Disruptions: Calling From the Clouds

Disruptions: Apple’s Next Unveiling Could Make or Break a Business

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Disruptions: More Connected, Yet More Alone

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Disruptions: New Targets for Hackers: Your Car and Your House

Disruptions: Rather Than Time, Computers Might Become Panacea to Hurt

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Disruptions: Microsoft’s Struggle to Make Things Simple for Consumers

Disruptions: Ride-Sharing Upstarts Challenge Taxi Industry

Richard Perry/The New York Times Uber, like the other services, does not have its own fleet of cars. The company teams with existing luxury car services and acts as a digital dispatcher for people booking a car through its mobile app.

Last week, when I arrived at the Los Angeles airport on a flight from San Francisco, I made my way to the taxi stand and waited 10 minutes for a cab. Just as I was about to hop in, the driver and the dispatcher began fighting over whose job it was to put my suitcase in the trunk. After a few minutes, I dealt with the bag myself. We then drove off in a filthy taxi that smelled like cigarette smoke and had suspension so old that it felt as if it had square wheels.

This made me think once again: the taxi industry is ripe for disruption.

Several companies in Silicon Valley — like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar — are acting on that very thought.

Uber, like the other services, does not have its own fleet of cars. The company teams with existing luxury car services and acts as a digital dispatcher for people booking a car through its mobile app.

Although Uber determines price the same way taxis do, calculating fares by time and distance, the service can cost 50 percent more than a normal city cab. Another service offered by Uber, called UberX, offers passengers a lower-cost ride in hybrid cars and is comparably priced to traditional taxis.

But companies like Uber are continually confronting the obstacle of entrenched government bureaucracy, resistant unions of taxi drivers and dispatchers, and overlapping and sometimes conflicting systems of state and city regulation.

The latest roadblocks have come up in Los Angeles, where Uber began offering its service in March.

Travis Kalanick, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, said it received a cease-and-desist letter from the city of Los Angeles, “even though this is not under their jurisdiction.” He added, “The taxi industry feels it is getting disrupted and they are doing whatever they can with their lobbying relationships to try and stop us.”

The letter, issued by the Los Angeles Transportation Department, says that Uber is “operating an unlicensed commercial transportation service” in the city. Jonathan Hui, an agency spokesman, wrote in an e-mail that it was working with the mayor’s office “to determine ways to address ride-sharing companies,” but he declined to comment further.

William Rouse, general manager of Yellow Cab in Los Angeles, one of the largest taxi companies in the city, and president of the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association, a trade group, said that making sure taxis were officially licensed was a matter of public safety.

“Our roadways are a scarce resource,” he said. “When you have an oversupply of taxi cabs, you have more congestion, depressed driver incomes and poor service. It’s also an issue of public safety, where drivers aren’t insured and there are felons driving some of these ride-sharing apps’ cars.”

Uber and other ride-sharing apps say that all their cars are insured over the required taxi insurance limits and that drivers must undergo stringent background checks.

“This isn’t about safety,” said John Zimmer, co-founder of Lyft, which also received a cease-and-desist letter from Los Angeles regulators. Mr. Zimmer said he believed the real opposition from taxi companies was not about customer safety, but fear of competition.

Mr. Zimmer also pointed out that state regulators had approved his service.

The California Public Utilities Commission, he said, lets it operate “because we go above and beyond all of their guidelines.”

Uber has been dragged through regulatory hurdles in New York City since its introduction there in 2011. But last month Uber had a victory of sorts, winning a ruling allowing it to operate in Cambridge, Mass. This came after city officials, at the behest of local taxi companies, tried to ban Uber even though state regulators had already approved the operations of such ride-sharing services statewide.

The Federal Trade Commission has also recently issued a statement supporting the services; the agency said trying to snuff out ride-sharing apps would stifle competition and could hurt consumers.

The controversy in Los Angeles is par for the course for start-ups that have come up against regulators. They have been sued or received cease-and-desist letters from almost every city they operate in.

