Uncanny Valley | WIRED
Episodes
23andMe and You
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry offer a pretty enticing prospect. Just mail off a little bit of your spit in a tube and the compan...
Misinformation Is Soaring Online. Don’t Fall for It
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Misinformation lives everywhere. False accounts of events, doctored photos, and purposely misleading news stories are quickly shared and passed around...
Business Wars: Living in an Artificial World
12 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence abounds, and it’s only making its way deeper and deeper into every scrap of technology we use. Generative AI in particular i...
Searching for a Better Google
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's finally nearing the end of a month filled with consumer tech announcements, and Wednesday’s Google event felt like the grand finale. While Goog...
Meta’s Sound and Vision
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Undeterred by its many detractors, Meta is still trying to make the metaverse happen. This week, the company held its annual Connect developer confere...
Alexa Gets an AI Makeover
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Alexa was due for an upgrade, and now it has gotten one. This week, Amazon held its annual media event where it debuted a slate of new hardware, softw...
Your Life, Your iPhone
14 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's September, which means Apple has announced yet another round of new iPhones. During a typically bombastic media event at the company’s headquar...
We Robloxed So You Don’t Have To
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you want to see what the future of the internet looks like, peek over your kid’s shoulder while they’re using Roblox. The online platform is fi...
I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
31 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be...
The Case of the Not-Stolen AirPods
24 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us who went to school in the United States have been threatened with detention for minor infractions like uttering a curse word or showing up ...
The Cruelest Summer
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Summer isn’t even over here in the Northern Hemisphere, but it’s already been a brutal few months. This year’s summer heat waves have been more ...
Nobody’s Driving That Car!
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Tech companies have been touting self-driving cars as the future of transportation for over a decade now. Companies like Cruise, Waymo, and Zoox all h...
Farm-to-Table Internet
03 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Cloud computing has streamlined our hyper-mobile digital lives. We upload files, images, and globs of data to the cloud. Once all of our stuff is stor...
The Future of Hollywood
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Back in May, the Writers Guild of America went on strike—partly over disputes about compensation, and partly over fears that studios could use gener...
Elon Musk’s Grand xAI Plans
20 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Elon Musk is back in the news again. (Really, does he ever leave the news?) Last week, Musk announced a new artificial intelligence venture called xAI...
Stop Trying to Make New Twitter Happen
13 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hey look, there's a new Twitter alternative. The text-based Instagram offshoot Threads launched a week ago, and in the days since, the platform racked...
Have a Nice Future: Don't Worry, It Gets Worse
06 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're off this week, so instead of our usual show, we're sharing an episode of WIRED's other podcast, Have a Nice Future. It's hosted by Gadget Lab co...
Our Clothes Are Making Us Sick
29 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever put on a new shirt and then discovered that it makes you feel itchy? Or have you ever taken off a new pair of pants at the end of the da...
Shop Talk
22 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly every one of us in the US and Canada has bought something from either Walmart or Amazon. Not only are these two retailers ubiquitous, but they ...
What the Truck, Elon?
15 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hey, remember the Cybertruck? Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s futuristic electric vehicle way back in 2019. At the launch event, Tesla tr...
Apple’s Vision Quest
08 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
After years of rumor and speculation, Apple finally took the wraps off its virtual reality headset this week. The Apple Vision Pro made its debut at t...
AI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)
01 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consume...
How to Get Started Biking
25 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic ...
Let’s Get Swole
18 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The weather is warming up in our part of the world, which means people are starting to think a little more about getting outside and being active, and...
Google Disrupts Itself
12 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Google would like you to know that it has been at the forefront of machine intelligence for decades, actually. Never mind that it was beaten to the ge...
Nothin’ but Bluesky
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online wh...
This Episode Is Nuts
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The most successful industries out there are the ones that play to consumers' insecurities. Many self-care companies prey on people’s anxieties abou...
I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
20 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long th...
Send in the Clones
13 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence continues to seep into every aspect of our lives: search results, chatbots, images on social media, viral videos, documentarie...
Like, Follow, Subscribe to Cars
06 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It used to be that when you bought a car, you just picked out the model and color you wanted and selected the optional extras. When the dealer rang up...
Sidewalk Surfin’
30 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Amazon has sold a lot of connected devices, and now it’s putting those devices to work. Millions of Ring cameras and Echo speakers sitting in homes ...
The Sacred Mountain of Chip-Making
23 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you're reading this, you can thank a semiconductor. Phones, tablets, computers—really any device more digital than pen and paper—all depend on ...
I Love You, I Hate You, Don’t Call Me
16 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Our smartphones rule our lives. We love them, we hate them. Somewhere deep down inside, we hope they never go away. But, if recent sales data is to be...
ChatGPT in Schools
09 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The worst part of going to school is all the homework. Nothing strikes dread in a student’s heart quite like facing down a deadline on a seven-page ...
We Really Recommend This Episode
02 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The modern internet is powered by recommendation algorithms. They're everywhere from Facebook to YouTube, from search engines to shopping websites. Th...
