Welcome to the Focus Group

11/15/2017 by J. Nelson

The first rule of Focus Club is – you do not talk about Focus Club.

Sitting around a table with strangers and snacks provided me with a glimpse of the higher levels of emotional pollution we live with today.

Before focus group attendance required a reference and the best paying research firms became fodder for Yelp, back when the topic of extra cash was still “light” conversation, my school-teacher mom enjoyed bragging about the extra $40, $60 or $90 she’d nabbed just for sitting around talking cars or cooking utensils. Her exaggerated enthusiasm made my brother and I feel like idiots if we failed to grab our own piece of this windfall. So I signed up.

Phone interviews asking after household budgets, TV time, annual electronics expenditures and so forth were the first step. Screeners frequently came off like car salesmen –as if the only thing between them and a three-day weekend was filling a late afternoon quota– but it was difficult not to play along. Answers that were a degree or three off elicited a disappointed sigh and a more “accurate” response.
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Apple’s Grapple

02/29/2016 by J. Nelson

Creation of Homeland Security not enough?

Office of Total Information Awareness left for the day?

Is the heart-shaped flower of police militarization wilting?

Did D.A.R.P.A. go dark?

Has the Patriot Act pooped out?

Nope. Nor have the corporations and power brokers of the surveillance state yet tapped out American taxpayers.

In other words, the FBI does not need the Genius Bar.

From Feds to street-corner cops and home security companies, law enforcement has more than enough control, technology, and boots-on-the-ground for continued counterterrorism success. And probably lots of fun civil liberties secrets, too.

The FBI has all the tools it needs and plenty more to keep American citizens safe. And when I say “safe,” I mean relatively safe, just as we’ve been since September, 2001. Stuff will happen; that’s just the trajectory of history, especially when we’ve been messing around with it as much as we have. But in trying to force Apple to write new software that will help them unlock an iPhone belonging to the perpetrator of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, the Bureau is overstepping its constitutional bounds. Apple worries that, if they comply, anyone who can grab or mimic their software will have access to every confidence Americans hope to keep electronically secure. Read more

Born into Phone Plans

09/21/2014 by J. Nelson

GUEST POST: 17-yr-old Grant Calderone on the future of phone plans.

If you’re asking me to shell out $749 for a smartphone, don’t market it to me like it’s a hamburger.

It’s hard to imagine Apple, Inc. desperate for anything, but the company has been squirming to return to prominence under the smartphone spotlight following the failure of its cheap and synthetic iPhone 5C.

We didn’t see the fall of tech’s Holy Roman Empire, but it was pie in the face of Steve Jobs’ legacy nonetheless. Now, with the the length of the iPhone 6+ exceeding six inches, infamous media manipulator Apple has detoured the public’s attention from design brilliance to bigness in one product. What’s next? A lifestyle clothing line featuring pockets fit for a smartphone king? A true visionary, MC Hammer sported iPants years ahead of their prime. Read more