When it comes to protecting customers on pricing and overcharging, taxi regulation makes sense. But in some instances, regulatory bodies have done more harm than good. In 2009, for example, more than 30 people in Washington, including at least one city official, were indicted on bribery charges during talks of regulatory change.

Some lobbying groups, meanwhile, are using fear tactics. In March, Mr. Rouse’s taxi industry group issued a news release warning that companies like Uber and Lyft were “rogue transportation apps” and a “threat to public safety.” The release said that arguments involving payment “could turn violent,” but offered no examples.

Mr. Kalanick of Uber said cities should simply let the customer decide. “The taxi groups are so protected through these regulations that they do not have to offer a better service to customers.”

Mr. Rouse acknowledged that cab companies needed to do a better job, and said he was working with cabdrivers to increase quality of service. But he said taxi groups “will continue to advocate for law enforcement against these ride-sharing apps.”

Although the services do not share figures on how popular they are, the opposition suggests they are posing a real threat. As for me, I’m glad when I have a choice.

To get to the San Francisco airport, before my recent flight to Los Angeles, I called an Uber car. When the driver picked me up, he was nervous about taking me to the airport, he said, because its police were ticketing Uber drivers. The service is allowed in San Francisco, but the airport police follow different rules.

“I can take you,” the driver earnestly said. “But we will have to pretend to be related so I don’t get a ticket.”

When we pulled up to the airport, he got out of the car with great ceremony, handed me my bags and followed his script. “Have a safe flight!” he said, giving me a big hug while peering sideways for signs of the law. “I’ll see you soon.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities

Jeff Swensen for The New York Times A self-driving car at Carnegie Mellon. Researchers have been contemplating how cities could change if our cars start driving for us, including having narrower streets because parking spots might not be necessary.

SAN FRANCISCO — By now, seeing one of Google’s experimental, driverless cars zipping down Silicon Valley’s Highway 101, or parking itself on a San Francisco street, is not all that unusual. Indeed, as automakers like Audi, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz make plans for self-driving vehicles, it is only a matter of time before such cars become a big part of the great American traffic jam.

While driverless cars might still seem like science fiction outside the Valley, the people working and thinking about these technologies are starting to ask what these autos could mean for the city of the future. The short answer is “a lot.”

Imagine a city where you don’t drive in loops looking for a parking spot because your car drops you off and scoots off to some location to wait, sort of like taxi holding pens at airports. Or maybe it is picked up by a robotic minder and carted off with other vehicles, like a row of shopping carts.

A test of Google’s self-driving car.

Inner-city parking lots could become parks. Traffic lights could be less common because hidden sensors in cars and streets coordinate traffic. And, yes, parking tickets could become a rarity since cars would be smart enough to know where they are not supposed to be.

As scientists and car companies forge ahead — many expect self-driving cars to become commonplace in the next decade — researchers, city planners and engineers are contemplating how city spaces could change if our cars start doing the driving for us. There are risks, of course: People might be more open to a longer daily commute, leading to even more urban sprawl.

That city of the future could have narrower streets because parking spots would no longer be necessary. And the air would be cleaner because people would drive less. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 30 percent of driving in business districts is spent in a hunt for a parking spot, and the agency estimates that almost one billion miles of driving is wasted that way every year.

“What automation is going to allow is repurposing, both of spaces in cities, and of the car itself,” said Ryan Calo, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law, who specializes in robotics and drones.

Harvard University researchers note that as much as one-third of the land in some cities is devoted to parking spots. Some city planners expect that the cost of homes will fall as more space will become available in cities. If parking on city streets is reduced and other vehicles on roadways become smaller, homes and offices will take up that space. Today’s big-box stores and shopping malls require immense areas for parking, but without those needs, they could move further into cities.

