Category Archives: Technology

An illegally flown drone gives scale to next to a lava tube in Hawaii Volcanoes national park. Photograph: Andrew Studer

Andrew Studer was admiring a massive lava fire hose at Hawaii Volcanoes national park when he spotted something unusual: a small quadcopter drone flying very close to the natural wonder pouring hot molten rock.

There were other visitors sitting out relaxing in somewhat of a meditative state, just trying to enjoy this phenomenon, said Studer, who recently captured a viral image of a drone hovering near the lava. I do feel like drones are extremely obnoxious, and Im sure it was frustrating for some of the people there.

In recent years, there have been growing concerns about technology invading national parks, with drones and other noisy gadgets disrupting wilderness areas, wildlife habitats and other recreational areas.

While the boom in drones has increasingly spoiled the natural sound that the National Park Service (NPS) is charged with protecting, there has also been a rising number of reports of social media use leading hikers to snap inappropriate and dangerous selfies, threatening wildlife and the environment in the process.

Being in nature, you should be focused on nature, said Judy Rocchio, an NPS program coordinator, who works on preserving natural sounds. Nature is very healing leave the tech at home or put it away and turn it off.

As drones became increasingly popular in 2014, the NPS moved to ban the launching and landing of unmanned aircrafts, but the problem has persisted. Since the new rule went into effect, parks have issued 325 citations related to drones, according to spokesman Jeffrey Olson.

It was pretty quickly apparent that visitors who werent flying them didnt like them, he said. People were really upset ... Its like a buzzing bee you cant get out of your head. People observed drones being used to herd wildlife.

The buzzing and clamor of drones, smartphones, music speakers and other tech gadgets that hikers can now carry in their hands isare contributing to damaging noise pollution, which is pervasive in US protected areas, according to a new study published last week.

People were really upset ... Its like a buzzing bee you cant get out of your head

The park service, however, has no control over drones that fly from outside park boundaries, which has allowed some pilots to skirt the rules and enter protected areas.

There are very few places that still have a very natural quiet setting, Rocchio said. How are we supposed to manage wilderness when you have drones flying over them?

NPS surveys and research suggests that drones and other tech-related noises are disturbing both visitors and wildlife. Minnesota black bears experienced elevated heart rates when they saw drones in the sky, according to one study.

Research further indicates that drones and similar aircraft and unnatural noises make it harder for wildlife to perceive natural sounds, which can interfere with communication, reproduction and survival.

Chronic exposures to relatively low sound levels could have significant impacts for animals by reducing their environmental awareness, said Kurt Fristrup, an NPS senior scientist who co-authored the recent noise pollution study suggesting that human noises are often 10 times that of background levels.

Sometimes the harm to animals are more obvious.

In 2014, NPS sent out a press release titled Drone Harasses Bighorn Sheep after volunteers at Zion national park witnessed a remote-controlled drone flying close to a herd, causing them to scatter, leading a young sheep to become separated from the adults. Today, law enforcement in the area gets roughly once every two weeks about drones, said Zion spokesman John Marciano.

If we dont start now, children of the future will never know what a natural quiet peaceful setting sounds like

People come in the park for a peaceful zen spiritual-type experience and when they have hiked for four hours somewhere and they want to be in the wilderness and suddenly, they hear this vrrrrrrr sound, it kind of kills the whole experience.

Other common gadget noises have increasingly annoyed visitors, according to park officials, who note research showing that natural sounds can have health benefits for humans.

At Muir Woods national monument, a popular destination in California, cellphone and other human noise recently became such a problem that the park began putting up signs reminding people to be quiet, according to Rocchio.

If we dont start thinking about this now, children of the future will never know what a natural quiet peaceful setting sounds like, she added.

In recent years, there have also been growing concerns about tourists displaying a lack of respect for nature in national parks, especially from visitors hoping to capture viral Instagrams. In an effort to take impressive photos for social media, park tourists have vandalized parks with graffiti, trampled on wildflowers in rare super blooms and faced attacks from bison.

