PC Magazine January 2018

This month’s cover story for the PC Magazine Digital Edition is loaded with tech predictions for 2018. We interviewed dozens of engineers, executives, and futurists and got their opinions on where technology is heading—0ur story is filled with revealing insights from a wide spectrum of industry pioneers. But I want to clarify one thing: We are already living in the future. This assertion was best expressed by William Gibson, who said, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Indeed, while there the are important debates to be had about the negative effects of unequal income distribution, unequal “future distribution” may be the more important issue to track. To see the future, you just have to look in the right places. I’ve been travelling a lot during the past few…

The entire history of civilization has been the development of the division of labor, with laborsaving devices making society wealthier and raising standards of living. The Industrial Revolution threw huge numbers of people out of work by replacing hand work with machines. But the ultimate result was a higher standard of living for everyone. True, modern robotics pose new problems for employment that we haven’t seen before. But those problems are made much worse by ruling class policies of importing huge numbers of unskilled and low-skilled workers. The upper classes get cheap labor, cheap nannies and gardeners, etc. Everybody else gets lower wages and higher unemployment. —Bizarro World Observer We’ve been “losing jobs” to robots for a very long time. But do we want to go back to having people calculating bank…

Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 845 processor will make your photos brighter, your connections faster, and even stretch out the battery life in your wireless headphones. At the company’s Snapdragon Summit, we heard all about the 845’s new features and got hands-on time with a reference phone. Here are some of the coolest features in the Snapdragon 845. QUALCOMM SNAPDRAGON 845 This little chip is at the heart of the Snapdragon 845 experience. Unlike with PC CPUs, the Snapdragon 845 isn’t a single powerful processor. Instead, it’s a complex system of different components for different tasks, all joined together. WHAT’S INSIDE Qualcomm upgraded several of the components from its Snapdragon 835. The X20 modem now lets wireless carriers hit gigabit LTE with a much more flexible combination of frequencies, making it more likely that you’ll see…

Fast Forward is a series of conversations with tech leaders hosted by Dan Costa, PCMag’s Editor-in-Chief. He spoke recently with Liza Kindred, the founder of Third Wave Fashion, a consultancy that helped create and define the fashion technology industry. Dan Costa: So Fashion Week wrapped up here in New York not long ago, but it seems like it was longer than a week. Liza Kindred: Yes, Fashion Week is actually a month long. It goes between cities—it goes to Milan, it goes to Paris. But in New York, where we believe we live in the center of the universe—or at least we behave like that sometimes— Fashion Week is finished. We cover fashion technology at PCMag…. when it’s Fashion Week, and we send people to the show. This year it seemed a little…

ZENDURE X6 POWER BANK This relatively diminutive power bank comes with a whopping 20,000 mAh capacity, USB-C input and output, no fewer than five USB outputs, and an X-Charge low-power charging mode as well as full-speed charging, so it’s able to handle quite a range of devices. And its UPS function lets it deliver the maximum possible output for charging any given device. Early bird price, $59; www.indiegogo.com DYGMA RAISE GAMING KEYBOARD Gamers get the coolest devices. This mechanical split keyboard is designed to improve your posture and take some stress off wrists and shoulders as you play (it can also be snapped together for normal typing). The Raise is very customizable, letting you create multiple layouts that you can toggle among. All keys are remappable and can be configured as macros. And the…

One of the greatest fears among automotive enthusiasts is that when vehicles become autonomous, the joy of driving will disappear, and we’ll lose any emotional connection to cars. Even if you’re not a hardcore motorhead and hate your daily commute, you can probably imagine missing, say, the sensation of hitting the gas to get around a slowpoke or the visceral feeling that comes from controlling a multi-ton machine. Several companies are working on ways to ensure humans feel comfortable in self-driving cars— despite a perceived loss of control or fear of hurling from motion sickness. But a project developed by Hyundai and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art goes a step further to explore how to improve the relationship between people and autonomous vehicles. Titled The Roadable Synapse, the project centers…