Parmy Olson

The Flying Car Failure Is a Lesson For Us All

For a project so ambitious, the announcement about the end of flying-car startup Kitty Hawk Corp. was surprisingly terse. A single post on the company’s LinkedIn page on Wednesday stated: “We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We’re still working on the details of what’s next.” The…

Facebook, Beware: The Metaverse Is Flat

In a few weeks’ time, Mark Zuckerberg will announce a new virtual reality headset from Meta Platforms Inc. Embarrassingly, we already know what it will look like. A video of the purported device has been doing the rounds online after someone found one in a hotel room. Yet none of that should matter…

Can Apple Be a Privacy Hero and an Ad Giant?

Apple Inc. last week unveiled its latest iPhone in a 90-minute glitzy infomercial that was all about hardware. Though the company didn’t talk about what it would do with people’s personal data, it has long been a given that your information on an iPhone is kept private. Its messaging system is…

Paying for YouTube Makes Sense. But Facebook?

Meta Platforms Inc. has become the latest social media giant to tinker with the idea of selling premium features as part of its service, according to a report in The Verge. Having been free for years, it wants to see if any of us will pay for new widgets in Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp. That…

Contact Lenses Could Soon Replace Our Phone Screens

Walk down any street and it’s a familiar scene: people craning their necks as they look at their phones. But in the not-too-distant future we’ll probably just stare at digital information hovering over the world in front of us, taking in a blend of the digital and real worlds, all thanks to…

Sorry Zuckerberg, the Metaverse Won't Replace Zoom

“Welcome, welcome!” My guide, Philip, waves at me from his seat in a virtual conference room, where he’s wearing a green shirt and sitting at a desk. I’m at Facebook’s Reality Labs headquarters in Burlingame, California, wearing Meta Platform Inc.’s Quest 2 headset. Philip is in another room there…

Social Media Can No Longer Hide Its Problems in a Black Box

There’s a perfectly good reason to break open the secrets of social-media giants. Over the past decade, governments have watched helplessly as their democratic processes were disrupted by misinformation and hate speech on sites like Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and…

Facebook Does Something Right for a Change

As one of the 21st Century’s most powerful data brokers, Facebook is best known for its role in sucking up the personal information of billions of users for its advertising clients. That lucrative model has led to ever-heightening risks — Facebook recently shared private messages between a Nebraska…

The Secret Tricks To Beating Phone Addiction Shouldn’t Be Secret

Instead of the bright colors that popped from the screen, my apps and photos stared out like washed-out newspaper print. This was intentional on my part. I wanted to see if setting my phone to grayscale would make me spend less time scrolling through apps . One surprising result near the beginning…

Mark Zuckerberg's Ruthlessness Is What Facebook Needs Now

Alphabet Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai sent a surprising memo to his staff this week: “Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days,” he wrote, according to tech news site The Verge. Not only did his…