🟤 PP

For the 17-year-old Logan Lane, the solution was to quit cold turkey. Lane grew up in Brooklyn and was a screen-addicted teenager who spent hours curating her social media presence on Instagram and TikTok. Then, a little over two years ago, Lane started questioning whether living a life of constant connection was actually a good thing and made the decision to ditch her smartphone altogether. She began assembling a “Luddite Club” — a group of teenagers who reject technology and its creeping hold on all our lives.

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🌀 DTech

Our constant need for entertainment has blurred the line between fiction and reality—on television, in American politics, and in our everyday lives.

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🟣 SC

Everyone onscreen was real, sort of. The singers had human counterparts in the studio, isolated in cubicles, with headsets on their faces and joysticks in both hands. Immersed in a virtual world, they were competing to become part of (hopefully) the next big Korean girl band.

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🟣 SC: Spatial Computing 🌀 DTech: Digital Technologies

The days of Japanese college students turning up at job fairs in staid dark business suits may be swiftly coming to an end. Welcome to the metaverse, where students armed only with a smartphone can peruse job offers and engage in online interviews from wherever they are in Japan, or even beyond.

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🌀 DTech: Digital Technologies 🔴 HCI: Human-Computer Interface 🟤 PP: Postphenomenology(Phenomenology)

I want to gauge the impact of computers on the world, the potency of computers as a filter on our society, and explore the fact that the computer screen is the retina of the mind’s eye. This will, I hope, lead the reader to agree with me that computers are necessary for our survival, but also that for us to survive, computers must be significantly absent from our lives.

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🔵 FS: Future Studies 🔘 Arch: Architecture

I thought about ChatGBT’s use in writing about architecture. Would it encourage more trite, languid, anodyne articles about design published online and in print? I’ll let you decide. Here’s an edited transcript of my 15-minute interview with the bot.

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🔘 Arch: Architecture 🟡 Sci-fi: Science Fiction 🔵 FS: Future Studies

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) has unveiled its futuristic design for a science fiction museum now being built in Chengdu, China, conceived by the architect as an asymmetrical star that floats on a lake.

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🔘 Arch

Ocean Builders, based in Panama, is building floating pod homes. It says its mission is to develop technology that makes oceans into an "eco-sustainable paradise." The company claims the pods act as "fish aggregation devices ... anytime you put something in the water that makes shade, it attracts sea life." The company also says that after several years coral growth can create a "thriving underwater ecosystem." Ocean Builders uses steel tubes to create the floating homes 3 meters above the water in Panama's Linton Bay Marina. The 73-square-meter floating homes will be upgradeable with new apps still being developed.

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🟣 SC: Spatial Computing 🌀 DTech: Digital Technologies

A recent invention by a research team led by Professor Lim Chwee Teck (Dept of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, iHealthtech) promises to substantially enhance a user’s sense of touch in virtual reality (VR), with the aim of delivering a more authentic and immersive experience within the metaverse.

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🟣 SC: Spatial Computing 🌀 DTech: Digital Technologies

There are many companies angling to make money in the metaverse at the moment, but far fewer trying to use its technology for public good. The World Economic Forum hopes to change that with the Global Collaboration Village, which will be introduced at Davos this year ahead of a full rollout. The virtual village has been designed to function—and look—like the real Swiss town, except that here the people convening in co-working spaces, attending conferences in government buildings, and browsing museums will be doing so as avatars

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