The Lay Technologist ™

It’s not groundbreaking news that products often have tiers. Whether it is cars, washing machines, or airline tickets, you have some iteration of bronze, gold, and platinum. You have the entry-level, the mid-grade, and the premium. The workhorse and the ultra-luxury model. But looks and labels don’t always tell the whole story. Sometimes when buying a product or service, you may be getting a whole lot of the same thing and not even realize it. First, a short primer on price discrimination . This is a concept in economics that, simply-put, means that a seller can get some people to dole out more money for the same thing than it can others. How is that possible? In part, this is influenced by the fact that not everyone has the same amount of money they’re willing, or able, to spend. Second, it is also a function of desire. One person who has a stronger desire for the product, may be willing to pay more for it than another person who desires the same product less. “But everyone is price...

It's easy for people to understand robots as a personification of artificial intelligence and the ultimate interface between humans and computers. After all, we can see them, we can touch them, and they look a lot like what we already know and understand. With that image of an advanced future, we can resolutely say that we are not there yet. We don't have robots living alongside humans, despite what our past selves imagined and predicted. But looks can be deceiving. The absence of physical robots doesn't mean they aren't there -- embedded in deep ways in the environments where we spend the most time and wedged sometimes between our human relationships.  Our world has been cloned, re-imagined, and modeled into an online environment. Software developers have operationalized interactions into likes, emotions into emojis, and fleeting thoughts in "tweets," and the like. While imperfect, this has created a virtual universe in which we all have an identity, in which...

LayTech's BookClub section discusses intriguing themes in science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. While we try to preserve plot twists and not reveal endings, it’s best to visit this section and ponder after you’ve read the book or chapter covered. Are we able to differentiate why certain things make us feel a certain way and when those feelings are justified? We seek pleasure and avoid pain -- a fundamental programming language embedded into our behavior and existence thanks to evolution. Sex is very pleasurable and thus we go out of our way to search for, find, court, and engage with a mate that we find attractive. Attraction itself, while subjective in many aspects, has common threads. Biology has shown that attraction tends to favor certain markers of good health and compatible genetic variation. Pain warns us against harm that could impact our physical ability. Thus, the feeling of pleasure and avoidance of pain ultimately serve functional and utilitarian pur...

The interaction of scarcity (actual or created) and human desire for control over our environments, which may or may not include other humans within it, leads to an apparent tendency for resources to travel down a conceptual funnel toward a gravity of concentration and thus control. At certain ideal levels of concentration, several resources can interact to make possible the creation of additional value. However, runaway concentration can lead to sequestration of resources to the point that they lose their broader usefulness for society. This visualization illustrates this idea.

Our Deepening Relationship with Our Smartphones Image credit: Wayhome Studio / Shutterstock.com Smartphones have become the center of our sensory universe. Take a look at the people around you on the train, bus, subway, or at an airport terminal, dentist's office, or even at restaurant tables with guests "eating together" -- no less. Crisp displays, sensors-galore, high speed data, and smart app developers have glued us to these devices. Not surprising, given their ability to convey to us loads of precise and up-to-date information enabling us to to make smart decisions -- think minute rain and temperature forecasts, real-time transit updates, traffic congestion data, event reminders, GPS directions, and breaking news from around the world. And the bellwether for our deepening tie to our smartphones is the Notification . The, often, multi-sensory reminder, alert, flash, vibration, melody, that tells us where we should look, what we should take into consideration, a...

The laptop and notebook have evolved and hybridized. They now exist on a continuum, with geared-up-tablet on one end and ultra-high resolution near-desktop performing machine on the other. Given the abundance of choices in the market, this decision guide does not endeavor to review specific devices. Instead, we provide a framework to use to help you define how you use a device, determine your priorities, and to categorize and consider the different elements and features of what is out there. With this approach, we hope you will arrive at the best type of device with the right combination of features and components that will best address your needs. We will call of these devices “notebooks” for short, but our discussion includes “2-in-1” devices, traditional laptops, and expanded tablets that include a keyboard. How Does it Look and Feel? The Materials. We experience our computers mostly through the software and applications that it executes. But physical form, build, finish , ...