is looking to be, it will help if it is not required to be in range of an iPhone or Wi-Fi connection at all times. While general internet capabilities are still out of reach without these crutches, the Apple Watch Series 2 is taking a great step in the right direction with the introduction of a built-in GPS.

Previous versions of the Apple Watch relied on its iPhone counterpart to take care of GPS tracking, but with the Series 2 this is no longer necessary. The new GPS will record precise distances and speeds completely on its own, which should be a great boon not only for tracking runs and other workouts, but also for the speed and responsiveness of location tracking via Maps.

The inclusion of GPS is a step forward toward the inevitable future of an Apple Watch freed from its iPhone ball and chain. There aren't too many more items to be checked off the list from here before that future becomes a reality.

Water Resistance

The original Apple Watch was rated to be splash proof and mostly water resistant, but submerging it was not recommended. The Apple Watch Series 2 ups the ante, receiving a water resistance rating of up to 50 meters. This means the Apple Watch can now safely be worn for swimming in pools or the ocean, and should generally remove any worry about wearing your Apple Watch into potentially watery situations.

From the fitness angle, this change of course positions the Apple Watch to be an excellent tool for swimmers, and Apple pushed hard on this fact during the keynote. According to Apple's keynote announcements, they have created a new algorithm that allows the Apple Watch to more accurately track calories burned during a swimming workout, and it can even count the number of laps a swimmer does. To compliment the new tracking capabilities, Apple will also be releasing new workout types for the Activity app, one for swimming in a pool and one for swimming in open water.

The final thing to note about the Apple Watch's new waterproof design is the innovative answer to the problem of waterproofing speakers. As Apple described during the keynote, speakers require a throughput of air in order to function properly, and anywhere air can access, water generally can too. To compensate for this, Apple has crafted a new design in which the speaker itself is actually used to physically eject the water that ends up inside of it after the Apple Watch has been submerged. This clears up the speaker and prevents water from getting trapped inside of it. I find this to be a very intriguing design idea, and I hope to see it brought to the newly water resistant iPhone line at some point in the future.

New Display

The Apple Watch Series 2 also features a brand new display technology, engineered for increased brightness. According to Apple, the new display on the Series 2 is capable of producing 1,000 nits of light. Not only does than make it 2 times brighter than the previous Apple Watch display, but it is actually the brightest display that Apple has ever shipped in any product. This change should be a great step forward in making out the contents of the Apple Watch display under bright sunlight (which, of course, is commonly required during runs or other workouts).

Performance

Not surprisingly, the Series 2 Apple Watch has received an impressive boost in performance. The new watch features an improved dual-core processor within the Apple-designed S2 chip. This provides up to 50% faster performance than the original Apple Watch. The GPU has also been upgraded, resulting in double the graphics performance of the previous model.

Altogether, the performance improvements on the Series 2 are uncomplicated, but appreciated. Paired with the speed and efficiency enhancements of watchOS 3, these new internals are sure to make the Series 2 significantly better.

Wrap Up

The Apple Watch Series 2 marks a new direction for the world's most popular smartwatch, which is not the kind of change that Apple makes to its products very often. I think it's fairly safe to say that this was the direction the Apple Watch has already taken itself over the past year and a half on the market. The huge reduction in the Edition's price seems to show that Apple's foray into high fashion was unsuccessful. The promotion of the Sport to a standard model and the accompanying change in marketing points to what was likely a huge majority of Sport watches sold over even the stainless steel models. Usually understanding Apple's product direction can take a bit of reading the tea leaves, but for the Apple Watch Series 2, it's surprisingly clear.

So fitness is the future, at least for the present. Regardless of the course correction, the Cupertino company still delivered a solid step forward for their smartwatch platform. While I wouldn't have complained about seeing any other interesting new health sensors, or an improvement to battery life, the advancements we have received continue to build out the Apple Watch's strong base.

The Apple Watch will be available for preorder starting September 9th at 12:01 AM, and will ship starting September 16th. The aluminum models of the Series 2, including the Apple Watch Nike+ (when it is released in October) will start at $369. The stainless steel Series 2 models will start at $549.

