Fast, cheap, abundant broadband is a fantastic economic accelerator, enabling breakout businesses and kick-starting new industries.
As technology tries to maintain its dizzying ascent, one dead weight has kept its altitude in check: the battery.
The myth of the peachfuzz billionaire has emerged. This new Horatio Alger typically launches his first start-up in middle school, and somewhere between the campus computer-science lab and a move to Palo Alto hacks up a Web site where users provide fun or useful content.
Every year, I come to TED prepared to roll my eyes a lot at the beginning, but knowing that at some point in the intellectual marathon, my brain will buckle to the cascade of ideas and bend to the painstakingly rehearsed presentations.
Two thoughts occur to just about any parent whose child is about to enter college. The first is, 'I can't believe how quickly the years have gone by.' The second: 'I can't believe how much it costs.' As one of those parents, I did my best to get past the disturbing first thought and tried to calm my churning stomach while dealing with the second.
When superpower countries like the United States and the former Soviet Union contemplated moving their conflicts to outer space, there was justifiable fear and dread.
What made the days leading up to the iPhone launch even crazier was that Apple had pulled off the greatest disappearing act in tech promotion history. In January 2007, Jobs announced the long-awaited iPhone. But somewhere that winter, the iPhone vanished.
The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.
Since the iPhone, the most transformative products have not been gadgets but services. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat have changed lives, but they didn't launch to massive fanfare.
With the iPod - Apple's first successful stab at market dominance - Apple had begun with a high price but quickly dropped it.
Even though chess isn't the toughest thing that computers will tackle for centuries, it stood as a handy symbol for human intelligence. No matter what human-like feat computers perform in the future, the Deep Blue match demands an indelible dot on all timelines of AI progress.
Through a mix of market forces and regulation, we've brought civilization to the electronic provinces.
I think that the most beautiful thing lately hasn't been in hardware or software per se but collaboration - the idea behind Napster, which uses the distributed power of the Internet as its engine.
Right after the keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Shuffle, I went backstage with one question in mind: What makes an iPod an iPod? By then - January 11, 2005 - I had staked my own claim to iPod expertise, having written a 'Newsweek' cover story about Apple's transformational music player, and I was writing a book on it.
Everyone in the tech business, from Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist John Doerr on down, says that the ruination of the industry, if not the entire country, will come from the inability to hire more brainiacs from countries like China and India.
Generally, TED speakers are believers in the scientific method.
How do you show off the most anticipated product in years? That was my dilemma with the iPhone X. Since my unit was one of the first few released into the wild, it naturally drew a lot of curiosity when I pulled it out of my pocket and gave it a dewy-eyed glance to wake it from slumber.
I am old enough to have grown up glued to a screen offering only three alternatives, each of which was an all-powerful national network that seemed permanently ensconced in the entertainment stratosphere.
Just as we have what used to be supercomputers in our pockets, our homes now require the telecommunications infrastructure of a small city.
The rush into scripted video by tech giants is going to accelerate an evolution of entertainment that's already underway. We're already moving away from the idea that drama is a 60-minute exercise with four bathroom breaks.
