Vanity Fair
Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. He is a former technology and business columnist for the the New York Times and lead writer for its Bits blog.
The paradox of automation Many American workers are panicked about automation, for good reason. Computers and robots are replacing more and more men and women. The upside is that technological change creates new jobs at the same time it takes old ones away -- but there's a kicker. The new jobs are very different. That means re-education, re-location and other adjustments that can sometimes be painful. It's also a fundamental challenge to Donald Trump, who promised to bring back the old manufacturing jobs for blue-collar workers. They aren't going to be there. When Donald Trump met the heads of Amazon, Apple and other titans of tech this week, he celebrated their contributions to the new economy. He embraced them and promised help from his administration.
Utopia and Arcosanti It's been 500 years since Thomas More published his great work of social and urban philosophy, Utopia. More's vision inspired the ideal cities of the Renaissance, the garden city movement, Le Corbusier's modernist City of Tomorrow, as well as the Israeli kibbutzim and the hippie communes of the 1970s. It's also inspired the theme for this year's London Design Biennale. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley firms are thinking about future "smart cities." DnA learns about Utopian planning, future -- and past, with a visit to Arcosanti , an experimental community built in 1970 on a mesa in Yavapai County in central Arizona.
Driverless cars are here We've been hearing about Uber's new driverless fleet of cars in Pittsburgh, and whether human driving will become a thing of the past. Critics say neither the infrastructure nor the cars will be ready for prime time anytime soon. Tech columnist Nick Bilton begs to differ.
Is Silicon Valley in a Tech Bubble? The last time this many Silicon Valley startups saw this much money, it was hot and heavy for a time. But the inevitable breakup was devastating. The tech bubble burst in 1999. And lots of people lost their shirts in an instant. Now the dreaded word “bubble” is on lips in Silicon Valley again. Could it burst?
Keeping Your Car Safe from Electronic Thieves Nick Bilton is the technology columnist for the New York Times , and he lives in LA's Los Feliz District. Recently, his neighbors suffered a series of car break-ins — with no broken glass on the pavement and no scratches on car doors due to locks that had to be jimmied. When it happened to him, he set out to solve the mystery.
Intolerance Over Intolerance? Two weeks ago, Brendan Eich was appointed CEO of Mozilla, maker of the popular Firefox web browser. Yesterday, he resigned after a firestorm had erupted over a $1,000 donation he made in 2008 to the campaign for Prop 8, California’s anti-gay marriage initiative. 70,000 people had signed a petition calling for him to step down. But now there’s a backlash to the backlash.
Google's Secret Lab for the Future "In a top-secret lab in an undisclosed… location where robots run free, the future is being imagined." That's not the tease for a new movie but the lead on a news story. That secret location is in the San Francisco Bay Area and nobody is talking about it for attribution. Technology reporter Nick Bilton is following the Google story for the New York Times .
Accusations of lying fly between James Comey and White House During his testimony Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey accused President Trump and other White House officials of lying when they said the FBI was in disarray and its staff had lost confidence in him. President Trump’s lawyer said Comey was wrong -- that the president never asked for his loyalty, and never asked him to back off the investigation into former NSA director Michael Flynn.
Securing Public Spaces, Super Wealthy Asians Vehicles are increasingly being used as weapons, as seen in the London Bridge attack over the weekend and in New York’s Times Square last month. The Compton-based company Calpipe is designing security bollards to help make public spaces safer. And novelist Kevin Kwan satirizes the “crazy rich” Asian jet set and their luxurious tastes in his latest book, “Rich People Problems.”
Why is Trump so behind on filling staff jobs, establishing concrete policies? Yesterday Donald Trump signed a “decision memo” to revamp the air traffic control system. But there was little legislative detail in the plan. There’s not much to other splashy announcements from the White House, including tax cuts and the arms deal with Saudi Arabia. And hundreds of positions are unfilled in federal agencies.
