Bianca Bosker

Bianca Bosker: The Truth Behind Google's Bizarre Mission To Make Tech 'Go Away'

Wed, 15 May 2013 23:50:46 GMT

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com --- Wednesday, May 15, 2013
As a cadre of Google executives took turns touting Google's newest products at a conference in California on Wednesday, they also described how they were working toward a future in which technology would disappear. That might sound like a bizarre mission for a tech company. Yet they promised that by fading into the background of our lives, technology would become easier to use, more intuitive, more efficient and more anticipatory, even allowing people to speak to Google like it were a person, rather than a piece of software. Google would usher in this new world with tools that would bring web services into every crevice of our lives, from maps that know where we'll go next, to Google Glass, eyewear that puts the Internet mere millimeters away from our eyeballs. But Google's professed goal of making technology "get out of the way" masks what's truly taking place. By making technology invisible, Google is also making it omnipresent. As software and gadgets become less in-your-face, they also become more pervasive and more influential, as we in turn become more dependent on them, more accepting of their presence in our lives and less critical of them. After all, how can someone scrutinize what they can't see? When Google says it's working on technology that will go away, it really means the opposite: It's after technology that gets into our heads and takes over. "The idea of getting technology out of the way is a loose and fast way ...

Bianca Bosker: Actually, You've Already Got A Facebook Phone (And It Needs Some Manners)

Fri, 10 May 2013 21:06:49 GMT

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com --- Friday, May 10, 2013
This week offered a status update on Facebook's efforts to get people to embrace its phone: Its much-hyped Home software , engineered to put Facebook front and center on smartphones in every way possible, has so far been a bust. Home has been downloaded fewer than one million times -- small change for a company with more than one billion users -- and the first smartphone to come pre-loaded with Home has had its price slashed from $99 to 99 cents . On top of that, more than 15,000 reviewers on Google Play, Google's app marketplace, have decided that Home merits no more than two stars . But in taking stock of Home's flop, most have ignored the fact that we already have Facebook phones: They're our iPhones. (Or really any other smartphone with a Facebook app) Facebook has become so pushy about its on-the-go alerts that the primary screen of my phone has already been taken over by Facebook notifications -- less visually appealing than Home's news feed, but just as brash. My Apple smartphone more and more feels like a Facebook smartphone: the social network is aggressively using our conversations with friends as an entrée into starting a conversation with us. And in so doing, it risks alienating the very people it needs to keep hooked through the very medium it most needs to master. In its urgent bid to show its network is gaining mobile users more quickly than it's losing desktop ones , Facebook has become the annoying, tone-deaf rel ...