Mike Elgan

My Toyota Prius is always unlocked—but only for me. When I grab the handle to open my Prius door, the car uses Bluetooth to see if the wireless key fob is within a few feet of the same door. If so, the door is automatically unlocked. Prius owners’ experience is that the driver’s door is […]

Only humans can have meetings, sadly. But some of the clerical work associated with organizing and documenting meetings now might be outsourced to artificially intelligent machines. Wait, you might say. Isn’t artificial intelligence for big tasks such as self-driving cars, automated trading and facial recognition? Once the stuff of science fiction, AI is quickly becoming […]

Smile! Cameras are everywhere now. Thanks to smartphones, just about everybody carries a high-quality camera and an instantaneous way to share photos and videos with the world. Our laptops have cameras. Our drones have cameras. ATMs, intersections, police cars and street corners have cameras. Businesses have security cameras. Even a new generation of smart doorbells […]

The social web is the most egalitarian medium in history. It’s also overrun by trolls, haters, misogynists, racists and bullies. Coincidence? I think not. In his 1994 book, “In Defense of Elitism,” author William A. Henry III made the shocking claim that our longstanding myth of egalitarianism is dumbing down America. Everybody loves egalitarianism in […]

Why pick up after your dog when an internet startup will do it for you? A company called PooperApp claims that, after your dog does his business, all you have to do is take a picture of the result using their Pooper app, press a button, and a “Scooper” (a freelance poop-removal professional) will drive […]

Everybody’s talking about Pokémon Go, the world’s first super popular augmented reality game. Sure, it’s all fun and games—until somebody gets hurt. Pokémon Go became an instant runway hit after it was launched July 6 by Niantic Labs, the Google spin-off formerly known for the less-popular Ingress mixed reality game. After downloading the free Pokémon […]

Oh, no. Pied Piper bought fake users. The most recent episode of the HBO TV series, “Silicon Valley,” (spoiler alert) ends with the revelation that one member of the team saved the fictional startup by buying the services of a fake-user company in India. It’s a fascinating scene. The show’s closing shot shows a room […]

We control our computers and phones by pointing, clicking, swiping, poking and typing. But these interfaces are about to go almost extinct. Instead, we’ll interact with our machines the same way we interact with each other—by talking. Amazon’s Echo, which is a big hit with some users, is helping to usher in the habit of […]

Google’s new attempt at a social app will fail because the company hasn’t learned from past mistakes. Google this week introduced Spaces, which is not quite a social network and not really a messaging app. Spaces is a Googly cross between Slack and Snapchat, available from an app on iOS and Android, a Chrome extension […]

In the beginning, there was the office. If you were a white-collar or “office worker” of any kind, an office was the only place you could work. This was long before “Office Space” became a cult favorite or “The Office” became a comedy franchise. Then the Internet happened. Since then, a growing number of people […]