Marciano said there have also been increasing demands for internet service throughout Zion national park.

A lot of people want wifi access. They want to use their phone gadgets They want to plug in, he said, noting that there are park areas that now have wifi. We have to adapt to new technologies.

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'Turn it off': how technology is killing the joy of national parks - The Guardian

For seniors stuck using a cane or walker to stay on their feet, there soon may be a new way to get around without falling: an exoskeleton.

Researchers in Italy have created a wearable robotic system designed to use torque to help prevents people from slipping and falling, according to a report published yesterday in Scientific Reports.

The teams at from the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Ecole polytechnique fdrale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation Mission studied a small group, including eight elderly people and two amputees, and the preliminary results were promising.

"Our study revealed that a wearable robotic platform can effectively interact with humans during reactive motor responses, such as accidental slipping," Dr. Vito Monaco, lead author of the study and expert in locomotion biomechanics at the Don Carlo Gnocchi Foundation Mission said in a statement. "These results open new perspectives for researchers who are expected to develop robotic platforms for enhancing human capabilities all day long."

Falls may seem like a small risk, but they are the number one cause of injuries and deaths from injury among older Americans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Older Americans experienced 29 million falls causing seven million injuries in 2014. Those falls cost an estimated $31 billion in annual Medicare costs, according to the CDC.

To test if the robotic exoskeleton they developed could help reverse falls, the researchers had the subjects wear the device and walk on the treadmill while wearing a safety harness. The treadmill would start normally and periodically jerk forward, causing the subjects to slip.

The device worked by recognizing that a person was falling and then applying counteracting "torque" to the body to help a person regain their balance.

They found that those wearing the exoskeleton when it was activated were better able to keep their balance without losing their center of mass as much as if they were not wearing it.

While the research is in the early stages, this could help researchers develop an assistive device that could help the elderly stay on their feet -- or at least be an upgrade from current walkers, canes or wheelchairs.

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New 'exoskeleton' technology can help protect seniors from slips and falls - ABC News

John Stanton, an attorney for the US Department of Justice, travels often for work. Hes deaf, which he notes in his profile whenever he buys a plane ticket.

Last year, when traveling to San Francisco via United Airlines, Stanton disembarked from his flight to find an attendant waiting with a wheelchair. He looked up, to see the aide was carrying his name on a sign. Stanton, who played football in college and has run seven marathons, was confused. I told him, Thanks, buddy, but I dont need that, he recalls.

Talk to a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, and youll hear a litany of travel horror stories. Take Laura Gold, who once found herself on the wrong airplane because the ticket counter didnt tell her that her flight had changed gates. Or Carly Armour, who missed a flight that would reunite her with a long-lost older brother when she couldnt hear the announcer calling her name.

These kinds of mishaps arent limited to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and they happen all the time. The millions of Americans with disabilities, who require accommodations when they travel, are dealt slipshod fixes when they travel by air. Often this happens because passengers are classified under the broad umbrella of disabled, as if someone who is paraplegic requires the same accommodations as someone who is deaf. But the system also fails because the technology it relies on is just plain outdated.

There are few recourses. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed by Congress in 1990 to ensure equal access for people with disabilities, only partially addresses air travel under its broad umbrella of mandates. Thats because the Air Carrier Access Act, an earlier bill passed in 1986, covers accessibility issues in airline travel. The ACAA is enforced by the Department of Transit, while the ADA is usually covered by the Department of Justice. The split responsibilities make the ACAA difficult to enforce.

That means that airlines have less of an incentive than other companies and public agencies to alter their typical user experiences. So as terrible as airline travel is, if you have any kind of unusual need, its invariably worse.

Most of the problems encountered by passengers are technologicaltied to arcane classification systems that enhance the confusion of traveling-while-disabled. Airlines classify passenger information through Special Service Request (SSR) codes: four-letter acronyms that alert staff to a passengers needs. (The code for someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is DEAF.)