Netflix Is No Longer Chill
23 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The promise of streaming TV was that you could watch whatever you wanted, when you wanted. And for a while, that was mostly true. But recently, stream...
Real Humans Chat About Chatbots
16 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The unstoppable march of artificial intelligence carries on. In mere weeks, AI has oozed into nearly everything we interact with on the internet, from...
I Know What You Did With That Bitcoin
09 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you’ve committed any internet crimes lately, you probably shouldn’t have paid for them with Bitcoin. While many crypto-evangelists have long th...
Have We Reached Peak Smartphone?
02 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Phones have been pretty boring for a long time. Don’t get us wrong—phones are still amazing little devices! It just feels like we haven’t seen a...
Why the Kids Love TikTok Search
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
TikTok’s influence is expanding well beyond the social sphere. The app is increasingly being used for the types of internet searches one would norma...
We Need to Talk About Your Stove
19 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Gas stoves are so hot right now. A recent report found that emissions from gas cooktops are worsening both the environmental crisis and the health of ...
Oh, Deere!
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The tractor company John Deere has faced a lot of criticism for the tight hold it keeps over its products. If someone needs to repair their tractor, t...
CES 2023: We Live Here Now
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the world of consumer tech, there’s no palette-cleanser for the new year quite like the annual CES, the giant electronics show. What better way t...
Is It 2023 Yet?
29 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Keeping on theme with the roaring ‘20s, this year has been a doozy. Social media sites are aflame, all that hype over the metaverse has fizzled, the...
Plastic Rap
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across t...
The iPod of Crypto
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you own no Bitcoin, no Ether, and no NFTs, crypto wallets—pocket-friendly hardware lockers that store digital assets—will be a part of you...
ChatGPT for You and Me
08 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Artificial intelligence is advancing faster than ever, with a new crop of generative AI programs that are creating art, videos, humor, fake news, and ...
What the Hell is BNPL?
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Money is tight these days. Holiday shopping, ballooning inflation, and a looming recession have forced people to more carefully consider their finance...
The State of the Smart Kitchen
24 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Companies love sticking chips in everything. That's how you get a feast of connected kitchen tech: app-controlled Instant Pots, $400 touchscreen toast...
What Happens if Twitter Gets Hacked?
17 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Twitter doesn't work like it used to. Under new ownership, the site is operating with half its usual staff and an entirely new set of executive pressu...
Demystifying Mastodon
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amid all the Twitter hubbub, the lesser known social site Mastodon has seen a surge of new users. Mastodon is a loosely connected network of individua...
Tweelon
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you've been on Twitter in the past week, you may have noticed that the platform has been emanating some slightly different vibes. Mostly because ev...
Plastic Rap
27 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Plastic waste never really breaks down. It just splits into tinier and tinier pieces until it becomes trillions of microscopic bits scattered across t...
OK, Car Computer
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Modern cars are giant computers. They're packed full of chips and bits, all working toward the goal of making your ride smoother, safer, and more comf...
Zuckerberg's Innovation Dilemma
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As its new company name would imply, Meta’s making a big deal about the metaverse. The company formerly known as Facebook just announced a new VR he...
Life in Pixels
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even though it’s already October, we are somehow still seeing new products announced by the tech giants. This week, it was Google's turn to show off...
The State of the Smart Kitchen
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Companies love sticking chips in everything. That's how you get a feast of connected kitchen tech: app-controlled Instant Pots, $400 touchscreen toast...
Row Row Row Yourself
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Peloton's been weathering a rough year. The home workout company soared high in the early days of the pandemic, when demand for its stationary bikes a...
Visualizing VR’s Future
15 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Virtual reality has long been hailed as the next big thing in tech. It's pure escapism; strap on a headset and immerse yourself in a different world. ...
Welcome to Dynamic Island
08 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At a splashy media event this week, Apple announced four configurations of the new iPhone 14, as well as some new Apple Watches and an update to the w...
How YouTube's Tumultuous Past Will Shape Its Future
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Collectively, people stream more than a billion hours of video on YouTube every single day. That's a lot of eyeballs, and it means the platform has en...
How to Get Your Climate Tax Credits
25 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The United States government just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that allocates nearly $400 billion dollars to fu...
Tractor Hacks
18 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Farming has gotten quite tech-savvy. These days, there are all sorts of Wi-Fi-enabled, app-controlled, and autonomously piloted machines out there doi...
The Weird Phone Future
11 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Samsung's mobile phone design philosophy could best be described as "if it ain't broke, bend it." The company—one of the top smartphone manufacturer...
NFT Frames
04 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Maybe you’re intrigued by NFTs. (They can often be pretty fun.) Maybe you’ve even felt the urge to buy a piece of digital art, only to give up onc...
Reel Talk About Instagram
28 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you've opened Instagram recently, you've certainly seen Reels. The photo-sharing app has started aggressively pushing the TikTok-like video feeds o...
Zucka Kappa Meta
21 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Facebook has nearly three billion users, which means that when it makes a change to its business, it affects nearly half the planet. Facebook's ambiti...
Too Cool for Juul
14 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Do you even vape, bro? Well if the United States Food and Drug Administration has its way, that answer might soon be a hard "no." Last month, the FDA ...