The Autonomous Intersection Management project, created by the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin, imagines cities where traffic lights no longer exist but sensors direct the flow of traffic. Although a video showing off the automated traffic intersection looks like total chaos, the researchers insist that such intersections will reduce congestion and fuel costs and can allow cars to drive through cities without stopping.

Of course, getting to a utopian city will take a little longer than circling the block looking for a spot. A spokesman for Audi said a fully automated car would not be available until the end of the decade. And the regulatory issues to be addressed before much of this could come true are, to put it mildly, forbidding.

But the pieces are starting to fall into place, at least enough to excite future-minded thinkers. Last year, Jerry Brown, the governor of California, signed legislation paving the way for driverless cars in California, making it the third state to explicitly allow the cars on the road. And federal agencies are starting to consider their impact. In May the Transportation Department made its first formal policy statement on autonomous vehicles, encouraging cities to allow testing of driverless cars.

But to some, this promise — or overpromise as the case may be — sounds familiar.

“The future city is not going to be a congestion-free environment. That same prediction was made that cars would free cities from the congestion of horses on the street,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School and a member of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford. “You have to build the sewer system to accommodate the breaks during the Super Bowl; it won’t be as pretty as we’re envisioning.”

Mr. Smith has an alternative vision of the impact of automated cars, which he believes are inevitable. Never mind that nice city center. He says that driverless cars will allow people to live farther from their offices and that the car could become an extension of home.

“I could sleep in my driverless car, or have an exercise bike in the back of the car to work out on the way to work,” he said. “My time spent in my car will essentially be very different.”

“Driverless cars won’t appear in a vacuum,” Mr. Smith said. Other predictions for the future city imagine fewer traditional-looking cars. Taking their place will be drones and robots that deliver goods.

Oh, and that food-delivery car double-parked outside? That, Mr. Calo said, will be replaced by a delivery drone.

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Social Media Images Form a New Language Online

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Disruptions: Medicine That Monitors You

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Disruptions: Smartphone Battles Shift to Software

Eric Risberg/Associated Press Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, on Monday at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO — Last week, Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, stood on stage at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference without a new version of the iPhone or the iPad or some new device.

After showing off new laptop computers and a new, cylindrical Mac Pro, Mr. Cook and other Apple executives spent the rest of their two-hour keynote address discussing the features of Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 7. With the image of a flattened smartphone interface with thin typography on a screen in the background, Mr. Cook proudly noted, “This is the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone.”

How does he figure that?

Mr. Cook’s bold claim was based on something that is well understood in tech circles but is easily overlooked by consumers. It is the design of the software, far more than the look and feel of the device itself, that allows a company to leap over its competitors.

Hardware features like processing speed or screen resolution or even how well a camera works offer only fleeting advantages in the constant competition among smartphone manufacturers. And with more than a billion smartphones in the world today, much of them with the same rectangular design meant to fit in your hand yet large enough to be used as a phone, it is hard to imagine a breakthrough in their general look.

But changes to the software are limited only by the skill and creativity of a company’s engineers and designers and are not as easily mimicked since they appeal to softer notions like “experience” rather than speed or weight.

Designers at Apple, Microsoft and Google appear to have been keenly aware of that when they worked on the latest versions of their mobile operating systems, experimenting with ways of making software that is unique yet as intuitive as a road sign.

“I have my home, I have my office and I now I have my phone interface,” said Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “When you turn a smartphone off it is an enigmatic monolith; it’s the interface that not only animates it but gives it meaning.” Ms. Antonelli said she hoped to one day include iOS 7 in MoMA’s design collection.

Apple is making some stark changes to the appearance of its software with the latest operating system, which will be available to consumers in the fall. Jonathan Ive, senior vice president for industrial design at Apple and the executive responsible for the new look, has done away with design metaphors like a wood grain bookshelf for the phone’s virtual newsstand. The new look also eliminates borders. It doesn’t sound like much, but that allows apps to stretch across the screen, which makes the phone feel larger. By doing away with shadows and dark colors, the design makes the phone’s screen feel brighter, too.

