Search Results for: tech

An Ex-Industrial Fisherman Rethinks His Job

Bren Smith. Photo by echoinggreen

Diane Ackerman | The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us | W. W. Norton & Company | September 2014 | 16 minutes (3,877 words)

 

Below is an excerpt from the book The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us, by Diane Ackerman, as recommended by Longreads contributor Dana Snitzky. Read more…

How the MTA Introduced the Touch Screen to New York City

In a recent piece for Next City writer and illustrator Aaron Reiss looks at the design of the MTA’s automated ticket kiosk. As a germaphobe, Reiss hates the amount of screen-touching the MTA kiosk requires, but as he investigates the history of the machine and meets with its creator he begins to understand the reasoning behind the design:

The first thing [the machine’s creator, industrial designer Masamichi] Udagawa did was to provide some context for the realities of New York City in the late 1990s, when the MTA ticket vending system was being developed. What I hadn’t realized before was exactly how novel these machines were at the time.

“This was the first time a touchscreen was really [going to be] introduced to the public [in New York City],” remembered Udagawa. “When [the MTA ticket] machine came out in 1999, 50 percent of subway riders didn’t have bank accounts, so they had no experience with ATMs, let alone touch screens.”

It’s interesting to note here how in the late 1990s the ATM could be used as both an inspiration and as a cautionary tale. Remember, the iPhone was a good seven years off and touchscreens were far less common than they are today. That guided Antenna’s design in a major way. “It was a different world in ’99, even if it was only 15 years ago,” Udagawa said.

The issue is perhaps best illustrated by Udagawa’s explanation of the “Press to Start Screen,” one of the features of the MTA design that most niggled at me.

A huge number of people who tested early mock-ups of the machine were at a complete loss when met with the new touchscreens, he said.

At this point, I was beginning to see the problems with my hyper-efficient ideas of trimming excess screens. I was quickly grasping that the system I battled with daily was created for a different time.

In the late ‘90s, when Udagawa and his team were hired by the MTA to make the machines more user-friendly, riders had a very different relationship with technology and in particular, with technology in the public realm.

Aaron Reiss, writing for Next City. 

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Slither and Hiss: Four Stories About Snakes

This week, I’m sharing four stories about snakes and the people who love, hate, and tolerate them in equal measure. But first, a haiku:

Scary, beautiful
Important to religion
Slithering and scaled.

1. “The Pentecostal Serpent.” (Asher Elbein, The Bitter Southerner, September 2014)

An Atlanta zoo. A dusty office at the University of Tennessee. The mountains of Appalachia. A small church in Alabama. How has the life of the handled snake touched each of these? Read more…

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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How Listening to Music and Fighting with Susan Sontag Helped Me Cope with Chemo

Longreads Pick

An essay about dealing with stage IV cancer and developing coping techniques.

Source: The Stranger
Published: Jan 21, 2015
Length: 24 minutes (6,152 words)

How Ordinary Americans End Up in the State of the Union Address

One of Ronald Reagan’s greatest gifts to us was the inclusion of Lenny Skutnik in his 1982 State of the Union, the hero who rescued plane crash survivors from the sub-zero Potomac. Since then, every president has had the privilege of publicly recognizing such inspiration throughout his address.

This was my favorite part of working on the State of the Union. I would smile from my office as Laura Dean, our assistant speechwriter and expert researcher, called the bewildered people who made it into the speech. “Yes, that’s right, the President of the United States. No, this isn’t a prank.”

This is President Obama’s favorite part, too—particularly the story that’s often told to conclude the speech. My old boss is a sucker for good endings, and he would send us far and wide to find just the right anecdote. In 2011, a worker from a Pennsylvania firm whose drilling technology helped save the Chilean miners said, “We proved that Center Rock is a little company, but we do big things.” The President loved the quote, and turned it into an entire ending about American greatness and aspiration. In 2012, I remember the tears in his eyes as he told us that his proudest possession was the American flag that the SEAL team took with them on the Osama bin Laden mission, and later gave to the president as a gift. He turned that story into an ending about the unity and teamwork that defines America at its best.

Undoubtedly, the President and Cody are hard at work on another such ending for this year’s speech, and I can’t wait to hear it live. There will always be people who mock these stories as overly sappy and trite, but I think that our politics and the media give us enough reasons to be cynical every other day of the year. For one hour tonight, we get the chance to be inspired together. To me, that makes all the fuss worthwhile.

Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau writing last year in The Daily Beast about how the President prepares for the State of the Union address.

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.

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Read more…

Where Do You Go When Being Around Cell Phones Makes You Sick?

Photo: Ben

In the Washingtonian, a story about people afflicted with “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” who are moving to the small town of Green Bank, West Virginia, where much of modern technology has been banned due to their possible interference with a government telescope:

It turned out there was a whole community of people out there who called themselves “electrosensitives” and said they were suffering due to the electromagnetic frequencies that radiate wirelessly from cell phones, wi-fi networks, radio waves, and virtually every other modern technology that the rest of society now thinks of as indispensable.

The affliction has been dubbed “electromagnetic hypersensitivity,” or EHS, and it involves a textbook’s worth of ailments: headaches, nausea, insomnia, chest pains, disorientation, digestive difficulties, and so on. Mainstream medicine doesn’t recognize the syndrome, but the symptoms described everything Grimes was experiencing.

She went back to her doctors with her newfound evidence of EHS, relieved to have sorted out the mystery. But she got no sympathy. As she puts it, “They look at you like you have three heads.”

Grimes moved to a new building, then another, and six more times, but at each turn a smart-meter rollout wasn’t far behind. “I sat down there in Florida,” she says, “and just prayed to God: ‘Where is my way out?’ ”

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The Town Without Wi-Fi

Longreads Pick

People afflicted with “electromagnetic hypersensitivity”—ailments related to being around devices like cell phones that emit electromagnetic frequencies—have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia, where modern technology has been banned due to their possible interference with a government telescope. The locals aren’t happy about the stream of newcomers.

Source: Washingtonian
Published: Jan 5, 2015
Length: 16 minutes (4,247 words)

Reservation Confirmed: A Reading List About Airbnb

It’s easy to get distracted while reading about Airbnb. First, the listings themselves range from luxurious to quaint, and if you have any sort of upcoming vacation planned … well, let’s say it’s a timesuck. Double if you have I-want-to-see-where-you-live voyeuristic tendencies. Second, Airbnb is giving away $1 million to customers who document their random acts of kindness, which is a hell of a headline and a bit of an oxymoron. Airbnb’s detractors are firm and its fans are rabid; Its prices, tempting. I’m planning a trip to Seattle in the summer—we’ll see where I end up sleeping. Here are five pieces about Airbnb hosts, the company’s founders, its guests and its implications for city politics.

1. “The Dumbest Person in Your Building is Passing Out the Keys to Your Front Door!” (Jessica Pressler, New York Magazine, September 2013)

Two idealistic art students founded Airbnb, and business boomed once the recession hit. But they didn’t foresee backlash from New York politicians or affordable housing advocates. Read more…