 What kind of year was 2012? It was a big, weird, scary, fun, thrilling year of discovery. It's been insane. All of tech has kind of changed in the last 12 months. What is the biggest change in the last 12 months? I think that we have, in the last couple of years, in particular this past year, seen just a total acceptance of technology as an important and obvious part of our culture. Technology and culture and art and science are all coming together. What is the biggest change in the last 12 months? So, if we're looking at guys who are hacking their bodies in order to find a new level of sense, if we're looking at furries at a convention, if we're looking at K-pop fans, or if you're talking to Philip K. Dick fans, who have all come together in San Francisco to celebrate the guys' work, ultimately what it comes down to is not the technology and it's not the gadgets. It's the people behind it. Scamworld continues to be a deeply fascinating piece to me because it exposes something that I had no knowledge of, I had no understanding of before I read the story that Joe put together. What's so incredible about it is that world is so spread out and so insidious and so connected to lots of other pieces of our culture. It's a bunch of these guys that are living in kind of a post-Tony Robbins world. They're basically setting up these sites and these fake products to prey on the unassuming. So, where a lot of this stuff would have been on TV, would have been at massive conventions like 10, 15 years ago, a lot of this stuff has now moved online. I think it's a story that's important, and I think reading the comments on that and reading what happened on the web after the story went up and seeing how many people sort of woke up to these guys and their existence and how many people were reviled was a fascinating trend to watch. This is another one of those stories that you've never heard of before and then when you hear of it, it sounds like the most insane thing in the world. And then a writer tells you they're going to go and get a magnet implanted into their finger. Ben's idea was to look at the subculture of people that were pushing limits of human perception. We're going to continue to try to bring you the craziest shit you've ever seen in your life. So the easiest way is just to embed magnets directly into your finger. After it heals, you're able to feel magnetic waves and electrical waves. I wouldn't exactly call it science. It's more like a mad desire to be a cyborg, which is a weird, odd, crazy thing to want to be. Whether it's augmentation for human vision or embedded electronics, these concepts that have really been in our sci-fi for the past couple of decades are increasingly closer to reality. I left the internet this year and I do think it was an indictment or at least a chance to judge how valuable the internet is to me. The question of boredom is very different now and it's very easy to push all those buttons and never be bored. And it's increasingly difficult to focus on anything. And I feel like there's culture-wide, there's a feeling that a lot of this has been caused by technology. And I think what Paul did is push it to an extreme where he was forcing himself to focus for a year by completely avoiding the internet. You've been on the internet for a super long time, most of your adult life. And he wants to write about what his life is like without the internet in it. Yeah, the internet fills most of my life and has filled most of my life since I was a teenager. And so I don't really know what it's like to be an adult or be in civilization without the internet. What we like to look at is not whether technology is good or bad, but it's like, how are people actually using it? How is it actually affecting people's day-to-day lives? When you think of a computer as a thing you have to sit down at, it's very different than when it's a computer as something you have in your hand all the time, that you put in your pocket, this constant companion. And I think that as our minds shift to thinking of technology in that way, as a companion, unless as a thing you take action upon, that is really significant. The things that we think of as PCs, this is their last year of dominance in the industry. I think from here on out it's all tablets, it's all phones, it's all mobile devices. The PC only ever was the primary computing device for a very narrow range of one generation. Smartphones are reaching this maturity where they're selling them to you like cars. You've got better engines and your family will be happier and your wife will love you. Smartphones are the norm. It's not weird for somebody to have one now. The ownership has skyrocketed. So it's obviously become very competitive, but it's also stratified. You have two players right now in smartphones, iOS and Android. Windows Phone is trying to get a word in edgewise, RIM is on a steep decline. And so it's interesting to see how quickly people get tired of options. All these companies kind of want to have their own isolated experience where it's like this is what Google thinks you want in a phone or a tablet, and this is what Apple thinks, and this is what Amazon thinks, and we're getting increasingly into that world. And I think it's how we're going to go going forward for a long time. We try to find ways to cover an election from angles that I don't think a lot of people have explored. Technology and the new way that we communicate as human beings played. I mean, it could be argued that it played the most important role in deciding who won the presidential election in the United States in 2012, which seems insane to me. You know, conversations that are happening on social media are now just part of the news, and nobody thinks twice about it. Election coverage this year, for example, was driven a lot by Twitter. I watched the debates on Twitter, basically, and then I would watch the news afterwards, and it was news anchors