It used to be so easy to get away with things in school. The teacher, after all, was always turned around writing at the chalkboard! But then came a bit of technology, previously mostly used for military purposes, called the overhead projector. It would change far more than just the disciplinary record of students everywhere. […]
For multiple years, the hottest toy in the United States was a book. But not just any book: a smart book that could play sounds and respond to taps and help kids learn to read. It was the kind of gadget seemingly any parent could get behind, but it came with a high price – […]
Google didn’t even call the first Chromebook a “Chromebook.” The Cr-48 had no interesting design and no bright logos – it wasn’t even designed to be a product you could buy. Instead, it was a portal to a big new idea about computers. In this week’s episode of Version History, The Verge’s Nilay Patel and […]
The idea was big, exciting, and inspiring: What if we could get every kid in the world access to a computer? For a bunch of thinkers and executives in Silicon Valley, it felt like the way to fix everything. But the One Laptop Per Child initiative, and the XO-1 laptop designed to be given away, […]
The same calculator has been on most kids’ back to school shopping list since the early 2000’s and the dominance of Texas Instruments’ calculator division goes back even farther. In the next episode of Version History, David Pierce is joined by The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Victoria Song to tell the story of TI graphing […]
Whether you played it in the back of your classroom or on your computer at home, if you were a kid in the last 30 years you almost certainly grew up playing The Oregon Trail. On the season 5 premiere of Version History, our fearless wagon leader David Pierce is joined by gaming journalist Chris […]
Clap on. Clap off. Well, more like, Clap, pause for half a beat but no longer because otherwise it’ll stop hearing you, clap again because you waited too long, clap louder and faster, that didn’t work, clap two more times, and suddenly: on. The Clapper didn’t always work – and even when it did, it […]
The state of the smart home can be frustrating, because it is just so obvious how things ought to work. You should be able to control everything from everywhere. Your spaces should adapt to what you’re doing and how you’re feeling. Making your home smart shouldn’t require renovating, and the smarts should be mostly invisible. […]
Before Keurig, the coffee in your office was almost certainly terrible. Old, burned, made by someone who would rather poorly eyeball than properly measure. Just altogether gross. After Keurig? You could make your own coffee, a cup at a time, exactly when you needed it. The single-cup brewer was an elegant solution to an extremely […]
The founding story of Nest is pretty much a perfect tech myth. A legendary product maker (in this case, Tony Fadell) helps create one of the most successful products ever (the iPhone) and then rides off into the sunset to enjoy the rest of his life, only to have an experience that drags him back […]