But these codes are often misused, according to Eric Lipp, the executive director of the Open Doors Organization, a nonprofit that aims to improve travel and tourism accessibility. Airlines often just plug in the code MAAS, which stands for Meet and Assist, for passengers who are blind or deafwhich leads to the automatic wheelchair meet-and-greet.

These codes are often the only information airport staff and other customer service representatives receive, because airlines withhold personal passenger information from contractors. Depending on the city and service provider, software often doesnt recognize the SSR codes, Lipp says, or airlines use the wrong code, which gets misconstrued as it makes its way through the chain. Thats why Lipp, who travels with his own scooter, inevitably finds a wheelchair waiting when he deplanes.

United Airlinesa company where many of my sources experienced problems while travelingtold me they use the SSR code HI for Hearing Impaired. But according to Lipp, all codes are four letters, and this code doesnt exist. And changing a code isnt easy, says Lipp, because the codes are used internationally. Many underdeveloped countries would have to change their processes, which could be a financial burden to some, he adds. Its easier for service providers to join the software systems used by airlines, allowing for a continuous thread of information.

And despite upgrades to airline comfort, in-flight entertainment still doesnt include captions, aural action descriptions, or other ways of letting deaf and blind people participate. For the first time last fall, the US Department of Transportation drafted regulations related to captions for in-flight entertainment. The final agreement mandates that the same in-flight entertainment thats available to all passengers also be accessible to passengers who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired.

Delta now provides captioning on in-flight entertainment on both seat-back displays and personal wifi devices, but only 20 percent of its airplanes have upgraded. Captioning is also available on JetBlue through its DirectTV service on all Airbus A321 aircraft, and will eventually expand to the rest of its fleet.

Its difficult for anyone to hear airline announcements, but for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, its decidedly harder. Airlines are becoming more tech savvy, but Lipp says the industry is concentrating on mobile apps and devices. Mobile apps often include push alerts covering major announcements, such as gate changes or flight delays. Yet these alerts are often delayed compared to the immediacy of an announcement, and smaller announcements, such as an overbooked flight or a standby notification, arent included. Visual pagingwhen an audio page is posted in text form on screensis becoming very easy, but its not yet ubiquitous.

And what happens when a deaf person tries to complain? When I tried to contact Delta Airlines using the Relay, a calling system used by people who are deaf or hard of hearing, I received several hang-ups and long hold times. Corporate Care transferred me to the reservation desk; the reservation desk transferred me back to Corporate Care. Theres no email address for media relations or customer service. And Delta is supposedly one of the most accessible airlines.

In 1986, as a result of the ACAA, airlines launched a system of complaints resolution officialsstaff who are specially trained to handle disability-related issues for airlines. The CRO can handle all situations on behalf of the carrier, and all carriers have a central CRO at corporate.

But that doesnt solve all of the problems. Lynn Rousseau, a member of the United Airlines Accessibility Board, agrees that the lack of accessibility at airports is frustrating. Travel has become accessible to so many more people, Rousseau tells me, but it still hasnt adapted to meet the needs of every customer. Those customers are already advocating for themselvestheyre just waiting for the industry to catch up.

Important information for deaf/HOH flyers:

A Complaints Resolution Official (CRO) should be available to help people with disabilities. If the airline doesnt comply with your request for a CRO, they will receive a hefty fine.

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cAirlines Are Letting Old Technology Abuse Their Customers - Backchannel

As with coffee or alcohol, the way each person processes medication is unique. One persons perfect dose may be another persons deadly overdose. With such variability, it can be hard to prescribe exactly the right amount of critical drugs, such as chemotherapy or insulin.

A researcher holds a prototype of a biosensor designed to detect active levels of a medicine in the bloodstream, as part of a system to personalize drug dosing. (Image credit: Soh Lab)

Now, a team led by Stanford electrical engineer H. Tom Soh and postdoctoral fellow Peter Mage has developed a drug delivery tool that could make it easier for people to get the correct dose of lifesaving drugs. In a paper published May 10 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the group showed that the technology could continuously regulate the level of a chemotherapy drug in living animals.