In a surprising last-minute twist, Apple is also upgrading the internals of the original Apple Watch (now to be dubbed the Series 1). The single change is to replace the Apple Watch's original S1 chip with the brand new S2 chip, increasing the speed of the device by 50%. The upgraded Series 1 will be available only in aluminum models, and will surely be a competitive new option for Apple Watch purchases, as it holds a starting price of just $269.

You can also follow all of the MacStories coverage of today's Apple's keynote through our September 7 Keynote hub, or subscribe to the dedicated September 7 Keynote RSS feed.

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In the Australian cities of Sydney and Melbourne, there was uproar last week when Mao Zedong fans tried to stage celebrations of the life of the “Great Helmsman” to mark the 40th anniversary of his demise, that falls this Friday.

What we’ve been up to so far

Our new Context Graph effort is steering us into some new and uncharted territory. But I can’t help but feel a sense of adventure because this opens up so many opportunities for new products and experiences — exciting times!

I spent the early part of my career working with a bunch of startups. “Move Fast and Break Things” was often the motto. Sometimes it was the right approach. Hammer away, and don’t be afraid to pivot later on. But stopping to question what or why we’re hammering is becoming more and more important.

Our team was tasked to create a New Mobile Experience. Here’s how we’ve been approaching it.

The Design Sprint

We started by reading The Sprint Book written by the folks at Google Ventures. “Sprint” writes about a five-day process for iterating on ideas and ultimately shipping products that solve real user problems. Additionally, the book has some great examples of other teams that have followed the same process.

To help us figure out what we should start hammering on, we decided to run our own sprint.

Since working remotely is fairly common at Mozilla, the first thing we wanted to do was get together in person. A prerequisite to running a sprint, but also just very helpful things to do for a new team. As luck would have it though, scheduling proved to be our first issue. Not a great start.

But there’s still a lot we needed to do before meeting. Our two main goals right now are:

1. Familiarize ourselves with the Sprint process
2. Share an understanding of what problems we’d like to solve

Remote Sprinting

Here’s where things get more interesting. Before meeting, we decided to try and run a modified sprint. Specifically, to running one remotely. Scary, I know. But the hope is that it will help us achieve the two main goals I mentioned earlier — to work together, and to learn.

Gemma, our Lead User Researcher, headed up this effort for us and designed with our first remote sprint. She also played the role of facilitator. You can read more about the process in her upcoming blog post (link to be posted soon!) but I’ll give a quick recap below.

At a high level, they’re two weeks long, requires a lot of video meetings (everyday to be exact), and involves a large amount of trust. Most days break down to a team working component followed by an individual homework assignment (to be completed before the following day).

Week 1

Day 1: Team — Select a high-level topic, Individual — Research and map out the problem space

Day 2: Team — Share research, choose a topic of focus, Individual — Sketch out ideas for solutions

Day 3: Individual — Cont’d sketching ideas for solutions (Crazy 8s style)

Day 4: Team — Quickly present own sketches, vote on the best ideas

Day 5: Team — Turn the “best idea” into a testable hypothesis, Smaller Team — Begin drafting a storyboard

Week 2

Day 6: Team — Share storyboard draft, give feedback, Smaller Team — Address feedback, or start on a prototype

Day 7: Team — Share the progress on the prototype, Smaller Team — Create, pilot and launch a user test

Day 8: Team — Watch user testing videos, capture learnings, Individuals — Brainstorm next steps

Day 9: Team — Evaluate the process, iterate on the prototype

Day 10: Team — Postmortem/follow up sprints

How Might We

The second goal here is to have a shared understanding of the goals and the problem spaces. It’s important for us to be research and data driven here so we created a template to help us out.

Since we’re distributed, it’s really helpful to have these posted somewhere. The team can refer back to them at any time, and they can be used to settle tie breakers. It provides a “North star” that everyone can always look to.

