Author: Taylor Lowery

“AI is the new electricity” is well on its way to becoming one of those comparisons that are used so frequently that they become meaningless. However, if you spend enough time observing the real-world applications of this technology, such as how a steel plant schedules its shifts, hospitals, farms, and customer service lines, the comparison begins to feel less like marketing and more like an accurate depiction. Since electricity was a single product, it did not transform the world. Because it served as a foundation for all other industries to build upon, it revolutionized the world. Instead of simply plugging…

This spring, a certain sound has become commonplace at college graduations: the low rumble of jeers that reverberates throughout a stadium whenever a tech executive brings up artificial intelligence. It took place in Arizona. It has also occurred in other places. That response at a commencement ceremony would have seemed unimaginable a few years ago. These days, it hardly ever makes news on its own. This is due to the fact that the booing is merely the courteous tip of a much bigger iceberg. Residents of Detroit have demonstrated at utility meetings with signs demanding to know who is actually…

Observing a 23-year-old explain, with genuine conviction, why she paid $300 for a phone that is incapable of running Instagram is particularly ironic. She is not impoverished. She is not a Luddite. She simply wants to remove the app from her body. That scene, or a variation of it, is currently taking place in coffee shops, co-working spaces, and college dorms from Manchester to Brooklyn, and it’s worthwhile to find out what’s truly happening. By 2015, the dumbphone—also known as a brick phone or a feature phone—was expected to be obsolete. Rather, it’s having a moment that very few people…

When a weapon designed for one purpose ends up in the hands of people it was never intended for, a certain kind of unease sets in. That’s essentially what’s happening at the moment with a piece of iPhone-hacking software called Coruna, and those monitoring it can’t quite agree on how concerned everyone should be. Early this year, researchers at Google and the mobile security company iVerify spent time dissecting a hacking toolkit that, on paper, sounds almost unremarkable: five exploit chains, twenty-three vulnerabilities, all targeted at older iPhones. However, the specifics are anything but ordinary. Nothing needs to be clicked…

Just before a market either repeats itself or makes the same error twice, a certain level of confidence appears. That’s about where things stand with digital real estate in the middle of 2026, as a new wave of affluent buyers begins circling virtual land once more. Many of them are newly minted through AI ventures, while others are sitting on crypto gains accumulated since the last bull run. Without the Super Bowl commercials or the Snoop Dogg headlines of 2021 and 2022, it’s happening quietly, but it’s still happening. According to reports, Brighty, a cryptocurrency payments platform started by a…

When you click on an outdated link and end up on a 404 page, you feel a certain kind of unease. These days, it happens all the time: a government form you bookmarked, a news article you intended to read again, or a tweet someone cited during a disagreement three years ago. The page has simply vanished. This sentiment has been measured by Pew researchers: almost 25% of all webpages created between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, and for the oldest content, the figure rises above 33%. It’s easy to dismiss this as a small annoyance. Most likely…

There’s a particular kind of nostalgia that hits when someone mentions the Nokia 3310. Not because it was elegant — it wasn’t — but because it did one thing and did it without asking for attention. Compare that to the device sitting face-up on most desks right now, glowing faintly, waiting. Somewhere between those two objects, an entire category of technology evolved, swallowed a dozen industries whole, and arguably started eating itself. It’s worth remembering how unglamorous the beginning actually was. Martin Cooper made the first handheld mobile call fifty-some years ago from a device that weighed nearly a kilogram…

When you reach a savings target, a finance app will make a specific sound. A small chime, perhaps some confetti floating across the screen—the kind of upbeat sound that designers spend months perfecting. It has a pleasant feeling. That’s the idea. And that’s also becoming a bigger issue. You’ll see badges, streaks, levels, and leaderboards when you browse the finance section of the app store today. These features weren’t present ten years ago. Budgeting tools have features that were taken verbatim from mobile games. Chip and other apps monitor a “WealthScore.” Some people give you rewards for saving money, as…

Around eight in the morning, a certain silence descends on a subway car, with dozens of people standing shoulder to shoulder, thumbs moving, eyes fixed downward, and no one fully present. Now that it’s so prevalent, it’s easy to overlook, but things weren’t always this way. Strangely, the person who made the change in the architecture of our attention has been attempting to apologize for it for the past few years. His name is Aza Raskin, and he created what he called infinite scroll in 2006. It was essentially a straightforward technical solution designed to eliminate the annoyance of clicking…

It smelled like a phishing email three years ago. A request that seemed to have been translated twice, a greeting that didn’t quite fit the sender’s typical tone, or a comma that was misplaced all seemed a little strange. Security teams focused their entire training curriculum on that odor. Look for the typo, consider the urgency, and hover over the link. For the better part of twenty years, it was largely successful. It is no longer functional, or at least not dependable. The telltale signs that once distinguished a scam from a typical Tuesday email have been subtly eliminated by…