This is the first time anyone has been able to continuously control the drug levels in the body in real time, Soh said. This is a novel concept with big implications because we believe we can adapt our technology to control the levels of a wide range of drugs.

The new technology has three basic components: a real-time biosensor to continuously monitor drug levels in the bloodstream, a control system to calculate the right dose and a programmable pump that delivers just enough medicine to maintain a desired dose.

The sensor contains molecules called aptamers that are specially designed to bind a drug of interest. (These aptamers are a focus of Sohs lab.) When the drug is present in the bloodstream, the aptamer changes shape, which an electric sensor detects. The more drug, the more aptamers change shape.

That information, captured every few seconds, is routed through software that controls the pump to deliver additional drugs as needed. Researchers call this a closed-loop system, one that monitors and adjusts continuously.

The group tested the technology by administering the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin in animals. Despite physiological and metabolic differences among individual animals, they were able to keep a constant dosage among all the animals in the study group, something not possible with current drug delivery methods. The researchers also tested for acute drug-drug interactions, deliberately introducing a second drug that is known to cause wide swings in chemotherapy drug levels. Again they found that their system could stabilize drug levels to moderate what might otherwise be a dangerous spike or dip.

If the technology works as well in people as in their animal studies, it could have big implications, Soh said. For example, what if we could detect and control the levels not only of glucose but also of insulin and glucagon that regulate glucose levels? he said. That could allow researchers to create an electronic system to replicate the function of the dysfunctional pancreas for patients with type 1 diabetes. Now that is an exciting future, Soh said.

Many years of tests lie ahead to ensure that this technology is safe and effective for people, but the researchers believe it may be big step toward personalized medicine. Doctors already know that the same drug can have different effects on people with different genetic makeups. They also know that patients who take more than one medication can experience unwanted drug interactions. But they lack tools to deal with this.

Monitoring and controlling the actual dosage a patient is receiving is a practical way to take individual factors into account, said Soh. He said the technology could be especially helpful for pediatric cancer patients, who are notoriously difficult to dose because childrens metabolism is usually different from adults.

The team plans to miniaturize the system so that it can be implanted or worn by the patient. At present the technology is an external apparatus, like a smart IV drip. The biosensor is a device about the size of a microscope slide. The current setup might be suitable for a chemotherapy drug, but not for continual use. The group is also adapting this system with different aptamers so that it can sense and regulate the levels of other biomolecules in the body.

Other authors on this study, Closed-Loop Control of Circulating Drug Levels in Live Animals, include B. Scott Ferguson, Daniel Maliniak, Kyle Ploense and Tod Kippin from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Funding sources include the Garland Initiative, Army Research Office and W.M. Keck Foundation Medical Research Program.

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New technology monitors and maintains drug levels - Stanford University News

With technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence finally reaching the mainstream, we're on the cusp of a creative revolution. New mediums have given birth to a new class of artists, entertainers, filmmakers and musicians, limited only by their access to and understanding of technology. Despite this explosion in creative possibilities, however, artists, entertainers and technologists often exist in distinct, isolated worlds. Today, Engadget is doing its part to bring those worlds together.

On November 16th, 2017, we'll bring together some of the brightest minds in art, entertainment and technology to explore the unique challenges facing today's creative pioneers. With The Engadget Experience, a one-day event in the historic United Artists Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles, California, we'll attempt to bridge the gap between these often-disparate worlds, through a series of talks, interviews, screenings and installations.

But we're not just paying lip service -- we're paying artists. To be specific, we've gathered a small committee of technology and art tastemakers to award five grants of up to $100,000 a piece toward the production of ongoing or original works addressing the theme of alternate realities.

We'll select, fund and showcase works that demonstrate the potential of new, immersive mediums and give our audience the chance to engage, not only with the art but also with the people making it. A short documentary series, which will debut alongside those five projects at The Engadget Experience, will follow our committee as they bring the show together and the selected artists as they create their projects.

