Barack Obama was a president who understood not only how technology could transform the way government services worked but also technology itself. He got it.
— Steven Levy
Wifi was never supposed to be a big thing and certainly not a thing that would become as vital to a home as indoor plumbing.
Amazon is definitely serious about delivering its goods by an autonomous air force.
Every year, I come to TED prepared to roll my eyes a lot at the beginning, but knowing that at some point in the intellectual marathon, my brain will buckle to the cascade of ideas and bend to the painstakingly rehearsed presentations.
No one in Silicon Valley loves virtual reality or believes in its future as much as Clay Bavor.
Since the iPhone, the most transformative products have not been gadgets but services. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have changed lives, but they didn't launch to massive fanfare.
Implanting a microchip inside the brain to augment its mental powers has long been a science fiction trope.
How do you show off the most anticipated product in years? That was my dilemma with the iPhone X. Since my unit was one of the first few released into the wild, it naturally drew a lot of curiosity when I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it a dewy-eyed glance to wake it from slumber.
We might enjoy essays, TED talks, and even Facebook posts bemoaning our dependency on tech, but judging by our enthusiastic adoption of these services, we're all in.
Though the first iPhone was expensive, it was such a refreshing new product that early users flocked to it.
I am old enough to have grown up glued to a screen offering only three alternatives, each of which was an all-powerful national network that seemed permanently ensconced in the entertainment stratosphere.
Every great device, gadget, electric car, and robot would be even greater if batteries didn't suck so badly.
The iPod Shuffle was something unique for Apple: a device stripped down to a single function.
Everyone in the tech business, from Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr on down, says that the ruination of the industry, if not the entire country, will come from the inability to hire more brainiacs from countries like China and India.
In the history of U.S. elections, the fall of 2000 is notorious for the debacle that occurred in the country's attempt to elect a president that year.
Technology writers are seldom subject to frenzied, Beatlemania-esque paroxysms of public attention. June 29, 2007, was the exception. I was in the wrong place - Apple's Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan - with the right device. The iPhone.
The myth of the peachfuzz billionaire has emerged. This new Horatio Alger typically launches his first start-up in middle school, and somewhere between the campus computer-science lab and a move to Palo Alto hacks up a Web site where users provide fun or useful content.
Facebook takes it as a core truth that sharing and connecting is a force that will improve the world.
Just as we have what used to be supercomputers in our pockets, our homes now require the telecommunications infrastructure of a small city.
Through a mix of market forces and regulation, we've brought civilization to the electronic provinces.
Generally, TED speakers are believers in the scientific method.
Even though chess isn't the toughest thing that computers will tackle for centuries, it stood as a handy symbol for human intelligence. No matter what human-like feat computers perform in the future, the Deep Blue match demands an indelible dot on all timelines of AI progress.
What made the days leading up to the iPhone launch even crazier was that Apple had pulled off the greatest disappearing act in tech promotion history. In January 2007, Jobs announced the long-awaited iPhone. But somewhere that winter, the iPhone vanished.
After a few days with the iPhone X, I can begin to make out its themes. It's a step towards fading the actual physical manifestation of technology into a mist where it's just there - a phone that's 'all screen,' one that turns on simply by seeing you, one that removes the mechanics of buttons and charging cables.
Google serves all of humanity with information within milliseconds.
As an open system, Android is not under the tight control of its creator, Google.
All through the 1980s, Apple kept its prices high. There were many reasons Microsoft's much bigger user base managed to resist moving to the GUI - but price was high among them.
Internet-centric companies have already begun changing the rules with binge-watching, flexible running times, fewer commercials, and crowd-sourced content. The brainpower - and just plain power - of the most valued tech firms will change things even more.
Our chips keep getting faster, and our data rates keep climbing, but at the end of the day - or worse, by mid-afternoon - those power meters on our screens inevitably turn to red.
My favorite thing to do with my iPod was to shuffle my entire music collection and marvel at what songs came next. Sometimes the segues would be so perfect that it seemed a genius deejay was behind the wheel.
Who wants to broadcast the news that he's bought a can of Sprite? And who wants to see that on a News Feed?
Is it possible for Apple or anyone else to rule in the mobile realm the way Microsoft did on the desktop? The way to do this is to go mass-market with a device that can do anything the others can do.
This paradox of vision - the genius of youthful ignorance - is nothing new. Had Bill Gates not been in diapers in the early days of computer software, he might have understood that there could never be a market for consumer software - but the 19-year-old Gates went ahead and cofounded Microsoft.
Fast, cheap, abundant broadband is a fantastic economic accelerator, enabling breakout businesses and kick-starting new industries.
Inevitably, we will spend a multiple of the amount we used to drop on a new router once the old one petered out. The New Wifi is the $5 latte to the standard cup of coffee.
Because Facebook can't exist without AI, it needs all its engineers to build with it.
For many years, when people described how the Internet worked - whether they were talking about shopping, communicating, or starting a business there - they inevitably invoked a single metaphor. The Internet, said just about everybody, was a contemporary incarnation of the wild, wild West.
It's almost impossible to totally eliminate terrible content in a huge open network.
Steve Ballmer never used to be someone who let facts speak for themselves. In the 1990s, he was the hyper-energetic Microsoft exec yelling 'Developers! Developers! Developers!' at an all-hands meeting in Safeco field.
The iPhone was such a phenomenon that even the humble journalists chosen for an early look were thrust into a spotlight.
There's plenty to admire in the iPhone X straight from the unboxing. The biggest change stares you in the face: that screen, that screen.
Twitter provides a platform that allows anyone on the planet - from a political activist in the Middle East to an intemperate golfer in the White House - to broadcast his or her thoughts.
With the iPod - Apple's first successful stab at market dominance - Apple had begun with a high price but quickly dropped it.
Just as the cable revolution overturned broadcast, the net is destined to become the dominant mode of video, both in terms of transit and programming.
The rush into scripted video by tech giants is going to accelerate an evolution of entertainment that's already underway. We're already moving away from the idea that drama is a 60-minute exercise with four bathroom breaks.
As technology tries to maintain its dizzying ascent, one dead weight has kept its altitude in check: the battery.
Right after the keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Shuffle, I went backstage with one question in mind: What makes an iPod an iPod? By then - January 11, 2005 - I had staked my own claim to iPod expertise, having written a 'Newsweek' cover story about Apple's transformational music player, and I was writing a book on it.
Facebook has never been shy about its ambitions.
Apple's iPod success led them to believe an even bigger breakthrough was possible with the iPhone. In some respects, the iPhone hype overwhelmed even Apple.
If you're 19, you don't know what can't be done.