Interestingly, until this update, among the digital technology community, Apple was losing its reputation for cutting-edge design as competitors like Microsoft experimented.

“From a design standpoint, Apple’s interface became pretty cheesy and predictable,” said Yves Béhar, the founder of Fuseproject, a San Francisco design agency that helped create the low-cost One Laptop Per Child PC and the Jawbone Up wristband health-monitoring device. “It lacked strength and vision.”

Microsoft, which was regularly criticized in recent years for the staid look of its software, has been pushing the design boundaries as it tries to play catch-up in smartphones. In a recent blog post on the company’s Web site, Steve Clayton, a design manager at Microsoft, wrote that company executives finally understood about three years ago that the look of the software was just as important as what the device could do.

The new appearance of the company’s operating system for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7, consists of an array of flat, colorful squares that can be easily moved around on the screen. Though when that tiles-based look was also applied to the Windows 8 PC operating system, some longtime customers complained it was too drastic.

But it has been good for the mobile business.

In the first quarter of 2013, Windows Phone nudged Blackberry to become the third most popular phone operating system globally, according to a report by IDC, a market research firm. Microsoft shipped seven million Windows Phone 7 devices in the first quarter, compared with 6.3 million Blackberry devices. Blackberry is trying to rebound with a new version of its phone with software that has also changed considerably from older versions.

Mr. Béhar said a good software design would always help sell more hardware.

“We are in an era where the 30-second TV ad doesn’t count anymore,” he said. “The product — the smartphone — is its own form of advertising today and a good experience, where people want to spend more time with the product, is what people see.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Social Media Product Plugs Draw Scrutiny

Texas Instruments

In 1982, Bill Cosby appeared on television showing off a snazzy new computer. “Looking for a powerful home computer?” he said as he waved his hands over a Texas Instruments PC that looks archaic now. “This is the one! With 16K memory, it can take you a long way.”

The commercial made it obvious that Mr. Cosby, a prominent comedian and television star, was being paid to promote the boxy device.

Computers have changed significantly in the decades since. And, to the confusion of consumers, celebrity endorsements have, too.

Today, when celebrities and people with large followings on social networks promote a product or service, it’s often impossible to know if it’s an authentic plug or if they were paid to say nice things about it.

Take Miley Cyrus, the 20-year-old pop star who was traveling around America last week promoting her new album. One morning she posted on Twitter: “Thanks @blackjet for the flight to Silicon Valley!” The details of the arrangement between BlackJet, a Silicon Valley start-up that arranges for private jet travel, and Ms. Cyrus are unclear. But Dean Rotchin, chief executive of BlackJet, said “she was given some consideration for her tweet.” Ms. Cyrus did not respond to a request for comment.

Thanks @blackjet for the flight to Silicon Valley! #wecantstop

— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) June 3, 2013

Did her 12 million Twitter followers know about the arrangement? It’s unlikely, and that lack of clarity, increasingly common in the social media postings of celebrities, is starting to draw the attention of federal officials.

“In a traditional ad with a celebrity, everyone assumes that they are being paid,” said Mary K. Engle, associate director of the advertising practices division at the Federal Trade Commission. “When it’s not obvious that it is an ad, people should disclose that they are being paid.”

Under F.T.C. guidelines, companies and the celebrities they are sponsoring risk being deceptive by not noting that these endorsements are advertisements, Ms. Engle said. Sometimes, they are breaking federal rules called “Dot Com Disclosures” that require clarity about sponsorships, even on Twitter. People who violate the law can be given warnings or be fined, though the size of the financial penalty isn’t clearly defined.

Some celebrities are unapologetic about promoting their investments anywhere they can. In 2011, Ashton Kutcher was guest editor of an online-only version of Details magazine, where he profiled a dozen companies in which he was an investor or adviser, but did not disclose the investments. At the time, Dan Peres, the editor in chief of Details, said the magazine stood “by how we communicated Ashton’s involvement with some of the companies.” Mr. Kutcher declined to comment.