For more information on The Engadget Experience and the Alternate Realities grant program, visit our events page.

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We're giving away $500000 to foster art and technology - Engadget

Boston Celtics guard James Young shows off his Gatorade sweat patch at a recent practice. Photo via Gatorade.

You probably know Gatorade as a sports drink maker. But the 51-year-old company also has a robust research and innovation arm that is developing some high-tech data-driven methods for helping athletes maintain peak performance.

The Gatorade Sports Science Institute(GSSI) has been around for more than three decades, but some of the groups recent work has caught the attention of professional teams across the world that are testing new ways to hydratetheir players more efficiently beyond just new flavors.

Traditionally, Gatorade hasnt been a tech company, Dr. James Carter, GSSI director, told GeekWire. But with the emergence of our Gx platform and the ability to track and monitor hydration phases, the technology is becoming more interesting to us.

The Gx platformis all about personalized hydration and mixing differentformulas to replenish an individual athletes nutrients during practice or games.

A handful of NBA teams, including the Boston Celtics, Portland Trail Blazers, and Chicago Bulls, have been working with Gatorade for the past few seasons to measure player sweat content and provide appropriate drink formulas.

Melissa Anderson, principal scientist at GSSI,is in her fourth year working with the Celtics. She explained how Gatorade takes body weight measurements before and after practice to detect how much fluid each player lost; or how it uses sweat pads to analyze electrolyte concentration and sodium loss.

Her team then crunches that data and figures out what formula each player needs in terms of optimal hydration.

Its actually working and weve definitely seen good buy-in from the players, she noted. The head athletic trainer with the Celtics is really interested in seeing the numbers, and the technology makes it helpful for him.

Gatorade is also developing smart cap bottlesthat can track individual sips via microchips and small turbines; they pair with formula-specific Gatorade pods. In addition, the company, which expanded its GSSI laboratory last year, is researching new food products that can help speed up recovery.

Earlier this year at the big SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, Gatorades push to brand itself as an innovative company was on display at an interactive combine of the future setup that allowed people to try out technology from other startups like STRIVR, Sparta Science, and Kitman Labs.

Gatorade, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, isnt the only company trying to figure out how hydration can be optimized for athletes. Nikes recent Breaking2 project, which aimed to break the 2-hour marathon mark, highlighted how the company used skin temperature monitors, muscle imaging technology, and sweat monitors to create custom hydration formulas for long-distance runners.

From Nikes Breaking2 site:

Another important factor that is affected by environment is hydration. Throughout training, the team weighed runners before and after their runs, which tells the team how much water each individual runner has lost through sweat. Then, our team observed how the body of each runner responded to their respective fluid strategiesa carefully crafted sugar-water liquid mixture. This mixture continues to be customized to each athletes sweat rate and will evolve as we approach race day.

Otherresearchers are also designing new tech to monitor sweat, like this team from the University of California Berkeley.

Carter envisions a day when teams are monitoring sweat levels in real-time from the sidelines, allowing decisions about proper hydration to be made on the spot.

In a few years time there could well be technology that allows real-time measurement and real-time data on hydration status, he said. That could be through a number of different ways perhaps similar to the smart sweat patch we use now, but one that has built-in electronics that lets athletic trainers know when players are dehydrated.

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How Gatorade is using technology to measure sweat content and help athletes stay hydrated - GeekWire

Nothing actually appears to happen when the Essentium rep flips the switch to fire up the companys demo. The change is undetectable standing a foot away from the Stacker industrial 3D printer, but if you lean forward and peek into the small gap between the print head and bed, youll spot two small semi-circles that glow purple like a range oven on its highest setting.

Its the glow of plasma reacting with the air as the print head goes to work fusing together the plastic material as the printer builds the piece up, layer by layer. The startup is headlining the Rapid conference in Pittsburgh, PA to show off FuseBox, a technology aimed at addressing the issue of structural integrity that serves as one of a number of key roadblocks slowing 3D printings growth as a legitimate option in manufacturing.

