Email? Voicemail? They're passe, New York Times tech guru says
New York Times columnist David Pogue shocked his father, a managing partner of what was once Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, with the announcement that he would not be attending law school.
While he may have eschewed his lawyerly roots (Pogue’s grandfather was an aviation attorney), the Emmy-winning technology correspondent charmed ABA Techshow attendees in a charismatic keynote address that included a piano, songs and oodles of tips as they enter an era dominated by the prolific use of personal tech devices.
“It’s a joke these things are called phones, they are so much more,” Pogue said as he quickly moved through a rundown of the latest tech developments, with the greatest innovations taking place on our hand-held smartphones and tablets. The speech wasn’t exactly directed to an audience of lawyers, but it was certainly entertaining.
Pogue emphasized the global impact and adoption of user-friendly apps that allow people to interact with each other and add their own content, such as the Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia mobile apps–the latter of which was found in a study to be 2 percent more correct than the Encyclopedia Britannica.
“The next big wave in tech will be augmented reality,” Pogue said. These devices and apps will include phones and glasses with perpetual video cameras that see the world as users do but superimpose text data over the images they’re viewing. Imagine an app that has facial recognition abilities and can pull all social media activity of a person who steps in the view of the camera’s lens. It exists.
Another of Pogue’s favorites include a $5 app called WordLens that allows users to hover their phone’s camera over signs, menus or any written text and an accurate translation will appear in real-time on the video screen of their phone.
Pogue ended with wry observations of younger generations who are constant multi-taskers, seekers of immediate gratification and pay lip service to privacy. The next generation, he noted, feels voicemail and email are obsolete, replaced by the instant communication of texts and social media like Twitter and Facebook.
“We need to teach them ethics of the online world; we need to teach permanence and credibility,” Pogue warned the roomful of attendees. As advisors to a generation that will adopt new technology faster than any before, trusted guidance will be in full-demand.
With that, Pogue closed with a song that pitted the Recording Industry Association of America against high-schoolers who downloaded and share music off the Web.