Adapting this from the Activity Stream Team and The Sprint Book, here’s how we’re phrasing our ideas in the form of a hypothesis statement:

We know this is a problem worth solving because
(user research/background research/other sources, attach if possible)
We believe that
(doing this/building this feature/creating this experience)
for (these people)
will achieve (this outcome).
We will know this is true when we see
(this user feedback/data).
The primary thing we want to be able to answer after user testing is if users
(used/understood/adopted, etc).

What’s next?

Gemma, our Lead User Researcher, will be publishing a post on designing and running remote sprints.

Ricardo, our Senior Interaction Designer, just facilitated our second remote sprint and has already been sharing his thoughts as a first time facilitator .

Next week, we’ll be meeting in person for a full Sprint Week.

This process has already inspired two new experiments we’ve started hacking on. The first, a clipboard application to help users gather links for later. The second, a notification manager to give users more control over disruptive notifications.

The way teams are distributed across timezones at Mozilla, I think it will always be helpful to find new ways of working. Perhaps some of our learnings here will be helpful for other teams too. We’ll continue to iterate on this process and look for ways to improve it. Each sprint, better than the last.

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A New Mobile Experience was originally published in Firefox User Experience on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

mkalus shared this story from Consumerist.

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Yesterday, Apple made people sit through an hour of pointless blather about the Apple Watch before finally unveiling the iPhone 7, complete with its missing headphone jack. Sure, you can connect your favorite analog headphones with the included dongle, but how do you charge your phone while also listening to music? You’ll need to go wireless.

Apple showed off the odd-looking AirPods that it claims are a step up from existing wireless headsets, but those won’t be available for another month (and they also look like you have a broken plastic dinner fork sticking out of both ears).

However, our audio-testing colleagues at Consumer Reports have already put together a roundup of decent wireless headphones that should play nice with the iPhone 7. But be prepared to pay a pretty penny.

The least expensive of the bunch are the MEE audio X7 Plus in-ear headphones with a retail price of around $100 (but can be obtained for less than that at some retailers). CR says these “deliver very good sound quality” and include a built-in microphone for when you need to talk on the phone, plus integrated smartphone controls.

For a sticker price of $125 (though again, they can be found for around $100 online), there are the Jabra Sport Coach Wireless headphones. For the sportier user, there is an integrated cross-training app that lets you choose from more than 50 exercises, and a motion sensor for keeping track of distances, steps, calories expended, etc. CR says the combined in-ear and earbud design is “useful for keeping the headphones on your ears and the music flowing inside them while you strive to get your heartbeat up.”

At around double the retail price, there are the $200 Sony h.ear MDR-EX750BT. With a name that awful, they must be decent, right?

CR says the Sony headset is “ideal for life on the go,” even though it doesn’t include any noise-canceling tech. The “in-ear design will at least muffle the din from leaf blowers, jet engines, and other nuisances that threaten to interfere with your listening pleasure.”

At the same $200 price point, you’ll find the on-ear Audio-Technica ATH-SR5BT headset. In addition to the very good sound quality rating from CR, the magazine notes that these bluetooth-connected headphones are good for people who frequently switch between devices while listening to music, as their built-in memory “stores pairing info for up to eight devices facilitating quick connections to your smartphone, tablet, and music player.”

Finally, we get to the Parrot Zik 3 at around $400. The stylish, over-the-ear design is probably not ideal for sportier types, but CR says the fancy headphones offer “very good sound quality, excellent active-noise reduction, and useful features that let you quickly change settings via gesture control (on the right ear cup) or the model’s mobile app.”

For the clumsy folk out there, both the Audio Technica and the Parrot headphones come with a 24-month warranty.

Check out the full write-up on these headsets at ConsumerReports.org.

Earlier this year, I spent a couple of weeks in Oslo, as part of the After Belonging In Residence programme, part of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016. The triennale opens today, and the result of my residency is installed at the National Architecture Museum.

Each of the In Residence reporters was given a site to respond to; mine was Oslo’s Gardermoen Airport. I spent many happy and curious hours exploring the terminals, watching the herculean snow management operations, and talking to baggage handlers, fire crews, security guards, cafe staff, and travellers.

