What's Tech?

We have a few cyborgs on staff. Ben Popper is arguably the reporter best known for peeling back his skin to insert a piece of technology, which he chronicled in his feature, Cyborg America. But others have gone under the knife. I wanted to know why. You know, because I have crippling FOMO.

After a light night spent skimming the Interstellar Wikipedia page, I began to wonder about some of the bigger questions of humankind: Will we live on Mars? Will we inhabit the moon? Will we just build our own giant space home away from home? Will Matthew McConaughey ever have another year like 2014?

I am nostalgic for internet videos in the time before YouTube. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I remember watching strange, absurd, hideous shorts — shot on home camcorders or animated with cheap software — on websites I’m no longer sure exist. What’s strange is to think series like Teen Girl Squad, Stella, and Homestar Runner charted the path for internet television programs like House of Cards and Burning Love.

If you named a video game, I could probably tell you who made it, when, and how it was received. I've reported on the medium in some capacity for seven years, and in that time I've acquired an encyclopedic-like understanding of the industry. But knowing the details doesn't mean I fully comprehend video games. The medium is so new and has tended to defy expectations, limitations, and labels.

Sometimes I’m ashamed by the pockets of the internet I overlook until a friend holds them right in front of me. I knew beauty vlogging was a thing, for example, but I didn’t grasp that the video format attracts millions of viewers. Nor had I considered positive impact beauty logging has had both on its stars and its fans.

Will Bitcoin make me rich? That was my first question about Bitcoin when I heard the term years ago. I didn’t know a thing about cryptocurrency, or why or how a Bitcoin might be used, but it sounded like an internet gold rush. I never invested in Bitcoin, and that may have been the right decision. But sometimes I think of the life that could have been.

The selfie gets a bad wrap. Labeled shallow and self-centered by its critics, self-portraiture has a rich history, dating back to humanity’s earliest works of art. What changed between artists painting themselves last century, and people snapping photos of themselves today?

Emoji have become such an everyday part of my life that I can't remember my iPhone keyboard without the adorable icons. The tiny cartoon characters have been my go-to solution for Poe's Law, a way for me to express that my text messages should be read with the sobriety of a smiley face farting a stack of flying money.

We're taking this week off because Chris is deep in the throes of E3. We'll be back with a brand new episode next Tuesday/ But today, we have a special bonus!

Uber is an ideal topic for an episode of What's Tech. It's a ubiquitous piece of technology that millions of people use across the planet. But even intelligent veteran tech executives throw around the name without really knowing what it represents. We've heard about "the Uber for tailors," "the Uber for trucking," and "the Uber for alcohol," along with countless other wannabes.