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“A library of the future might also be, at its best, a sanctuary where we are encouraged to spend entire hours looking at just one thing.” —Michael Agresta, “What Will Become of the Library?” Slate (2014) The library of the future is more or less the same. That is, the branch is an actual and metaphoric Faraday cage. You enter, a node and a target, streamed at and pushed and yanked, penetrated by and extruding information, sloppy with it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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Masdar City, a squeaky-clean planned city under development outside Abu Dhabi, grew from the sand with a single vision: help the United Arab Emirates wean itself off its own vast oil reserves. The 10-year-old micro-metropolis serves as an incubator for clean-technology companies. It incorporates the latest design and construction strategies to minimize its energy consumption. It runs solely on renewable energy. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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“Roughly half of Americans would feel better about the concept of a robot caregiver if there was a human operator who could remotely monitor its actions at all times.” —“Automation in Everyday Life,” Pew Research Center (2017) The thing is beeping at Brad. > Begin EOL protocol. OK? > Beep. > OK to begin? All he needs to do is accept. Click it and the action cascade will download to his tablet, setting into motion the procedure. End of Life. > Beep. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Online shoppers, media consumers, and app lovers are increasingly sucked into the world of recurring payments. On the bright side, subscription services offer convenience. They also establish a relationship between the company making a product and the person buying it; if you’re on the buying side, it means paying only as long as something is valuable to you. Plus, subscriptions often come bundled with perks. (Like, for example, this publication. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hanging on the wall of Postmates' stealth R&D laboratory, there's a framed photo of an iconic scene from Star Wars, Luke Skywalker bent down beside R2D2. Except someone has used Photoshop to replace Luke's face with Ali Kashani, Postmates' VP of Robotics. Nevermind that Kashani has never seen Star Wars (he considers this a point of pride). Kashani recognizes the symbolism of his face in a world where robots roll around next to people, where bots act almost like friends. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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No, self-driving cars aren’t here yet. But they are roaming a few select sections of American road. Waymo just launched a limited service in metro Phoenix (albeit with a safety driver behind the wheel); General Motors’ Cruise is testing in San Francisco; Ford is noodling around Florida; Aurora and Argo (which is closely aligned with Ford) swing through the hills of Pittsburgh. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Welcome to the most interesting thing in tech. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

At first bite, it seems no more than a clever way to boost sales at the expense of a competitor. When a hungry customer walks into a McDonald’s (or within 600 feet of one), they can use the Burger King app to order a Whopper for a single cent. The app will then provide directions to the nearest BK, where the now certainly famished customer can pick it up. The promotion, good until December 12, is called the Whopper Detour. Is it trollish? Sure. Has it worked? Apparently. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I’d ridden the motorcycle part of the way up a small dirt hill, and was trying to simply reverse my way back down when I fell off the machine. As I went down, I tightened my grip, inadvertently pinning the throttle. I soon found myself underneath a pirouetting motorcycle. It was my first experience with the so-called whiskey throttle—and indeed my first experience of any kind on a motorcycle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For the productivity-obsessed, a more joyful and efficient life starts with good habits. Our sensible routines prepare us for success: plan your day, wash your face, early to bed, early to rise, etc. If you have an iPhone and you've updated to iOS 12, you can streamline those routines on your phone across apps, and maybe even create new habits. Shortcuts (née Workflow) was introduced to iPhones and iPads in this fall's software update. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

To recap: Sheryl Sandberg joined Facebook as chief operating officer in 2008, promising to make the popular but weird social network profitable. She went hard into advertising, marketing, and data-mining—and, by 2010, Facebook was going great guns. It’s been well in the black ever since. During these explosive years, the company enabled Russian troll farms. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We’re heading southeast on Interstate 10, headed into Tucson, Arizona, when we pass the group of men in orange jumpsuits and hard hats working on the side of the highway. “Inmates Working,” the sign on the back of the truck parked on the shoulder says. It’s the sort of sight that can generate a swirl of curiosity, pity, and distaste in a person, but the robot doesn’t register anything about who these men are. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If you could get rid of the keyboard on your laptop and replace it with a second tablet-like display, would you do it? In other words, would you prefer to work with two screens, Nintendo DS-style, instead of just one, like the MacBook-toting plebes of the world? Before you answer either way, you should spend some time with Yoga Book C930, a triumphantly pointless piece of technology that stands before the world with its fists on its hips and proudly proclaims, "We did it because we can. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2015, Microsoft introduced Edge, a homegrown browser it pitched as a modernized successor to Internet Explorer, and capable competitor to Google Chrome. Just three years later, Microsoft has raised a white flag, opting to rebuild Edge on Chromium, the same open-source rendering engine used by Chrome. As for Internet Explorer? Two years after its stopped getting feature updates, it's still more popular than Edge ever was. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The year has not been kind to MoviePass, and MoviePass, in turn, has been unkind to its subscribers. Its increasingly precarious financial position—parent company Helios and Matheson, lost $137.2 million last quarter alone—has prompted increasingly onerous restrictions on its service, from draconian anti-fraud measures, to surge pricing, to restricting available movies and showtimes so severely that finding a good one can feel like hunting Bigfoot. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