FuseBoxs thrust is simultaneously dead simple and entirely complex, but the most elementary level, it utilizes heat and electricity to increase the temperature of the material before and after each level is deposited. This serves to strengthen the body of the printed product where its traditionally weakest during the FDM (fused deposition modeling) print the same layer-by layer technology employed by MakerBot and the majority of desktop 3D printers.

The resulting process, according to the company, creates a part thats around 95-percent as strong as one created with injection molding. Not perfect, but most of the way there. And the 3D printed pieces the company had on hand certainly appeared far denser and more solid that most of what youll see coming out of an FDM printer, even at the industrial level.

FDM typically has been plagued by a de-lamination problem, the companys president and CTO Blake Teipel told TechCrunch this week at Rapid. Its a layer-by-layer printing process, so you get an inherently weak bond between the layers. What were doing is reheating and post heating that plastic, creating a much larger heat affected zone in the plastic part. It makes the part stronger in all directions and between all those layers.

The system is new and isnt exactly cheap as far as components go, adding about $5,000 to the bottom line of these industrial systems, which run around $15,000 to $20,000. Its fairly adaptable, however, meaning that any printer manufacture can partner with the company to integrate it into their system. A number of manufacturers are looking to 3D printing as a potential way forward, thanks to its high level of customization, versus more traditional methods of manufacturing. And Essentiums solution could help address a key pain point.

Even so, at a show that is so heavily focused on bringing printing into the manufacturing mainstream, there are still plenty of issues left to address scalability chief among them. Watching the FuseBox-enabled Stacker system slowly create a print, level by level really drives home how far the technology needs to go in order to address the problem of speed.

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A new 3D printing technology uses electricity to create stronger objects for manufacturing - TechCrunch

On May 11, 1998, India successfully test fired the Shakti-I nuclear missile at the Indian Armys Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan in an operation led by aerospace engineer and late President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. Two days later, the country successfully tested two more nuclear weapons as a part of the same Pokhran-II/Operation Shakti initiative (Pokhran-I was the 1974 test firing of the Smiling Buddha missile). Following this, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared India a nuclear state, making it the sixth country to join the nuclear club of nations and the first one that was not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) an international treaty signed by the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and hopes to achieve nuclear disarmament.

Becoming the worlds sixth nuclear state wasnt the only feat India achieved on that day. The countrys first indigenous aircraft, the Hansa-3, was flown in Bengaluru while the nuclear tests were being conducted in Rajasthan. Developed by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), a Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) lab, the Hansa-3 was a light two-seater general aviation plane used in flying institutes for pilot training, sports, surveillance, aerial photography, and environment-related projects.

That isnt all. May 11, 1998 was also the day on which the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) completed the final test-fire of the Trishul missile after which it was inducted into service by the Indian Army and Indian Airforce. A short-range, quick-reaction, surface-to-air (SAM) missile, Trishul was a part of Indias Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme a Ministry of Defence initiative that has resulted in the creation of the Agni, Prithvi, and Akash missile systems.

Based on these tremendous breakthrough achievements by the countrys scientists, engineers, and technicians, Atal Bihari Vajpayee declared May 11 as the National Technology Day. Every year since 1999, the Technology Development Board (TDB) commemorates the day by honouring technological innovations that have positively impacted the nation. The TDB also selects a theme for each years event, and the 2017 National Technology Day theme is Technology for inclusive and sustainable growth.

Celebrated as a symbol of quest for scientific inquiry and technological creativity, and their translation into the integration of science, society, and industry, the National Technology Day sees the TDB confer National Awards to the most noteworthy individuals, institutions, and businesses of the year. It is a large-scale event which sees the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Bio-Technology, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and several other scientific departments in attendance. The event, conducted in New Delhi, also sees Indias President give out the National Awards and launch a range of innovative products as the Chief Guest. Furthermore, several state governments organise local events that see academic institutions, research organisations, and NGOs come together to generate awareness about the latest technological advancements in the country.

