Today was a big day in tech. Not because of any eagerly anticipated reveal of an upgraded Smartwatch, but because you can now fly above Manhattan like a bird, thanks to this Oculus thing (as Gothamist calls it) at the Museum of the Moving Image (through Fri-Sun, June 7th), and because this little 3-D printed robot can crack a combination lock in 30 seconds and not even break a sweat. Hacker Samy Kamkar came up with robot idea, built the whole thing for about $100, and then published the blueprint and software code, along with a How-To video, on the Internet. Masterlocks everywhere are cowering in fear.
Elsewhere, an artist is using a 3D printer to reproduce and sell that bust of Edward Snowden that popped up in Fort Greene Park last month—that’s tech plus patriotism, or the opposite of patriotism depending on who’s calling it. And, speaking of calling things, this uber-Kardashians fan has been calling the un-reality of the show by obsessively studying the episodes and matching them to the Kardashians’ prolific Instagram posts; Denmark has called for the end of paper-based money (and they’re serious about it); and this 81-year-old Army vet and cancer survivor had to call 911 because he didn’t have any groceries after getting back from the hospital, and had no one to help him.
The good news is that tech is going to help us all live longer, into our 80s, 90s, and—for many more than ever before—100s. Thirty is the new twenty, and sixty is the new forty, etc. Unfortunately, tech can’t seem to do the same for the honeybee population, which continues to die off mysteriously, in droves, across the nation. We will be 100 and we will talk of how there once were bees, how people once worshipped and devoted quite a bit of their time to something called Mad Men, and how humans once made things by hand, like this 10,000 piece LEGO Millenium Falcon, instead of just 3D printing everything.