According to absolutely legitimate research I read about in the Daily Mail, 55 percent of couples say they argue about the temperature at which their home is maintained. While the whole house is clearly a battleground, certainly it’s the bedroom that is ground zero for such squabbles. Stereotypically, women like things hot, men like them colder. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Skiers and snowboarders love to go fast. They seek the thrill that comes from strapping on a pair of freshly waxed planks (or just one) and gliding down a mountain trail with controlled speed through carved turns. To get that speed, competitive racers spend hours crafting the perfect combination of chemical waxes to reduce friction over changing snow conditions and achieve the slipperiest surface between snow and ski. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Waymo, the frontrunner in the self-driving car industry, today announces the moment everyone has been waiting for: It is officially “launching” a robo-taxi service in Chandler, Arizona, wherein riders will use an app to hail the vehicles to take them anywhere in an 80 to 100 square mile area, for a price. “Today, we're taking the next step in our journey with the introduction of our commercial self-driving service, Waymo One,” Waymo CEO John Krafcik wrote in a blog post. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Wherever the future of driving leads us, Porsche is sure of one thing: We’re going to need some excellent maps. And not just for navigation, either. That’s why Porsche is announcing today a collaboration with open source mapping platform Mapbox. Designers from the two companies are working together to explore new ways of using in-car maps, making them more than tools for getting from one place to another as efficiently as possible. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

If America’s biggest automaker’s crystal ball is working, the future of cars has way fewer cars. That’s the thinking driving General Motors’ major internal restructuring announcement, which came Monday. The company plans to stop producing many compact or sedan models, including the Chevrolet Cruze, Volt, and Impala, the Buick LaCrosse, and the Cadillac CT6. It will close at least three assembly plants that build those cars, in Youngstown, Ohio, Oshawa, Ontario, and Detroit. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The first PopSockets gripper I plastered to my phone's rear-end was a freebie gift thing I received from some company’s swag bag. Amidst the magnets, notebooks, business cards, and other marketing ephemera, there it was: the circular doodad that has leapfrogged selfie-sticks as the must-have mobile accessory for our smartphone-saturated society. When I fished it out of the tote, I felt secretly delighted. Then I felt sort of dopey. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In news that might help you make some sense of your fragmented, frustrating device set up, Amazon announced today that its Echo devices will support Apple Music starting December 17. It’s a small breakthrough in the streaming wars, one that should help bring some sense to your streaming strategy. And you’ve got Apple’s increasing need to branch out beyond hardware to thank. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Crash a new car today, and you might be surprised by how many airbags spring to your defense. Passenger cars coming off the assembly line nowadays can have 20 or more safety sacks lying in wait. They’re tucked into the steering wheel and dashboard, of course, but they also pop out of seat belts, doors, rear seats, and the ceiling. And now, they might be headed for the outside of the car. That’s the idea behind the “external side airbag,” the work of auto industry supplier ZF. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There was a time when social media was just for sharing things with your friends. Then you started looking up your old flames from high school, and you added them to keep tabs on who got engaged or had a baby. Your parents got on social media, so you had to add them too. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Since it launched in 2015, Google's Project Fi has quietly been one of the best deals in tech. An alternative to mainstream carriers, it offers simplified data plans, easy international use, and a slew of other perks. The catch: Only Google's Nexus and Pixel phones—and, more recently, a smattering of third-party Android options—have worked on it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Brand-influencer relationships used to be as simple as a YouTuber standing next to a man dressed as a giant tongue. At the very first Vidcon, in 2010, the tongue-scraper company Orabrush sent a bumpy pink mascot to the convention center to strike up quasi-impromptu interactions with early influencers like iJustine. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Lawsuits, man. Elon Musk’s Boring Company has abandoned its plans to dig a tunnel under the west side of Los Angeles after it and the city settled a lawsuit brought by two area neighborhood groups who opposed the scheme. The project, announced last spring, had entailed building a 2.7-mile test tunnel under Sepulveda Boulevard, adjacent to the crowded 405 freeway, under public property. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For many, the year 2018 has held precious few highlights. There’s Gritty, sure, but what else? Climate change rages. Politics divides. It’s bleak. Into that breach steps Spotify, which on Tuesday continued its now annual tradition of finding some levity among its users’ listening habits. The Spotify Wrapped campaign, in which ubiquitous billboards highlight unusual or unexpected stats from the company's user base, enters its third year with a few adjustments. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You recycle. You keep your showers short. Maybe you even drive an electric car, powered by the solar panels on your roof. In other words, you do what you can to reduce your carbon footprint and protect the environment for everyone. But you’re hopping a flight this week to chow down in Turkey Town, and your math says that one action could undo all your other good deeds. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