One of the most interesting places I was kindly given access to was the Airport Operations Center. I’m sorry to say that I am not allowed to share photographs of it, but it is exactly as mundane-Bond Villain as you would imagine, with huge flat-panel screens showing everything from wind direction and temperature out on the airfield to hundreds of CCTV feeds, baggage carousel statuses, passenger flow times, and all manner of other alerts. Into this one room flows every available piece of information about the ground status of the airport. Everything above the ground is the domain of the control tower, the only place allowed to override the orders of the Operations Center – because, as one operator told me, “they’re closest to God – them and the Air France pilots.”

The other place in the airport that might be closer to God is the meditation centre, or Stille Rom (above). I’ve written before about these fascinating spaces, which seek to create a zone of quiet, stillness and reflection within the highly networked, busy and omnidirectional space of the airport. You can read my essay on these spaces, which discusses Gardermoen as well as a number of other airports, at the Witte de With Review website (or download it here if on mobile).

That essay dwells on one recurring feature of the multifaith space: the inclusion of a qibla, the arrow which points the faithful in the direction of Mecca. The qibla appears in many forms in different places. At London’s Heathrow, it’s a metal stud screwed to the floor; at Stansted a laminated card pinned to the wall, in Athens, a beautiful beam of light. (For a taste of these spaces, see this collection of photos I’ve taken over the years.)

Oslo’s meditation room contains no such direction – but, as I note in my essay, this is less necessary now that the qibla and tools like it are available to anyone with a smartphone, in the form of a downloadable app, which uses the phone’s in-built compass to determine the direction of prayer. Nevertheless, as I found at Gardermoen and elsewhere, those praying often leave a trace on the floor or skirting board for others who may not have the same kinds of access. (Biro marks at at Gardermoen, above).

This reliance on networks consisting of both smartphones and more traditional forms of communication mirrored my experience of the refugee crisis in Athens and the Greek islands. The camps on Lesbos, the squares of Athens, and all ports in between, are thronged with SIM card vendors, offering cheap data packages. On the ferries, those in transit share information about which border points are open, which countries are (relatively) friendly, where to buy bus tickets – information often passed back from those who have already gone ahead, via Whatsapp messages and Facebook groups. Such information is not always reliable, but forms a vital part of any journey, and mirrors once again the systems of calibration, control, and flow engineered in the contemporary airport space.

For the Architecture Triennale’s exhibition at the National Museum of Architecture in Oslo, I have installed a work called Wayfinding, consisting of a constantly-updated information screen and floor projection. The modern usage of the term “wayfinding” dates from Kevin Lynch’s classic work of architectural theory The Image of the City, published in 1960, and defined there as “a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment.” The term dates further back, encompassing techniques such as Polynesian open-water navigation, and is most often used today to denote the highly organised signage developed for airports and other busy public spaces. Its most vocal contemporary proponent is the Danish designer Per Mollerup, who created the signage systems for Gardermoen as well as many other international airports and rail termini.

That original definition from Lynch still stands, but can be expanded. The airport is a prime example of one of Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge’s Code/Space(s), a concept I have long been fascinated with, which examines the interplay and interdependence between software and architecture. As everything, ourselves included, becomes networked, so the boundary between Lynch’s “external environment” and our own sensorium starts to blur and break down. Wayfinding is not a stop-start process of moving from one point to another, but a constant flow of data from multiple sources, subtly inflecting our passage through the world. Every bit a trimtab.

Wayfinding, the installation, takes as its source material news stories published online about migrants and refugees. It reads hundreds of these every hour, as they are published, and analyses them for location and sentiment. Location means the place or places that the story is about; sentiment means the tone of the article – is it positive or negative, and to what degree? (Sentiment analysis is an important and growing tool in newsgathering, analytics, and investment, and seems important to understand, whether its companies analysing social media for product research or political views or automated stock trading based on online chatter.)

