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November 22, 2024
 

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John Naughton
LIFE / Digital
Aug 20, 2013
Britain's new 'smart meters' not so clever
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make credulous. In the case of technology, especially technology involving computers, that's pretty easy to do. Quite why people are so overawed by computers when they are blasé about, say, truly miraculous technologies such as high-speed trains, is a...
LIFE / Digital
Aug 6, 2013
Manning case tests computer fraud laws' credibility
Do you think that, as a society, the United States has become a basket case? Well, join the club. I'm not just thinking of the country's dysfunctional Congress, pathological infatuation with firearms, addiction to litigation, crazy healthcare arrangements, engorged prison system, chronic inequality,...
LIFE / Digital
Jul 30, 2013
Post-Snowden, the days of the global Internet are numbered
Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world.
LIFE / Digital
Jul 23, 2013
How Microsoft spent a decade asleep on the job
Once upon a time, a young man named Bill had a vision. He saw "a PC on every desk, and every machine running Microsoft software." And lo, it came to pass, and the company Bill cofounded became a gigantic machine for making money, and Bill became the richest man on Earth.
LIFE / Digital
Jul 16, 2013
A different metaphor for China's firewall
Two years ago, when it was discovered that a U.S. intelligence agency was pouring millions of dollars into a research project on "metaphor," some people thought it was a delayed April Fool's joke. This columnist begged to differ, on the grounds that metaphors are the way that most of us make sense of...
LIFE / Digital
Jul 9, 2013
We are the sum of our metadata
Over the past two weeks, I have lost count of the number of officials and government ministers who, when challenged about Internet surveillance by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States, try to reassure their citizens by saying...
LIFE / Digital
Jul 3, 2013
Porn: Do we really want ISPs to censor?
Dearly beloved: our subject this morning is online pornography and what to do about it. The fact that there is a good deal of erotic material on the Internet is beyond dispute, though the precise amount is unclear. Let us assume that X percent of websites contain porn, where X is a number between five...
LIFE / Digital
Jun 26, 2013
Beware: NSA knows the power of your metadata
"To be remembered after we are dead," wrote William Hazlitt, "is but poor recompense for being treated with contempt while we are living." Cue U.S. President "George W" Obama in the matter of telephone surveillance by his National Security Agency. The fact that for the past seven years the agency has,...
LIFE / Digital
Jun 19, 2013
The NSA has us all trapped
Watching British Foreign Secretary William Hague doing his avuncular routine in the Commons on June 10, I was reminded of the way establishment figures in the 1950s used to reassure hoi polloi that they had nothing to worry about. Everything was in order. The Right Chaps were in charge. Citizens who...
LIFE / Digital
Jun 12, 2013
You're not a customer, you're just a user
A reader writes: "Dear John Naughton, As you write about the Internet, I wondered if you knew how long it takes Yahoo to get back to people. I have an iPad, but went to the library to print a document (attached to an email). Yahoo knew I wasn't on my iPad and asked me to name my favorite uncle. I replied,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Jun 5, 2013
Do self-driving cars need to cost so much?
"The best is the enemy of the good," said the 18th-century French writer Voltaire. It's a maxim that has a particular resonance for tech designers, because it highlights the intrinsic tension between ambition and pragmatism that haunts them. Many perfectly viable products have never made it beyond the...
LIFE / Digital
May 29, 2013
Online titans to profit from nostalgia
You may have noticed the hullabaloo last week over the news that Yahoo!, a weighty Internet giant, had paid $1.1 billion to acquire Tumblr, a blogging platform allegedly popular with the yoof of today.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
May 22, 2013
Is computing speed set to make a quantum leap?
"Our imagination is stretched to the utmost," wrote Richard Feynman, the greatest physicist of his day, "not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things that are there." Which is another way of saying that physics is weird. And particle physics —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 19, 2013
Google's big hitters' most ambitious predictions yet
When, in early 2011, Eric Schmidt stepped aside from his position as Google's CEO to become the company's executive chairman, some of us were reminded of Dean Acheson's famous gibe about postwar Britain — which had "lost an empire but not yet found a role." What would Dr. Schmidt's new role be, and...
LIFE / Digital
May 15, 2013
Crude 3-D print tech will make a big bang
The news that a few jokers in Texas calling themselves Defense Distributed have succeeded in creating a working handgun using 3-D printing technology has thrown the cat into the pigeon coop. The reaction from legislators in the United States has been hyperactive. Democratic Congressman Steve Israel from...
LIFE / Digital
May 8, 2013
Google Glass, half full or half empty?
The Chinese name their years after animals — the year of the goat, the rat and so on. In the tech world, we name years after devices. Thus, 2007 was the year of the iPhone and 2010 was the year of the iPad. It's beginning to look as though 2013 will be the year of Glass. This prediction is based on...
LIFE / Digital
May 1, 2013
Fragile systems make twits of us all
On Tuesday, April 23, a tweet from Associated Press (AP) revealed startling news. There had been explosions in the White House and Obama had been injured. The tweet was a hoax — the AP Twitter account had been hacked via a clever phishing exploit — but it briefly caused havoc. The Dow Jones Industrial...
LIFE / Digital
Apr 24, 2013
Why big IT projects go wrong
In 1975, a computer scientist named Fred Brooks published one of the seminal texts in the literature of computing. It had the intriguing title of "The Mythical Man-Month" and it consisted simply of a set of essays on the art of managing large software projects. Between its covers is distilled more wisdom...
LIFE / Digital
Apr 17, 2013
Facebook spreads like a virus with no cure
Infectious diseases, says the World Health Organization, "are caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi; the diseases can be spread, directly or indirectly, from one person to another." Quite so. Just like Facebook addiction, which also spreads from person to...
LIFE / Digital
Apr 10, 2013
Bitcoin has financial powers nervous
Among the many unpleasant discoveries made by those who stashed their cash in Cypriot banks is that the island's government could stop them moving their money elsewhere. Capital controls are supposed to be a thing of the past, a figment of the pre-globalized world. But it turns out that when banks are...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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