Seriously, What Is the Metaverse?
30 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Technologists have been crowing about “the metaverse” for a long time now, and here at WIRED we’ve written about it quite a bit, too. But someti...
The Zoomification of Slack
23 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you work in an office, chances are you spend a lot of time on Slack. The workplace messaging platform has become an even more important tool in the...
Streaming TV’s Many Possible Futures
16 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Streaming TV was supposed to be a thing you did to relax. But these days you might grab a drink, kick up your feet, and then sit there paralyzed by an...
Apple In Real Life
09 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Spring is in the air, so you know what that means: Developer conference season. Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference this week and used Mond...
Texting Is Broken
02 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The away message is a relic of desktop chat apps from decades past. But this simple feature helped keep boundaries between your online connections and...
WTF Is Web3?
26 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The cover story of this month’s issue of WIRED magazine is “Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution” by Gilad Edelman. We inte...
How to Get Started Biking
19 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For a lot of people, riding a bike through a crowded city—or even on suburban avenues—might feel daunting. Should you get an electric or acoustic ...
Google Gadgets Galore
12 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s springtime again, which means developer conference season is in full swing. (Hoo-ray?) This week marks the return of Google I/O, the annual con...
Kara Swisher's Take on Twitter
05 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hey, remember how Elon Musk bought Twitter? It's been a chaotic week since then, both on and off the controversial social media platform. There are st...
Snap’s New Drone Takes Flight
28 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The social photo-sharing and messaging app Snapchat is bigger than you probably think it is. According to its parent company, Snap, the app has more t...
What Would Elon’s Twitter Look Like?
21 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It probably won't surprise you that Twitter's a bit of a mess right now. Last week, billionaire Elon Musk made a play to buy the whole company, statin...
Browse Better
15 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you may not give much thought to your browser. Once you find one you like (probably Google Chrome, if...
Peloton Bets Big on Body-Tracking
08 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Peloton has had a turbulent couple of years. After the ups and downs of the pandemic economy came a rash of bad press spurned by a series of tragic pr...
Who's Behind the Okta Hack?
01 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you aren't familiar with Okta, you've probably used it. The digital login system is used by thousands of companies across the world to manage ...
How You DAOing?
25 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you wanted to create an exclusive online community with a shared goal, how'd you go about it? If your answer is, "with crypto, obviously!" then you...
When Facial Recognition Tech Is Wrong
18 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Like a lot of tech solutions to complex problems, facial recognition algorithms aren't perfect. But when the technology is used to identify suspects i...
And Apple Marches On
11 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Apple held its first product announcement event of the year on Tuesday. It showed off a bunch of new devices, including a new iPhone SE, a revamped iP...
Swift Sanctions
04 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Russia's armed invasion of Ukraine has already exacted a terrible human cost. Thousands of people are dead and over a million have been displaced. In ...
Tracking Apple
18 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Apple has been sprucing up its mobile operating system, bolstering privacy and safety features and sprinkling in some new emoji to boot. But while the...
Samsung Gonna Samsung
11 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week, Samsung held its Galaxy Unpacked event, its annual product spectacle the company uses to announce new mobile devices. In addition to its ne...
Hitting Pause on Spotify
04 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
You probably know Spotify as a streaming music juggernaut, but its business model has grown far beyond just music. Last year, the company paid a repor...
Help! My Family is Stuck in the Metaverse
28 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When the real world's a mess, the metaverse that Facebook (er, Meta) is pitching might seem like a welcome refuge. Just strap on a headset and play so...
Road to the Future
21 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For years, companies and techno-bros have been saying that self-driving cars are ready to roll. Now companies like the ride-hailing service Lyft are a...
Dry If You Might
14 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many people are taking a break from alcohol this month, a cultural moment that’s come to be known as Dry January. Beyond trends fueled by new year’...
Live From CES 2022
07 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
New year, new chaotic mega tech exhibition. CES was this week, complete with all of its usual glitzy gizmos and gaudy gadgets. It was a strange year f...
Goodbye to All That
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Good thing 2021 was the year we fixed all of the brokenness of 2020, huh? OK, not even close. But for some people, 2021 was a year of reassessing, rec...
WTF Is Web3?
03 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Web3! It's the latest internet buzzword which encompasses an egalitarian vision of the web that's more reliable, based on trust, and, inevitably, buil...
A Conversation with Neal Stephenson
19 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Over his nearly four-decade career as a novelist, Neal Stephenson has built complex visions of future worlds that, looking back at them now, feel eeri...
What an Augmented World
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Mark Zuckerberg may be busy pushing the idea of augmented and virtual reality worlds, but he is far from the first to start imaging them. Niantic CEO ...
Shipping and Shopping
05 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hey, how's that holiday shopping coming along? It's still a little early to start panicking in earnest, but right now is the best time to start buying...
Let’s Get Meta
29 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Facebook has a new name. This week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is changing its name to Meta. The title comes from something Facebo...
Big Macs, New Pixels
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Yep, it’s still product announcement season. This week, Google officially unveiled its new Pixel phones and Apple showed off new MacBook Pro models....