• A History of the Future, Now Free

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    1–2 minutes

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    Two years ago, A History of the Future in 100 Objects was published. The book describes a hundred slices of the future of everything, spanning politics, technology, art, religion, and entertainment. Some of the objects are described by future historians; others through found materials, short stories, or dialogues. Today, I’m making all 100 chapters available…

  • Austerity: The LARP

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    3–5 minutes

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    1 comment on Austerity: The LARP

    Everyone in Britain is playing a game called Austerity. Some are playing the game with enthusiasm and conviction. Some are playing with calculation and cunning. And others believe they are not playing, when in fact they cannot escape the game. Austerity is not a console game with expensive graphics, nor is it an addictive casual…

  • How Useful is the Apple Watch, Anyway?

    Back when I worked out at gyms, I’d often be found on the exercise bikes. Unlike the other cardio equipment, it was easy to grip the heart-rate monitors, and it was intriguing to see the numbers skip up and down as I went through my routine. But after a few sessions, I stopped bothering. The…

  • Apple Watch First Reactions

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    3–5 minutes

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    Speed It’s annoyingly slow. Apps that display information from the internet (social apps, news apps, transport apps, maps; i.e. most of them) can take a few seconds to open, and then a few more seconds to display your desired data. I’ve already installed and deleted entire swathes of apps that suffer from this issue; the…

  • The Secret Weapon to Get Kids Fit

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    2–3 minutes

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    Here’s a conundrum: Games are fun. Kids like games. Especially computer games. Many parents think their kids should be more physically active. So why don’t we have more games that get kids moving?. Combining kids’ love of games with their parents love of keeping their kids healthy seems like the perfect opportunity to do good…

  • Problems Running with Google Glass

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    3–4 minutes

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    In the summer of 2014, we developed a version of Zombies, Run! for Google Glass. Glass was discontinued in January 2015, but the lessons we learned from testing it still serve as a useful caution for those working with heads-up displays. A common use case for Glass was fitness and exercise activities such as running…

  • Watching the Future of Wearable Gaming

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    2–3 minutes

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    If you’ve been paying attention to the big tech headlines recently, you’ll have noticed the same trend as I have. Apple Watch. Microsoft HoloLens. Magic Leap. Wearable computing is on everyone’s minds (and arms, and faces). But all these people getting excited about their glasses and digital crowns are late to the party. We’ve all…

  • Too Much Information

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    3–4 minutes

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    3 comments on Too Much Information

    Eight years ago, I lamented to a friend that I was spending too much time keeping up with my RSS feeds. RSS feeds are generated by websites and they tell you when they’ve published new content; the feeds, and feed-readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon, and eventually Google Reader, became popular partly as a way to…

  • 200 Years of Change

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    1–2 minutes

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    1 comment on 200 Years of Change

    A game I like to play at history museums is imagining the present-day equivalents of past behaviour and objects. So at The Geffrye Museum of the Home in Hoxton, London, it’s fun to look at their Period Rooms and link up past and present behaviours. Take the 1935 Living Room; the armchairs are pointed at…

  • Eternal Fundraising, Luxuries as Resiliency, Isometric Buildings

    Mr. Miller Doesn’t Go to Washington, a bracingly honest story about running for Congress. It just astonishes me quite how much time candidates – and elected politicians – have to spend on fundraising. Hours. A. Day. I had written before about how crazy it is that we expect politicians to spend four hours a day…