Playing for Time

As his son battles terminal cancer, a father channels his grief into the creation of a video game unlike any other.

Author: Jason Tanz
Source: Wired
Published: Jan 5, 2016
Length: 26 minutes (6,688 words)

The Tech Elite’s Quest to Reinvent School in Its Own Image

The creator of online education juggernaut Khan Academy has started a brick-and-mortar school in Silicon Valley. But can tech’s disruption culture create a stable learning environment?

Author: Jason Tanz
Source: Wired
Published: Oct 26, 2015
Length: 15 minutes (3,990 words)

How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other

From Airbnb to Lyft to Tinder, the sharing economy is rewiring the way we interact with each other.

In about 40 minutes, Cindy Manit will let a complete stranger into her car. An app on her windshield-mounted iPhone will summon her to a corner in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood, where a russet-haired woman in an orange raincoat and coffee-colored boots will slip into the front seat of her immaculate 2006 Mazda3 hatchback and ask for a ride to the airport. Manit has picked up hundreds of random people like this. Once she took a fare all the way across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito. Another time she drove a clown to a Cirque du Soleil after-party.

Author: Jason Tanz
Source: Wired
Published: Apr 23, 2014
Length: 15 minutes (3,980 words)

The Curse of ‘Cow Clicker’: How a Cheeky Satire Became a Videogame Hit

It’s a Facebook game called Cow Clicker, and it’s unlike anything Bogost ever made before, a borderline-evil piece of work that was intended to embody the worst aspects of the modern gaming industry. He meant Cow Clicker to be a satire with a short shelf life. Instead, it enslaved him and many of its players for much of the past 18 months. Even Bogost can’t decide whether it represents his greatest success—or his most colossal failure.

Author: Jason Tanz
Source: Wired
Published: Dec 20, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,958 words)

Kinect Hackers Are Changing the Future of Robotics

(Not single page) For 25 years, the field of robotics has been bedeviled by a fundamental problem: If a robot is to move through the world, it needs to be able to create a map of its environment and understand its place within it. Roboticists have developed tools to accomplish this task, known as simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM. But the sensors required to build that map have traditionally been either expensive and bulky or cheap and inaccurate. … On November 4, a solution was discovered—in a videogame. That’s the day Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox 360, a $150 add-on that allows players to direct the action in a game simply by moving their bodies.

Author: Jason Tanz
Source: Wired
Published: Jun 16, 2011
Length: 15 minutes (3,786 words)