Note To Self

Touchscreen phones work so well for blind people that Braille may become obsolete. But advocates worry this could render the next generation "functionally illiterate."

We take a look at exactly what tech is in the classroom. Which leads to a bigger question: Why is this tech in the classroom?

We're kicking off a series on kids and technology. Sure, it’s just easier to ask, “did you finish your homework?” and assume they’re figuring it out on their own or from other kids. But as one middle school teacher found out, there's an opportunity to go WAY deeper.

Security technologist Bruce Schneier, author of “Data and Goliath,” says you should stop feeling guilty about skimming the Terms of Service. Get mad instead.

Watching TV — especially when it isn’t, strictly speaking, on TV — has gotten complicated. This week we bring you a conversation with the creators of "High Maintenance." They're staying off broadcast and embracing a smaller but devoted online-only audience, instituting a paywall in exchange for the artistic freedom. So what do they think of sharing passwords on Netflix accounts and fast forwarding through commercials?

Manoush made some phone calls to Bored and Brilliant participants around the world. This week, New Tech City eavesdrops.

We changed our phone habits, opened our minds to day-dreaming, and it felt good. Here's what the experts had to say about our data.

It's time to get really bored and make something creative. You might just learn something about yourself with this challenge designed by artist Nina Katchadourian.

For today's challenge, we want you to take note of one person, object, or interesting, uninventable detail you would have missed if your nose were glued to your phone.

Your instructions: Craft an away-message like “I’m out, taking an intensive sushi making class! Wasabi fingers so no phone for me today!" Put it up for an hour, an afternoon, or the whole day. It's good for your productivity. 

Your instructions for today: Delete that app. And listen in as our favorite casual cell phone video gamer confronts the designer of her worst addiction. 

We take 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") photos per year, mostly on our phones. Today, we want you to start seeing the world through your eyes, not your screen.

Your instructions: As you move from place to place, keep your phone in your pocket, out of your direct line of sight. Better yet, keep it in your bag.

Prepare for our week of Bored and Brilliant challenges with a peek at the data we're gathering on how much you use your phone and what you want to change. Plus, a psychologist and neuroscientist put it all in context with tips for behavior change. 

"Hello, this is Grace from Westchester. I am 16-year-old girl. I have an iPhone 4 and I am going to record my activities for the next few days."

Minds need to wander to reach full potential, and all that time on your phone might be getting in the way. We're here to help with a big project called Bored and Brilliant: The Lost Art of Spacing Out.

Find a 20-something, a 30-something and a 40-something. If you’re feeling especially experimental, add in a 70-something and a teenager. Say the word: “voicemail.” Watch what happens. Voice messages — and the etiquette around them — are changing. Some people are rooting for voicemail to disappear completely from our communication repertoire. "Typing and talking have an inverse relationship: as it's gotten easier to write your feelings, it's gotten more difficult to speak them." Gizmodo writer Leslie Horn makes a powerful case for voicemail in an essay last year that we just loved. It... well, it stuck with us, and we really wanted to hear the voices she described. Because those scratch recordings buried in her phone's voicemail folder got her through the tough months after her father's death. "Voicemail is a default archive of your life. You would miss it if it were gone," she says.  So this week’s show is about the way listening can jog memories and emotions like nothing else. To that point, we'd r

This week, an encore of one of our favorite New Tech City episodes ever: The tale of David Joerg, self-professed tech addict. David spent years living the life many kids can only dream of: video games at 3 a.m., Nutella from the jar, unlimited hours clicking from one piece of tech news to the next.  Running on three hours of sleep per night, he became, in his words, “a zombie.” He decided it had to stop - so he put his techie mind to work, and built a system that totally cut him off. Spoiler: It involves his daughter's piggy bank. Listen above. And if you’re struggling too? You can request a copy of the program for yourself from David here.  Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or on Stitcher, TuneIn, I Heart Radio, or anywhere else using our RSS feed. 

May we suggest a holiday activity for the family? Sleep. Without screens. Get a lot of it.  New research from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that that bluish-glow from computers, smart phones and tablets is, in fact, keeping us up at night, and the impacts are worse than scientists previously suspected. Not only are our devices keeping us up later and later into the evenings, they're actually making it more difficult for us to fall asleep at all. The consequences are psychological and biological. So no, this isn't an excuse to push the kids away on Christmas morning. It's more of a long-term lifestyle plea, culled from a ton of data WNYC collected earlier this year. And in that spirit, we're re-airing one of our favorite episodes from 2014, about something we do every day (or at least we try to do). Getting enough rest to stave off some pretty staggering screen-fueled sleep deficits.  Give it a listen (or another, if you caught it earlier this year), and join us in getting some muc

Somewhere hidden in the sleepy suburbs of New Jersey, there is a very small town. This all-American village boasts good public transit, its own reservoir, a coffee shop, a church, a bank... you name it. Their international airport rarely has delays.  Where is this idyllic hideaway? That's a military secret.  CyberCity, as it's called, serves as a training ground for a new class of specialized "cyber warriors," capable of defending against cyber attack. Every day, soldiers plot to take over the town, by hacking into its schools, its water systems, its power grid, and its Internet, as colleagues and instructors watch on screens in the other room. It's run by the SANS Institute's Ed Skoudis, whom the military hired to design a new generation of training equipment –  and, as Skoudis said, your average digital simulator wasn't going to cut it: "If you tell them, 'Hey, one of your folks was able to hack into a power grid and turn the lights back on,' certain people in the military leadership would look at that and