Mr. Kutcher has also tried to sneak companies in which he invests onto “Two and a Half Men,” the CBS show for which he is a lead actor, by placing stickers for the tech outfits Foursquare, Chegg and Flipboard on his character’s laptop. He boasted in an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference that he “pulled it off,” until the network found out and started blurring the back of his laptop during the show.

Mr. Kutcher regularly posts about companies he invests in on Twitter, too. He also uses his Twitter and Facebook heft (he has about 14 million followers on both services) when negotiating with companies he wants to invest in, by noting that he will share the product on these social networks. The F.T.C. declined to comment on any particular instances where celebrities have posted about companies with which they have financial relationships. The agency did say there are “open investigations” into companies that have broken federal rules.

“Like advertorials and infomercials, with Twitter, our view would be that the consumers have a right to know. It gives them that additional information, just like a celebrity endorsing something on TV,” said Andrea C. Levine, director the National Advertising Division, part of the Council of Better Business Bureaus, which reviews advertising claims for accuracy.

“It’s a new day, with a new way, but an old issue,” Ms. Levine said.

According to talent agency employees, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they are not allowed to divulge private dealings with clients, some A-list celebrities can be paid as much as $20,000 for a Twitter post or Facebook update.

In May, Kim Kardashian posted on Twitter: “Pregnancy lips…. @EOS to the rescue! LOL” with a picture attached of her using EOS lip balm. Ms. Kardashian did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month, the actor Michael Ian Black was more forthcoming and told his two million Twitter followers that Dos Equis had paid him thousands of dollars to share an ad for the beer company.

@planetoffinks No, they wrote it and paid me thousands of dollars to run it.

— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013

Linda A. Goldstein, a partner and chairwoman of the advertising, marketing and media division at the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, said that in all of these contexts the advertisers, investors and celebrities had a responsibility to disclose that they have something to gain.

“The message to brands is that you are responsible for the action of your spokespeople, so when you engage them, they should be aware of their obligations,” Ms. Goldstein said. In some cases individuals are breaking the law, she said, and she believes the F.T.C., or another government agency, will eventually bring fines against a celebrity for not disclosing his or her financial relationship.

Although there are no specific rules about the language people must use in an endorsement, Ms. Engle of the F.T.C. suggested using the word “ad” to preface a tweet. “It only takes up two extra characters.”

There is a risk, of course, that today’s celebrities could anger fans by not disclosing their financial ties. In an interview with InfoWorld magazine in 1982, William Turner, the marketing manager for Texas Instruments’ consumer products group, was asked why he had chosen Mr. Cosby to represent the company.

“He represents comfort,” Mr. Turner said, “and people trust him.”

Pregnancy lips…. @eos to the rescue! LOL twitpic.com/ctpyjj

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) May 28, 2013

Disruptions: Privacy Challenges of Wearable Computing

Pam Berry/The Boston Globe Thad Starner, second from right, is a technical adviser to the Google Glass team. He said he believed most people are respectful and would not use wearable computers inappropriately.

Perhaps the best way to predict how society will react to so-called wearable computing devices is to read the Dr. Seuss children’s story “The Butter Battle Book.”

The book, which was published in 1984, is about two cultures at odds. On one side are the Zooks, who eat their bread with the buttered side down. In opposition are the Yooks, who eat their bread with the buttered side up. As the story progresses, their different views lead to an arms race and potentially an all-out war.

Well, the Zooks and the Yooks may have nothing on wearable computing fans, who are starting to sport devices that can record everything going on around them with a wink or subtle click, and the people who promise to confront violently anyone wearing one of these devices.

I’ve experienced both sides of this debate with Google’s Internet-connected glasses, Google Glass. Last year, after Google unveiled its wearable computer, I had a brief opportunity to test it and was awe-struck by the potential of this technology.