This information is aggregated and displayed as a real-time screen of recent news stories, together with their tone and location. Behind the screen, each story is mapped and weighted, so that an ever-changing sentiment map of Europe is created; a model of the shifting climate of opinion towards refugees and migrants across the continent.

The “pole of inaccessibility” is defined as a point on the Earth’s surface which is harder to reach by some metric; the Northen pole of inaccessibility, for example, is a point on the Arctic pack ice calculated to be furthest from any solid landmass. Wayfinding, by contrast, calculates a pole of possibility: the point in Europe currently reported to be expressing the best (or least worst) sentiments towards refugees and migrants.

Onto the floor of the National Museum is projected a compass rose, the arrow of which points, constantly, towards this pole.

The Lincoln Plaza high rise, winner of the 2016 Carbuncle Cup. Image via Ike Ijeh

Take a bus or Overground trip around London. The city is, like J. G. Ballard’s High Rise, an urban sea of self-sustained luxury development. Each year, the architecture magazine Building Design nominates six buildings for the Carbuncle Cup, a celebration of the worst architecture in the United Kingdom.

Yesterday, Building Design (BD) announced the 2016 winner, Lincoln Plaza—a building that could be rightly called an aesthetic mess of bad geometry, color and patterns. It is, like the last five London-winning Carbuncle Cup buildings, a fitting indictment of hyper-gentrification, in London and beyond, has gone beyond all elegance and futuristic vision and into a realm of alienating amalgamations of metal and glass.

This image, from developer Galliard Home's website, shows Lincoln Plaza’s exterior from below.

Like most high rise developments in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, BD points out that the architects behind Lincoln Plaza, Galliard Homes, exhibit little respect for the local area, and much more for foreign investors looking to park (and/or hide) their money in the still relatively stable post-Brexit real estate market.

“Were anyone in any doubt as to the sheer level delusion and gall that has gripped London’s luxury housing market, then this asinine quotation should settle the matter once and for all,” BD’s Ike Ijeh writes. “Lincoln Plaza is actually in South Quay and not Canary Wharf but what better way of showing contempt for your local context than by insinuating it is actually located in your flashier neighbouring district that is more likely to be familiar to your target Malaysian investors?”

Another image from developer Galliard Home's website showcasing Lincoln Plaza’s exterior.

Ijeh's sarcasm does not end with the motivations behind development nor cynical location branding. Special relish is reserved for the building’s stylistic atrocities.

“In its bilious cladding, chaotic form, adhesive balconies and frenzied facades, it exhibits the absolute worst in shambolic architectural design and cheap visual gimmickry,” he continues. “Essentially, this building is the architectural embodiment of sea sickness, waves of nausea frozen in sheaths of glass and coloured aluminium that, when stared at for too long, summon queasiness, discomfort and, if you’re really unlucky, a reappearance of lunch as inevitably as puddles after a rainstorm.”

A quick glance at Lincoln Plaza architects BUJ's website reveals a firm that seems categorically uninterested in aesthetics. On the contrary, they look to be cashing in, like so many architecture firms these days, on the rampantly greedy redevelopment of cities.

Image: Flickr user Aidan Wakely-Mulroney

As BD points out, BUJ was part of the 2016 Urban Age Shaping Cities conference hosted by LSE Cities at this year’s La Biennale di Venezia. BUJ proudly revel in their conference participation, and offer up a utopian notion of how buildings are shaped by “people, institutions, policymakers, investors and designers.”

As we all know, and as buildings like Lincoln Plaza prove, people and policymakers are often powerless to stop developers and their architects. As places like London become denser jungles of luxury high rises, the futures these folks are forming are going to keep looking a whole lot worse.

Click here to see past winners of the Carbuncle Cup.

Related:

Tibet’s Iconic Architecture Is Alive in Rare Drawings, Maps, and Photos

Inside Robert Irwin’s Dazzling New Monument to Light and Space

A Look Inside Tom Ford's Stunning $75 Million Ranch

This article in the Financial Times asks the question directly: is urban cycling worth the risk?

