If you’re looking for a tech miracle, it’s that anyone can get off their cell phone long enough to invent something new. Here’s a look at what’s in the air.
If it is gadgets you are after, don’t connect with Wired. Except for a few pages on some cool items including Le Whaf Carafe, which turns liquids into clouds so you can smell vodka without the hangover, generally the January issue tackles robots. There is a story on how technology is advancing quickly for smart cars that run by themselves, and then the Jimmy Fallon cover feature on how robots can replace many of our jobs (teacher, comedian, etc). Worth checking out is a compelling piece from Belize on fugitive John McAfee and an article on a new, limited-risk blood test that determines if a pregnant mother’s child has birth defects.
Pink-haired Massachusetts Institute of Technology tech doyenne Limor Fried scored Entrepreneur magazine’s 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year plaudits, but that honor didn’t bring her a spot on the cover. Instead, the Entrepreneur Media Inc. publication disses Fried, who may be revolutionizing the way average folk think about do-it-yourself electronics through her New York-based start-up Adafruit Industries, in favor of the much more striking cover girl Sophia Amoruso, who is merely one of the publication’s picks for “Women to Watch” in business. Elsewhere, the magazine spends more than half of its 232-page issue ranking the nation’s top 500 franchisees, with Hampton Hotel franchises copping the No. 1 spot for the third year in a row, ahead of sandwich franchise Subway.
Fortune’s latest issue peers into the future of technology, just in time for the Las Vegas nerdprom known as CES. Cover star is “Black Eyed Peas” musician Will.I.am, who is a cultural futurist for the likes of Coke and Intel. No ordinary musician trying to hitch a ride as a marketing sidekick, this guy is real. Among the musician’s surprising initiatives, getting Coke into the business of recycling (in the fashion industry) and his own involvement creating a new digital camera for iPhones. The real eye-opener here is the fascinating interview of Google’s CEO Larry Page by Miguel Helft. The story begins with Page sending a Lexus that drives itself to pick up ad boss Martin Sorrell. The author tells the story of Google’s success in photographing every street in the world. The big disappointment is that Page won’t say what’s coming next. For the more practical, Fortune updates us on robots that will clean your house.
Fast Company should learn its own lesson: Page after page of cryptic tips from supposed visionaries is tedious and amounts to gibberish. This month’s edition offers a mishmash of quotes from tech and entertainment elites, whose shared wisdom for 2013 is as cliché as Fast Company’s idea to feature them. Here is one piece of advice barf: “Forget outcomes, real social progress isn’t achieved through plans or predictions. It’s achieved by keeping our systems open to new ideas and opinions.” The “lessons” also follow a confusing style of the magazine, mixing up fonts so it’s hard to tell where stories or sentences begin. Is that a headline or part of the story? Still, there is a real fun Angry Birds illustration, which you can fold Mad-style to reveal a hidden message, and that alone is worth the cover price.
Has your liberal heart yet had the chance to bleed for the plight of child-pornography convicts? If not, this week’s New Yorker is here to fix that — with one of the most shameful and downright idiotic stories we’ve read in a while. “Child-pornography sentencing laws have been passed rapidly, with little debate,” the mag frets, stupidly. Quoting a prof who classifies child-porn addicts as “fantasy offenders,” this article pretty much ignores the basic fact that they’re still participating in real abuse by fueling demand for the production of child porn.
New York, on the other hand, alerts us to a real epidemic that’s plaguing the nation: rampant theft of Tide from supermarkets. No, the thieves aren’t using the laundry detergent to cook up some new kind of street drug. They’re stealing it because wholesale prices for the revered Procter & Gamble brand are so doggone high — and some retailers are happy to buy it on the black market. “A store that charges $19.99 for a 150-ounce bottle might claim $2 in profit,” the mag explains. “But if it buys stolen bottles for $5, that jumps to $15.” And it’s “not just bodegas that hawk iffy product,” but also chain stores.
In Time, Rana Foroohar sharply observes that proposed tax holidays to allow big corporations like Apple and GE to repatriate cash held overseas would do nothing to create US jobs. Instead, they’d merely spur huge cash dividends for Wall Street investors. Elsewhere, there’s an excellent analysis of why abortion rights activists have been steadily losing ground in the 40 years since the passage of Roe v. Wade. While three-quarters of Americans believe abortion should be legal, a sizable majority also supports restrictions like waiting periods and parental-consent laws. Pro-Choicers, meanwhile, still insist on zero government interference — “a stance that seems tone-deaf to the current reality.”