It was in 1909 when Henry Ford, master of efficiency and standardization, famously said that a “customer can have a car painted any color…so long as it is black.” While the First Industrial Revolution introduced machines to replace hand labor, Ford helped usher in what was ultimately the principle of mass production; using those machines to produce large quantities of… Read More
Highlights From Mobile World Congress 2016
This week, we went to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2016. We covered a panel about mobile ad blocking, Mark Zuckerberg talked about Free Basics and encryption, Samsung announced the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, we went hands on with the modular LG G5, and oh, by the way, tablets are dead. Here’s everything you need to know from the event. Read More
Hastings & Co Gets The Mechanical Kickstarter Watch Right
Every few weeks I dig through the deepest recesses of Kickstarter and Indiegogo to find a few good watches. This time I’ve hit pay dirt. The $ 227 Hastings & Co Heritage Edition is a mechanical watch with enough class and high design to make it an heir to watches like the Tissot Le Locle and some classic Longines pieces at a price that resembles the good old Seiko Orange Monster. But… Read More
New Levitating 3D Printing Technology Prints In Mid-Air
Imagine printing something with multiple print heads while the object in question was floating in space. Please. Imagine it because I have no idea what is going on here. A new “levitating” 3D printing technology pioneered by Boeing uses a central nugget of magnetic material. Read More
The Politics Of The Internet Of Things
The prospective scale of the Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to fill anyone looking from the outside with the technical equivalent of agoraphobia. However, from the inside, the view is very different. Looked at in detail, it is a series of intricate threads being aligned by a complex array of organizations. As with any new technological epoch, questions around shape, ownership… Read More