Russia officially invaded Ukraine Thursday. The U.S. and its allies are imposing sanctions, but, as U.S. President Joe Biden said in a press conference Thursday, they aren’t expected to immediately stop the Soviet advance. Meanwhile, the people of Ukraine nervously await what might come next. The Ukraine crisis touches the tech world in a number of different ways. For example, a number of the U.S. sanctions relate to denying Russia’s ability to acquire high technology for military
I vividly remember signing up for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s text campaign so that I could be “one of the first people” to receive his announcement about his vice-presidential choice. Fast forward to 2020, and that very same Joe Biden was running for president while COVID-19 was shutting down the world. COVID-19 forced everyone to redefine the nature of political campaigning and turned it into a digital affair. Not being able to host events, go door-to-d
Talk about the collection of technologies and ideas known as Web3 often focuses on making up for the transgressions of Web 2.0 companies, which have centralized control over online experiences and mined our personal data for their own profit. Whether or not you think the future of the internet involves AR, VR, NFTs, DAOs, the multiverse, or some combination thereof, there is an immense amount of money flooding into those sectors from the usual suspects. But if the same companies and people
One of the most appealing aspects of Horizon Worlds—the Meta Quest 2 virtual reality app that launched to the broader public in December and now attracts more than 300,000 users monthly—is the opportunity to create and launch “worlds” within its ecosystem. Equipped with a suite of building, scripting, and customization tools (all free and, literally, at your fingertips), users can construct and deploy multiplayer games, immersive virtual experiences, and collaborative
What will Apple’s highly anticipated mixed reality glasses be capable of? As I’ve written before, Apple is likely hiding clues about the design and functionality of the glasses in plain sight. It’s putting features in existing products that will only reveal their true usefulness in a mixed reality (XR) context. Memoji–the animated emoji you can personalize to reflect your look, moves, and emotions–may be an example of this. You can already speak through your Me
Shortly after wrapping their 2018 choose-your-own-adventure film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, show creator Charlie Brooker and executive producer Annabel Jones were fed up with interactive content. “[They said,] ‘We never wanna do this again,'” recalls Andy Weil, Netflix’s vice president of comedy and interactive lead. “‘It’s too hard. You get lost in it at certain points.'” But two Primetime Emmy Awards and a windfall of audience
Trust is key to any effective technology implementation. If people don’t trust it, they’re not going to use it. This challenge comes up again and again, especially with AI. While we have mountains of data to train systems on, creating a system that users trust demands thoughtful use of data to ensure meaningful results, and therefore, trustworthy AI. An example of how this shows up in the real world is the case of seatbelts. Seatbelts are safer for men than women. Why? Data bias. W
I’m entering year two of my second startup, this time as CEO, and I’ve been thinking a lot about best practices for starting and building a company. I spent nearly a decade working at Google and more than three years at Alphabet’s X, the moonshot factory. There I cofounded X’s first cybersecurity startup, Chronicle, before venturing out and founding Stairwell. Along the way, I learned some important management lessons and philosophies that continue to help me. 1
It would be easy to write off Sony’s unveiling of the PlayStation VR2 headset and controllers on Tuesday as just the latest move in a marketing campaign, meant to slowly build interest in the PS5 peripheral. And in many ways, that’s just what it is. But it’s also a sign that the battle for virtual reality (VR) supremacy is about to heat up once again—and the fate of the metaverse could be at stake. VR’s not entirely essential to the metaverse, of course. You ca
Coda is hoping to lure in more Microsoft Word and Google Docs users with a major revamp of its document editor. With Coda, users can create free-flowing pages full of tables, planning boards, and other interactive elements, but that complexity has sometimes hindered the core editing experience. The overhaul lets users more easily select text from across an entire document, drag elements around the page or into a dual-column view, and edit the same part of a document that a team member is already