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Why India celebrates National Technology Day on May 11, and its theme for 2017 - YourStory.com

Whether or not youre familiar with the source material behindAmerican Gods, something thats becoming increasingly apparent for both longtime fans and recent converts alike is that theres a growing storm on the horizon. A clash between the old world and the new is coming, and caught right in the middle is none other than Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle). Presently, Shadows mysterious employer Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) seems untouchable, but Shadow hasnt fared so well, as he found himself dangling at the end of a noose after an encounter with the Technical Boy (Bruce Langley). If theres anything we can garner from the new gods weve met thus far, however, its that theyre as persistent as they are powerful, and once they extend an offer theyre not going to accept no for an answer, as we see in episode two when Media (Gillian Anderson) approaches Shadow with her own sales pitch in The Secret of Spoons.

In a sense, Media and Technical Boy are intrinsically, yet hopelessly linked. Watching a show on a mobile device is more accurately a means of worshiping both gods in tandem rather than choosing one over the other, as Media elaborates in episode two: They sit side by side, ignore each other and give it up to me. Now they hold a smaller screen in their lap or in the palm of their hand so they dont get bored watching the big one. By her own televised admission, Media is disturbed by Technical Boys more violent methods, but she seems either unwilling or unable to do more than subtly express her disappointment, considering that shes likely stuck with him for the foreseeable future. What shecan do for Shadow, at least, is to make amends in whatever way she can, including an offer to glimpse Lucy Ricardos assets.

When the source material was first written, the boundaries of the so-called new gods were more defined. Technical Boy could probably best be described as the Internet personified; Media, the embodiment of television. On their own, media and technology are ubiquitous; together they serve to mutually amplify each other as they viefor time and attention. The lines between media and technology have blurred for even the most ardent of devotees. After all, we only want the best, well-equipped devices in order to binge watch our favorite shows.

Therein lies the irony, and the way in which the new gods of American Godsstrike the viewer as that much more convicting than they might have if this on-screen adaptation had been conceived ofat any point within the last 15 years. The book was writtenseveral years before the advent of Twitter, before social media changed the landscape for how we watch television and engage with other viewers. Manyof us arewatching this story play out through our televisions, livetweeting our reactions, shifting attention between bigger and smaller screens. All of this is tracked to account for audience engagement, a system thats only been acknowledged by companies like Nielsen over the last few years. Media sums it up best: the screens the altar; Im the one they sacrifice to.

The intersection of media and technology in our own reality is an ever-evolving relationship, one thats omnipresent and feels entirely unstoppable. Perhaps thats oneof the reasons whyAmerican Gods Media and Technical Boy areparticularly formidable enemies for Mr. Wednesday; by sheer number of worshippers alone, theyve more than likely got him beat. Medias very muchaware that the scales are tipped in her advantage, citing recent technological advances from self-driving cars to 3D printers. Next to them, [Shadows] boss is still selling oranges on the side of the road. To his credit, however, Wednesday doesnt seem phasedas he travels across the country to rally other ancient figureheads of old religion and legend to his side. Hes either pretending to remain ignorant of his downward slide into obscurity, or, at the very least, hes prepared to defy it to the bitter end.

Two episodes into the planned-out narrative for the first season, the stakes are already pretty high if Shadows narrow escape from death is any indication, and, as the new gods have signaled, their resources are essentially limitless. Theyve found creative ways to ensnare new followers and used whatever means they have at their disposal to keep them. Within the greater narrative of American Gods,they certainly haveourtime and attention. By those rules, theyve already established themselves as the strongest gods this world has ever seen.

Images: Starz.

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Why Media and Technology are the Scariest Gods on AMERICAN GODS - Nerdist

Forbes

How Technology Is Changing The Way Millennials Name Their Babies Forbes What is it with computer programmers and their apparent allergy to plain English? Cartoon by Shannon Wheeler. See more cartoons: No Good Ever Comes From Engaging Internet Trolls · Gallery ...

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How Technology Is Changing The Way Millennials Name Their Babies - Forbes