reading what I had just seen on Twitter. That's the sort of thing where the new ways we have of communicating with each other are beginning to completely overtake the old ways. Tracking that story was really an interesting learning experience and really kind of a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into. Because it's kind of politics, you could go in a million different directions, and there are a million different stories that all seem vitally important. This year we saw a lot of the patent wars hit Android and the mobile landscape, which you expect to happen when any kind of technology sort of explodes into a real industry. I think we've seen a lot of our industry get bogged down in legal wrangling when they should be focusing on making great technology that's good for consumers. The stakes may be somewhat high in some of these cases, but ultimately they're not table stakes for these large companies. There's still a lot of open questions about what kind of inventions we want to protect. Do we want to issue patents and let people sue each other for things like slide unlock? Do we want to waste our time in the courts letting these companies argue over smartphones when they should be making better and better smartphones and trying to win the war in the marketplace instead of the courtroom? I don't know if any of these companies are looking at it going, this is the way forward. There are politics at play, but there's also actual negotiations happening, and I think that's really valuable and important if we expect to have any innovation in technology. Some of these things you can't just hold on to in perpetuity. You have to be able and willing to share what you've created with the world. For me, it's been really important to try to put into perspective how much technology really matters and how much my obsession over technology is healthy and useful versus just done for its own sake. I do hope that going forward we're going to look at the internet and start picking and choosing and not let the internet dictate to us how it wants to be used. It's such an early, young technology that it's really still a Wild West, and I look forward to a maturation of the internet. It seems like everything changes all at once, and then it changes again, and then it changes again, and we're in these funny waves of crazy technology happenings. We're just at this crazy pace of everything is different and better all the time. It's wild. For the last few years there's been a huge boom in types of devices and form factors, but I think that's going to wear off pretty quickly and people are going to start to think of, what is the best way for me to interact with this stuff? Where is the best place for it to be? What is the best size screen that actually makes sense for a human being? Now that we know we're going to live with technology, I think it'll be a year of us figuring out how to live with technology.
 What kind of year was 2012?
 It was a big, weird, scary, fun, thrilling year of discovery.
 It's been insane.
 All of tech has kind of changed in the last 12 months.
 What is the biggest change in the last 12 months?
 I think that we have, in the last couple of years, in particular this past year,
 seen just a total acceptance of technology as an important and obvious part of our culture.
 Technology and culture and art and science are all coming together.
 What is the biggest change in the last 12 months?
 So, if we're looking at guys who are hacking their bodies in order to find a new level of sense,
 if we're looking at furries at a convention,
 if we're looking at K-pop fans,
 or if you're talking to Philip K. Dick fans,
 who have all come together in San Francisco to celebrate the guys' work,
 ultimately what it comes down to is not the technology and it's not the gadgets.
 It's the people behind it.
 Scamworld continues to be a deeply fascinating piece to me
 because it exposes something that I had no knowledge of,
 I had no understanding of before I read the story that Joe put together.
 What's so incredible about it is that world is so spread out
 and so insidious and so connected to lots of other pieces of our culture.
 It's a bunch of these guys that are living in kind of a post-Tony Robbins world.
 They're basically setting up these sites and these fake products to prey on the unassuming.
 So, where a lot of this stuff would have been on TV,
 would have been at massive conventions like 10, 15 years ago,
 a lot of this stuff has now moved online.
 I think it's a story that's important,
 and I think reading the comments on that and reading what happened on the web
 after the story went up and seeing how many people sort of woke up to these guys
 and their existence and how many people were reviled was a fascinating trend to watch.
 This is another one of those stories that you've never heard of before
 and then when you hear of it, it sounds like the most insane thing in the world.
 And then a writer tells you they're going to go and get a magnet implanted into their finger.
 Ben's idea was to look at the subculture of people that were pushing limits of human perception.
 We're going to continue to try to bring you the craziest shit you've ever seen in your life.
 So the easiest way is just to embed magnets directly into your finger.
 After it heals, you're able to feel magnetic waves and electrical waves.
 I wouldn't exactly call it science.
 It's more like a mad desire to be a cyborg, which is a weird, odd, crazy thing to want to be.
 Whether it's augmentation for human vision or embedded electronics,
 these concepts that have really been in our sci-fi for the past couple of decades are increasingly closer to reality.
 I left the internet this year and I do think it was an indictment or at least a chance to judge how valuable the internet is to me.
 The question of boredom is very different now and it's very easy to push all those buttons and never be bored.
