Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Tag: BetterLivingThroughTechnology

Just Clap Harder

Why can’t our tech billionaires learn anything new?

The most powerful people in the world are technological optimists. They asked for our trust in the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s. They insisted that all we needed to do was clap louder. We clapped. They failed. We grew less trustful.

Excellent post shared by @baldur.

I have the same question as the author Dave Karpf.

Who is lying to us, Marc? You serve on the boards of trillion-dollar companies. A few of your peers own media companies. A few others have chosen to bankrupt media companies that write mean things about them. You have been celebrated for thirty years as the genius-inventors-of-the-future. If the public is turning against you, who ought to be held responsible for such a change in the public mood?

#BaltimoreUprising

In light of the recent uprising in Baltimore, here is the important information to know.

On April 19, 2015, Freddie Gray was killed by a Baltimore City Police Officer, sparking sustained unrest. We expect that the officers will be held responsible for his murder and many people have come together to demand justice.

We will update this page daily with key information regarding the organizing underway in Baltimore as we are in contact with many folks on-the-ground. And this isn’t meant to replace twitter, but to be a central space for information that can be updated in real-time.

We are all on the right side of justice.

http://baltimoreuprising.org/ takes you to a Google Doc with information about the ongoing unrest in Baltimore. This is a beautiful use of technology to get information out to people who need it.

It takes the immediacy of Twitter and filters out the noise. I love seeing technology being used to help people.

BaltimoreUprising.org

One google doc.

One domain name.

Providing updates to a city in crisis.

The season of perpetual hope

It doesn’t matter what phone you use. Nor do I care what operating system you run or if you even know. I don’t care what you’re into. Just like you don’t care what I’m into. We’re all into what makes us happy.

And I try to celebrate that. I am not the best at it. I still fall into the trap of dismissing things I don’t care for. But I am aware of it and I try to get better at it. I try not to be a jerk and to genuinely be helpful.

Yesterday, as I was sitting at a Thanksgiving dinner, surrounded my families visiting their mothers and fathers with dementia, one of the daughters pushed an Android tablet towards me and asked if I could get Netflix on it. She didn’t know how.

I said sure and went to work relearning how Android has changed since I used it years ago. I found the Play Store and updated the app. I didn’t enter any payment information, skipping the step to avoid unwanted charges. I located Netflix and downloaded it on to the tablet.

I then showed the daughter where the Netflix app icon was and how to get other applications in the future. I did mention some of them may require a payment and I skipped the payment step when I downloaded Netflix. I mentioned to her it would not require payment for anything free, so if she didn’t want to add a credit card to it, she wouldn’t have to immediately.

I love technology because of what it allows us to do. I haven’t lost my sense of wonder at how I can see friends in far away states, or talk to complete strangers across time zones and continents. I still marvel at the libraries of knowledge and entertainment a single click away.

Technology is my life. But it shouldn’t have to be everyone’s. I had no idea what I was doing with the Android tablet when she handed it over to me. But I figured it out and didn’t ask a thousand questions. I chose some sensible defaults and explained what I had done.

How One Boy With Autism Became BFF With Apple’s Siri – NYTimes.com

It all began simply enough. I’d just read one of those ubiquitous Internet lists called “21 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do.” One of them was this: I could ask Siri, “What planes are above me right now?” and Siri would bark back, “Checking my sources.” Almost instantly there was a list of actual flights — numbers, altitudes, angles — above my head.

I happened to be doing this when Gus was nearby. “Why would anyone need to know what planes are flying above your head?” I muttered. Gus replied without looking up: “So you know who you’re waving at, Mommy.”

Via How One Boy With Autism Became BFF With Apple’s Siri – NYTimes.com

This story had me in tears before I was halfway through it. It’s so great to see technology making someone’s life better. It’s the promise technology often fails to live up to. The way Judith Newman captures her son’s friendship with Siri deserves its own feature-length movie.

The illustrations are perfect too. This one is my favorite.

Thanks Jason for sharing this story.

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