Sure we know about the extraordinary health benefits, getting to places efficiently, and living in a smart way. But in a 2014 survey “64 per cent of people surveyed by the UK’s Department of Transport said they believed it was too dangerous for them to cycle on the road. These decisions are often based on gut feelings or anecdote: a friend who has had a great experience commuting by bike can inspire us to follow suit, while seeing or hearing about a bad cycling accident may put us off for life.”

In London England nine cyclists died in 2015 as a result of crashes at intersections. In response to this, the new cycle superhighway just opened in London on Blackfriar’s Road phases the traffic lights so that cyclists go through intersections separately from motorized vehicles.

Surprisingly Transport for London’s analysis points the finger at the DESIGN of trucks being responsible for crashes, and is urging for a new truck design with improved visibility for drivers.

And are you safer biking or walking?

Mile by mile, people in the UK are actually more likely to die walking than cycling, according to figures from the Department for Transport. For every billion miles cycled last year, 30.9 cyclists were killed, while 35.8 pedestrians were killed for every billion miles walked. Both activities are significantly safer than riding a motorbike – 122 motorcyclists are killed for every billion miles driven.

While you are statistically more likely to succumb while walking, you are three times more likely to have an injury biking.  But back to how to make biking in cities safer- John Pucher and Ralph Buehler’s book City Cycling  notes the following: London, with an average of 1.1 deaths per 10,000 commuters, fared better than New York’s 3.8. But both lagged far behind the 0.3 annual average deaths in Copenhagen and 0.4 in Amsterdam.

And we know the reason: Copenhagen and Amsterdam have long standing policy and demonstrated implementation of separated bike lanes, not painted lines or share alls, but actual bike lanes with separate traffic signals. It is possible to do a complete commute on some of the bike lanes without crossing a vehicular interloper.

It’s great to see the Financial Times take an active interest in cycling and commuting, and they include additional information  in their article on health benefits, and pollution exposure. Bottom line-infrastructure is key to safe urban cycling, and retrofitting for separated bikeways is the 21st century way to increase ridership and enhance safety.

 

 

Just west of Main St. at 7th Avenue, the andandandcollective painted an energetic group of children in faux colours, some emerging from partially painted areas. It looks like part of the Vancouver Mural Festival, but information is not easy to find or check.

Stopped for a few minutes the other day at Vanier Park, and watched as newish-to-Vancouver types of bikes came wheeling past.

Mobis, of course, very new but now as common as Canada Geese. And two cargo bikes (“Bakfeits-type”) with kids on board.

Brent Toderian on “… the best way to do density, what types of cities should take on the Olympics, and what happens to planners after they have kids.”

Listen here.

As some people in Metro Vancouver continue to applaud funding gigantic bridges, and in some powerful quarters to lust after building tract-home subdivisions on the Agricultural Land Reserve, Smart Growth continues to attract other people.

Todd Litman has published a concise and detailed (how does he do that?) guide to countering criticism of Smart Growth by the proponents and defenders of 1950’s-style sprawl.

Writes Litman:

Smart Growth:  refers to development principles and planning practices that create more efficient land use and transport patterns. It includes numerous strategies that result in more accessible land use patterns and multi-modal transport systems. It is an alternative to sprawl. Smart Growth is supported by diverse interest groups and professional organizations. Smart Growth has been criticized by various individuals and organizations. This paper evaluates that criticism.

Critics tend to assume that consumers prefer large single-family homes in automobile-dependent communities, and that current transport and land use policies are overall efficient and fair. As a result, they criticize Smart Growth as being harmful to consumers and the economy. This ignores evidence that many people will choose other housing and transport options if given suitable options and incentives, and that current markets are distorted in ways that increase sprawl and automobile dependency. Many Smart Growth strategies are market reforms that correct existing market distortions, increasing consumer options, economic efficiency and equity. Critics endorse some Smart Growth strategies in recognition that they increase market efficiency.

Critics often misrepresent Smart Growth and make various analytical errors which can lead to false conclusions. They often evaluate Smart Growth based simply on gross regional population density, ignoring other Smart Growth factors, geographic scales, and confounding factors. As a result, some evidence presented by critics misrepresents key issues. Specific Smart Growth criticisms are summarized below and evaluated in detail in the body of this report. . . .