What many people call airports, you like know as that one huge queue. From curb to gate, zig zagging between retractable barriers, from one pinch point to the next—in industry parlance, this is your travel ribbon, flowing, or jamming, through the terminal. Check in, bag drop, security, the coffee shop, the lounge, the boarding gate, the halting march down the aisle. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I recently took a trip to Berlin that sharpened my view of America. It turned out that the blandly named conference I'd been invited to—something about digital markets—was actually a giant collective hand-wringing about the state of German politics. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The air fryer, like some of the more superfluous appliances in my house, was a Black Friday purchase. It arrived on our doorstep on a chilly December evening, part of the parade of questionable decisions that my roommates and I had made on the internet: an egg boiler shaped like a hen, t-shirts I didn’t need. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Drones have arrived in US airspace, and now they are multiplying. By 2022, 700,000 of the little unmanned aircraft could be exploring American skies, according to the FAA, delivering packages, monitoring traffic, inspecting bridges, and filling other yet to be discovered niches. To do that work, every last one will need electricity to spin its rotors and run its sensors. Most will get it from batteries they take with them to work. Some might pull from the grid directly, using tethers. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Early on in Mortal Engines, the forthcoming movie based on Philip Reeve's book, a small Bavarian population gets consumed by the moving metropolis of "London." (The movie, like the book, is set in a future where roving "predator cities" ingest smaller towns for their resources.) As its citizens are forced to resettle in their new home, voices on loudspeakers tell them where to go and what to do. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s time once again to turn on The Monitor, WIRED’s roundup of the latest in the world of culture, from casting to big streaming deals to box-office news. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For a man who works in fashion, Michael Preysman thinks an awful lot about the world's oceans. He thinks about the stuff that runs off and pollutes the coastlines, the plastics that slide down the drains and choke fish. When he founded Everlane, the minimalist clothing brand that promises "radical transparency," Preysman didn't just want to make cashmere sweaters and wide-leg pants that would constitute the a certain kind of Silicon Valley uniform. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For many Americans, regardless of politics, race, gender, or creed, the Thanksgiving dinner table is an emotional minefield hiding underneath a kitschy tablecloth. As turkey time draws nearer, expectations and worries about relatives’ behavior begin to mount, while the media drum toll doles out advice about how to manage tensions. In truth, the holidays are one of the few times when an assortment of people with different political beliefs are apt to meet in real life. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Earlier this year, I asked a friend to dog-sit for us while my family was on vacation. I lured her in with the promise of access to our fully-equipped smart house. She could peruse the full extent of my Apple Music subscription on our Sonos, or watch Netflix on our Apple TV. She could fiddle with the Hue lights. She could even start the robot vacuum, if she wanted! No pressure or anything. That afternoon, I got a call. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are some harsh truths you'd rather not face, like what you really look like eating a turkey drumstick, or how you sound while you sleep. Similarly, how many hours you spend on Facebook and Instagram is a potentially shame-inducing data point that for years you’ve had no real way to assess. But today, Facebook has been widely—and quietly—rolling out a tool that lets you measure how much time you spend using both the Facebook and Instagram apps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Stan Lee, the avuncular, controversial longtime writer and publisher of Marvel Comics, died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 95 years old. Popping a big character death on people like that was just the kind of thing Lee liked. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

High-end chefs spend a lot of time figuring out how to get foods to taste their best. Are they seasoned correctly? Is there a balance between fat and acidity that makes you want more? Is there a way they could pull off the ultimate feat of making a food taste more like itself? Using the trick I've just learned from rising-star chef Eric Rivera, you can up your holiday game rather easily and I'm willing to share it: using powdered freeze-dried foods to amp up the flavors in your favorite recipes. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Consider how Spencer Salter spent the last two years, and the auto industry seems like a terrific business. The Jaguar Land Rover researcher rode on boats, trains, and planes. He hooked himself up for zip lines, braved roller coasters, flew in helicopters, and climbed into rally cars, all on company time and the company dime. But, “I made myself sick a lot of times,” Salter says. The resulting vomit was not an unfortunate side effect of Ferris Beuller-esque adventures. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mark Zuckerberg would like you to know that despite a scathing report in The New York Times, which depicts Facebook as a ruthless, self-concerned corporate behemoth, things are getting better---at least, the way he sees it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I always feel a bond with people who tell me they owned a Zune back in the day. Microsoft’s also-ran MP3 player never became a hit, but it was a fabulous little music machine and its influence can still be felt in the company's hardware and software a decade later. Its Surface devices have put a focus on high-quality design since they debuted in 2012, and now Microsoft is using the brand to re-enter the audio market with the Surface Headphones. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

From where Trina Hill is stationed at the corner of 16th and Illinois streets, she can see the future of San Francisco rising all around her. This is the Mission Bay neighborhood, the new hotbed for science, tech, and medicine. Warriors Stadium is right across 16th. Behind her stands the building she and her coworkers are finishing, future research laboratories for the University of California at San Francisco—one of the leading medical research institutions in the world. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The trouble started almost immediately. A few minutes after taking off from Lisbon on Sunday, the pilots of an Air Astana Embraer 190 jet called Mayday. “We have flight control problems,” he told air traffic control, asking for a path to the sea for an emergency landing. “We have six people on board,” one pilot said a few minutes later, according to an audio recording available via LiveATC.net. “Airplane is completely uncontrollable. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices