Jon Evans
Jon Evans is a novelist, journalist, and software engineer. His novels have been published around the world, translated into several languages, and praised by The Times, The Economist, and the Washington Post. His journalism has appeared in Wired, Reader’s Digest, The Guardian, The Globe & Mail, and The Times of India, and he writes a weekly column for TechCrunch. Jon also has a degree in electrical engineering and a decade of experience as a software developer, building everything from smartphone apps to billion-dollar asset-allocation services.
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When Your Carrier Becomes Your Bank
I write to you from my vacation, meaning, this time, the dusty port town of Kaolack in sunny Senegal. (What, your vacations don't involve long hours spent riding in--or, sometimes, on--overcrowded West African inter-city public transit? Weirdo.) On arrival I picked up an Orange SIM card, which cost 1000 francs (US $2) and came with 1000 francs of credit. And then my cab driver kind of blew my… Read More
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The Internet Is Held Together With Bubble Gum And Baling Wire
Did you know that, to quote an angry hacker: The Internet from every angle has always been a house of cards held together with defective duct tape. It's a miracle that anything works at all. Those who understand a lot of the technology involved generally hate it, but at the same time are astounded that for end users, things seem to usually work rather well. Today I want to talk about all of… Read More
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Enter The Blockchain: How Bitcoin Can Turn The Cloud Inside Out
Drop whatever you’re doing and go read Maciej Cegłowski’s absolutely magnificent essay Our Comrade The Electron, an astonishing history of the amazing Russian engineer Lev Sergeyevich Termen. Make sure you read right down to its punchline, “the most badass answer imaginable.” But if time is short, or you struggle to read English, please at least read its angry rant, from which I quote: Read More
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Software Patents Are Bullshit
"Patents are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution for a single purpose: to promote the progress of science and useful arts." Alas, when it comes to software, it is difficult to imagine a system worse at this than the current one. Everyone knows this--and most people will readily admit it--but no one, with the possible eventual exception of the Supreme Court, is willing to do anything about it. No… Read More
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The Next Revolutions: Drones Vs. Phones
It's been a hell of a week worldwide. Caracas, Venezuela: "What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden." Kiev, Ukraine: "Dozens dead as protesters regain territory from police." Bangkok, Thailand: "Four people have been killed and more than 60 injured after a gun battle erupted between police and anti-government protesters." Sarajevo… Read More
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In 3.5 Years, Most Africans Will Have Smartphones
I reckon it's time to check in on one of my bolder predictions. Some 18 months ago, I wrote "In Five Years, Most Africans Will Have Smartphones." Let's get this out of the way: most of the smart money thinks I'm wrong by at least three years. Worldwide, according to Gartner, smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales in 2013, for the first time -- but Africa remains a different story. Read More
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The Future Is Transcendent: A Review Of HER
For more than an hour Her seems little more than metaphor meets Manic Pixie Dream Girl: charming, yes, but insubstantial. And then— Los Angeles, mid-21st-century: techno-utopia. The city is a forest of sleek skyscrapers; a vast subway network connects downtown to the beaches; citizens mingle in public spaces that resemble art galleries, connected by broad pedestrian walkways that soar high… Read More
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BuzzFeed Is The Future (Whether It Lives Or Dies)
It's time for a little inside baseball! Be still your beating hearts. But admit it: secretly you want to know about the success/failure of the myriad news sources whose stories flit disconnectedly across your Facebook and Twitter feeds from time to time, if only so you can tell your friends that you already knew who was doomed, on the day that long-fabled Great Shakeout finally comes and half… Read More
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Failure Modes
This was a rich month for the deadpool. Prim shut down. So did CarWoo. And much-hyped Outbox. And even moot's Canvas/DrawQuest, which had 1.4 million app downloads and 400,000 monthly users. All part of the game, right? The circle of startup life, or something. It's a truism that most startups fail. But in fact most startups don't even get to fail, in the way the word is most commonly used in… Read More
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The Techno-Militarization Of America
Remember last year? Edward Snowden! NSA! Shock! Horror! Dismay! Looking back I'm amazed we all seemed so surprised. Over the last decade, pretty much every arm of American authority invoked "homeland security" as an excuse to acquire boatloads of new technology, and used it to help expand their power and authority to unprecedented levels. There is nothing at all exceptional about the NSA's… Read More
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Such DFW. Very Orwell. So Doge. Wow.
Let's talk about doge, but first let's talk about the late great David Foster Wallace, who thirteen years ago wrote a classic essay about modern English* entitled "Tense Present," which, realistically, is better than anything I will ever write, so I should maybe just point you at it and end this post here. But I won't. Not least because I strongly suspect that if DFW had not taken his own life… Read More
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Publish And Perish? What To Do With That Book Inside Of You
When people tell me they have a book inside of them -- which actually happens quite a lot, probably because I've been fortunate enough to have had a clutch of novels (traditionally) published -- I always want to ask: "Have you considered surgery?" As George Orwell famously said: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never… Read More
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I Can’t Believe I’m Saying This, But T-Mobile Is Awesome
I've spent the last week back in my wintry homeland in Canada, and here the scales have fallen from my eyes, and I have seen the light, and I have a message for all of you who live in America, a message of the utmost importance, inscribed in fire on the sacred stone of the Internet. And that message is: holy crap T-Mobile is awesome. If you travel internationally at all, you should switch to… Read More
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It’s A Wonderful Life, For A Few Of Us
So where were we? Oh yes: everybody hates us. San Francisco's recent Google-bus and "homeless trash" kerfuffles are symptoms of an increasingly broad, deep, and bitter anti-tech animosity. The Economist predicts: "The tech elite will join bankers and oilmen in public demonology." The New York Times concurs: "Tech workers have, rightly or wrongly, received the blame. Resentment simmers." Such… Read More
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Amazon Drones: As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap
As a drone hipster — I wrote an entire novel about a drone apocalypse a full five years ago — I watched the techosphere’s reactions to Amazon’s announcement that it was experimenting with drone delivery with a mixture of amusement and despair. Almost everybody is thinking so small. Jeff Bezos must feel like Butch Cassidy: “I got vision, and the rest of the world wears… Read More
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It’s Time For A Special Regulatory Zone
Your government is the enemy of the future. Innovative technology that would disrupt the world as we know it is already here, but oppressive government bureaucrats keep getting in its way. Taxi commissions vs. Uber; the FDA vs 23AndMe; the FAA vs. Amazon Prime Air; the DMV vs. self-driving cars; governments everywhere vs. Bitcoin. This is intolerable and must stop. The government must get out… Read More
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Yahoo Users Anonymous: A Transcript
This is what happened: Scene: A Silicon Valley church basement. Folding chairs, coffee, cigarettes tucked behind ears. Jon EVANS, a tall man with a shaved head and an Arsenal FC T-shirt, steps forward to the podium. He has a slight Canadian accent. Jon: Hi, my name's Jon, and I'm a Yahoo! user. Room, in unison: Hi, Jon! Jon: I guess...I mean, this is so embarrassing, obviously... Read More
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Let’s Kill The Aid Industry
Long have I nursed a healthy contempt for the aid industry. As I spent much of a decade wandering around the planet, taking local public transit through poor and/or unstable nations, I kept encountering aid workers in their flashy white branded 4x4s, and was almost invariably resoundingly unimpressed. As I've written elsewhere: Most development aid is actively harmful. Read More
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Android vs. iOS Development: Fight!
The eternal startup question "Android or iOS first?" grows ever thornier, with news that Android's market share exceeds 80%. But never mind the managers and non-technical founders: what do developers! developers! think of that divide? Whoever makes life easier for them gains a sizable edge. And by "them" I mean "us." When not writing TC columns (and novels) I'm a software engineer for … Read More
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Where I Went Wrong, Third Annual Edition
Happy anniversary to me: I’ve now been writing this here weekly column for exactly three years. Over the last year I have opined, prescribed, and predicted many things. And now, like last year, and the year before, as part of my one-man crusade for greater opinion-journalism accountability, I’m going to take a moment to go back and look at what I got right... and where I went horribly… Read More