. . .  Critics tend to assume that consumers are inflexible, helpless and lazy, and so would be unable to accept living in more Smart Growth communities and reducing their automobile travel. However, experience indicates that people are actually quite adaptable and creative, enjoy walking and cycling, and can flourish in a wide range of land use conditions and transportation patterns.

Mr. Litman is a respected researcher and analyst who runs the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (Victoria, BC). He is unafraid to wade into the issues with critics, no matter who they are and at what level they discuss the issues.

The First Annual Larry Bell Urban Forum   Mapping the Hedge City — Vancouver and Global Capital   September 23 5-8:30 pm SFU Vancouver Admission: $5. Buy tickets on Eventbrite. Admission is free for students with valid student ID. Webcast: Free but reservations required. Reserve for webcast on Eventbrite.   Twenty years ago, geographer David Harvey described London’s redeveloped Docklands as a “landing strip for capital” from investors around the world. Today, Vancouver has joined London, New York, Sydney and other nodes of a world network of “Hedge Cities”—places to buy real estate to store capital as insurance against an uncertain future. How are cities and public policy reshaped by a world of transnational investment? Chair and host: Andy Yan, Bing Thom Architects, and Simon Fraser University Speaker: David Ley, University of British Columbia Panelists: Prof. Manuel Aalbers, University of Leuven; Prof. Angie Chung, University of New York at Albany; Melissa Fong, University of Toronto; Prof. J. Rhys Kesselman, Simon Fraser University; Dallas Rogers, Western Sydney University; Ian Young, South China Morning Post; Prof. Meg Holden, Simon Fraser University This event is sponsored by The Larry Bell Urban Forum. The Forum is made possible by a generous donation by Larry Bell to the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. More information/registration

Images courtesy the artists

Ever wanted to glimpse inside Daft Punk's heads? Thanks to prop designer Mike Michelena, who has released an ingenious design for a Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo helmet, you can. Michelena, co- founder of the company Love Props, spent more than a year putting together the software and hardware to create what he calls, "an interactive light instrument. An easy to play and fully customizable device for composing music for the eyes." Decked out with sound- and motion-activated rainbow LEDs and WiFi for optional smartphone interfacing, Michelena's helmet just might outlcass the real thing. 

The godfathers of stadium-packing dance music have kept relatively quiet since the media blitz that followed their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, though rumors have recently surfaced of a collaboration with The Weeknd. Nevertheless, legions of fans like Michelena are resourceful when left to their own daft devices. Aside from imitating instantly-recognizable Daft Punk helmets, artists have rendered the robots in LEGO, laser-cut wood, and animation, mashed them up with famous movies, and arranged a gallery show of art inspired by their image.

Now that Michelena has thrown down the gauntlet for Daft Punk helmets, all that's left is to see how the legendary dance machines one-up the fans in their next round of robo-costumes.

Learn more about how Mike Michelena created his Guy-Manuel helmet on his website.

Related:

The Limited Edition Daft Punk Skate Deck Falls From the Heavens

Watch Daft Punk Pay Tribute to Music Legend Nile Rodgers

Design Experts Rank Your Favorite DJs’ Logos

This is a review of Greg Goldberg’s (2016) article “Antisocial media: Digital dystopianism as a normative project.” It is available in New Media & Society Vol. 18(5) behind a pay wall or with institutional access: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/16/1461444814547165.abstract

While the general tone of academic research on the internet has become increasingly nuanced since the 1980s and 1990s, much popular writing about digital technology remains locked in Manichean thinking: the internet is the best and the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. In an article for New Media & Society Professor Greg Goldberg analyzes the dystopian narrative common in popular writing on the internet, arguing that this discourse is “a normative project linked to domination.”