 And it's increasingly difficult to focus on anything.
 And I feel like there's culture-wide, there's a feeling that a lot of this has been caused by technology.
 And I think what Paul did is push it to an extreme where he was forcing himself to focus for a year by completely avoiding the internet.
 You've been on the internet for a super long time, most of your adult life.
 And he wants to write about what his life is like without the internet in it.
 Yeah, the internet fills most of my life and has filled most of my life since I was a teenager.
 And so I don't really know what it's like to be an adult or be in civilization without the internet.
 What we like to look at is not whether technology is good or bad, but it's like, how are people actually using it?
 How is it actually affecting people's day-to-day lives?
 When you think of a computer as a thing you have to sit down at, it's very different than when it's a computer as something you have in your hand all the time, that you put in your pocket, this constant companion.
 And I think that as our minds shift to thinking of technology in that way, as a companion, unless as a thing you take action upon, that is really significant.
 The things that we think of as PCs, this is their last year of dominance in the industry.
 I think from here on out it's all tablets, it's all phones, it's all mobile devices.
 The PC only ever was the primary computing device for a very narrow range of one generation.
 Smartphones are reaching this maturity where they're selling them to you like cars.
 You've got better engines and your family will be happier and your wife will love you.
 Smartphones are the norm. It's not weird for somebody to have one now.
 The ownership has skyrocketed. So it's obviously become very competitive, but it's also stratified.
 You have two players right now in smartphones, iOS and Android.
 Windows Phone is trying to get a word in edgewise, RIM is on a steep decline.
 And so it's interesting to see how quickly people get tired of options.
 All these companies kind of want to have their own isolated experience where it's like this is what Google thinks you want in a phone or a tablet,
 and this is what Apple thinks, and this is what Amazon thinks, and we're getting increasingly into that world.
 And I think it's how we're going to go going forward for a long time.
 We try to find ways to cover an election from angles that I don't think a lot of people have explored.
 Technology and the new way that we communicate as human beings played.
 I mean, it could be argued that it played the most important role in deciding who won the presidential election in the United States in 2012, which seems insane to me.
 You know, conversations that are happening on social media are now just part of the news, and nobody thinks twice about it.
 Election coverage this year, for example, was driven a lot by Twitter.
 I watched the debates on Twitter, basically, and then I would watch the news afterwards, and it was news anchors reading what I had just seen on Twitter.
 That's the sort of thing where the new ways we have of communicating with each other are beginning to completely overtake the old ways.
 Tracking that story was really an interesting learning experience and really kind of a fascinating rabbit hole to dive into.
 Because it's kind of politics, you could go in a million different directions, and there are a million different stories that all seem vitally important.
 This year we saw a lot of the patent wars hit Android and the mobile landscape, which you expect to happen when any kind of technology sort of explodes into a real industry.
 I think we've seen a lot of our industry get bogged down in legal wrangling when they should be focusing on making great technology that's good for consumers.
 The stakes may be somewhat high in some of these cases, but ultimately they're not table stakes for these large companies.
 There's still a lot of open questions about what kind of inventions we want to protect.
 Do we want to issue patents and let people sue each other for things like slide unlock?
 Do we want to waste our time in the courts letting these companies argue over smartphones when they should be making better and better smartphones and trying to win the war in the marketplace instead of the courtroom?
 I don't know if any of these companies are looking at it going, this is the way forward.
 There are politics at play, but there's also actual negotiations happening, and I think that's really valuable and important if we expect to have any innovation in technology.
 Some of these things you can't just hold on to in perpetuity.
 You have to be able and willing to share what you've created with the world.
 For me, it's been really important to try to put into perspective how much technology really matters and how much my obsession over technology is healthy and useful versus just done for its own sake.
 I do hope that going forward we're going to look at the internet and start picking and choosing and not let the internet dictate to us how it wants to be used.
 It's such an early, young technology that it's really still a Wild West, and I look forward to a maturation of the internet.
 It seems like everything changes all at once, and then it changes again, and then it changes again, and we're in these funny waves of crazy technology happenings.
 We're just at this crazy pace of everything is different and better all the time. It's wild.
 For the last few years there's been a huge boom in types of devices and form factors, but I think that's going to wear off pretty quickly and people are going to start to think of, what is the best way for me to interact with this stuff?
 Where is the best place for it to be? What is the best size screen that actually makes sense for a human being?
 Now that we know we're going to live with technology, I think it'll be a year of us figuring out how to live with technology.