Goldberg begins the article with an overview of dystopian popular writings on the internet and its effect on humanity. He focuses specifically on two texts: Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less from Each Other. Expressing concern about the neurological and psychological effects of the internet, respectively, the two popular publications reflect much of the tone of writing and reporting found in outlets like The New York Times and National Public Radio. Cyborgology readers will know that this type of writing is well-worn territory for the blog, with the critique of digital dualism being a cornerstone of our analysis, and co-founding editor Nathan Jurgenson’s extensive work on the augmented reality framework, which rejects the idea that “real life” is in opposition to the internet. In his recent essay on Turkle’s Reclaiming Conversation (2015) David Banks articulates the ways Turkle scapegoats technology without taking seriously and acknowledging the material forces that lay the groundwork for antisocial relations and violence.

Rather than reject the empirical evidence and general claims made by Carr and Turkle, Goldberg is concerned with understanding where dystopian claims come from and what kind of work they do. Of Carr and Turkle’s work, he writes: “The identification and analysis of neurological and psychological transformations engendered by internet use occur alongside the valuing of certain forms of embodiment, intellect, and psyche” (790). But Goldberg pushes beyond these surface concerns of dystopian internet writing to “interpret these as proxies for the social field and, in particular, responsible forms of sociality” (791).

To make this argument, he delves into the literature on affect and the politics of emotion, specifically that of Sianne Ngai and Sara Ahmed. Specifically, Goldberg uses anxiety as an affective foundation for dystopian analysis of the internet. He, through Ngai and Ahmed, draws an important distinction between fear and anxiety, one made by many modern and postmodern scholars, as one of temporality and object. Fear is present, and object-based; something is coming for you, you know what it is, and it is here. Anxiety, however, is locked in the future, and rather than having a single object that instills fear you have many, perhaps countless, objects that produce anxiety. As such, as Ahmed writes in The Cultural Politics of Emotion, “Anxiety becomes an approach to objects rather than, as with fear, being produced by an object’s approach.” Anxiety produces a feeling that one’s subject position is endangered, and these dystopian narratives index the anxious loss of subject position among the elite.

The anxiety on display in these dystopian narratives is not that the internet is not real, despite that being the rhetoric oft used; rather, the concern is that the internet is too real, that “it draws into question the utility of the concept of the real, laying bare its normative foundations” (792). From here, Goldberg presents dystopian anxieties as productive of a certain moral imperative: “the maintenance of a responsible sociality which is anxiously projected on the body” (792). In order for the internet user to remain a responsible member of society, they must do the work of “maintaining an independent, autonomous self;” for Turkle this work is the face-to-face, spatially co-present work of maintaining social relationships that, for her, are more difficult than those cultivated online.

These writers’ ultimate conclusion is that “real/valuable relationships are those that require various kinds of hard work: compromise, sacrifice, and responsibility” (793). It is a moralizing effort, inviting internet users to monitor their responsibility to “real” relationships, but also a “moralizing suspicion of pleasure as that which impedes and undermines relations of responsibility” (794). Concluding with a queer theory perspective, Goldberg investigates passivity as a concept oft used to undermine queer pleasure, that being penetrated, “bottoming,” are inextricably bound to this irresponsible pleasure. He then poses the question: “How much of this [dystopian] body of work similarly values the active, responsible, and the self-sovereign?” (797). He concludes that the “irresponsible,” “passive,” “unproductive” use of internet for pleasure may be politically queer, “insofar as users find joy and excitement precisely in abandoning normative orientations that solicit their responsibility” (798).

While many criticisms of the dystopian writing tackled by Goldberg have attempted to refute or counter the claims made by Carr, Turkle, and many others, Goldberg seeks instead to understand where they come from and what work they do in a rapidly changing technological society. Ultimately, his call for a queer politics of pleasure that undermines the authoritarian, normative moralism of dystopian writing gives a new perspective on the anxieties of internet writers. My own takeaway is the extent to which centuries-old notions of the Protestant work ethic, the inherent “goodness” of self-denial and self-flagellation, and other repressive narratives firmly rooted in capitalist material and ideological relations remain a powerful voice in contemporary popular culture, particularly when presented to an elitist readership.

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