A few months later, at a work-related party, I saw several people wearing Glass, their cameras hovering above their eyes as we talked. I was startled by how much Glass invades people’s privacy, leaving them two choices: stare at a camera that is constantly staring back at them, or leave the room.

Memoto Memoto can snap two photos a minute and later upload it to an online service.

This is not just a Google issue. Other gadgets have plenty of privacy-invading potential. Memoto, a tiny, automatic camera that looks like a pin you can wear on a shirt, can snap two photos a minute and later upload it to an online service. The makers of the device boast that it comes with one year of free storage and call it “a searchable and shareable photographic memory.”

Apple is also working on wearable computing products, filing numerous patents for a “heads-up display” and camera. The company is also expected to release an iWatch later this year. And several other start-ups in Silicon Valley are building products that are designed to capture photos of people’s lives.

But what about people who don’t want to be recorded? Don’t they get a say?

Deal with it, wearable computer advocates say. “When you’re in public, you’re in public. What happens in public, is the very definition of it,” said Jeff Jarvis, the author of the book “Public Parts” and a journalism professor at the City University of New York. “I don’t want you telling me that I can’t take pictures in public without your permission.”

Mr. Jarvis said we’ve been through a similar ruckus about cameras in public before, in the 1890s when Kodak cameras started to appear in parks and on city streets.

The New York Times addressed people’s concerns at the time in an article in August 1899, about a group of camera users, the so-called Kodak fiends, who snapped pictures of women with their new cameras.

“About the cottage colony there is a decided rebellion against the promiscuous use of photographing machines,” The Times wrote from Newport, R.I. “Threats are being made against any one who continues to use cameras as freely.” In another article, a woman pulled a knife on a man who tried to take her picture, “demolishing” the camera before going on her way.

This all sounds a bit like the Yooks and Zooks battling over their buttered bread.

Society eventually adapted to these cameras, but not without some struggle, a few broken cameras and lots of court battles. Today we live in a world with more than a billion smartphones with built-in cameras. But, there is a difference between a cellphone and a wearable computer; the former goes in your pocket or purse, the latter hangs on your body.

“Most people are not talking about privacy here, they are talking about social appropriateness,” said Thad Starner, who is the director of the Contextual Computing Group at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a technical adviser to the Google Glass team. He said he believed most people are respectful and would not use their wearable computers inappropriately.

Mr. Starner has been experimenting with different types of wearable computers for over 20 years, and he said that although some people are initially skeptical of the computer above his eye, they soon feel comfortable around the device, and him. “Within two weeks people start to ignore it,” he said. Over the years, his wearable computers have become less obtrusive, going from bulky, very visible contraptions, to today’s sleeker Google Glass.

Mr. Starner said privacy protections would have to be built into these computers. “The way Glass is designed, it has a transparent display so everyone can see what you’re doing.” He also said that in deference to social expectations, he puts his wearable glasses around his neck, rather than on his head, when he enters private places like a restroom.

But not everyone is so thoughtful, as I learned this month at the Google I/O developer conference when people lurked around every corner, including the bathroom, wearing their glasses that could take a picture with a wink.

By the end of “The Butter Battle Book,” the arms race has escalated to a point at which both sides have developed bombs that can destroy the world. As two old men, a Yook and a Zook, debate what to do next, the story ends with one saying: “We’ll just have to be patient. We’ll see, we’ll see.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Even the Tech Elites Leave Gadgets Behind

Nick Bilton/The New York Times The writer’s dinner guests place their smartphones in a stack in the middle of the table.

If you were to meet 32-year-old Robin Sloan of San Francisco, you might think him a Luddite unable to get his head around new technologies. He owns an old Nokia phone with one main application: making phone calls. He takes notes using a pen and paper notepad. And he reads books printed on paper.

But Mr. Sloan is far from a Luddite. He used to work at Twitter as a media manager, teaching news outlets to use the hottest social media tools. Before that he was with Current TV as an online strategist, inventing the future of digital journalism.

Yet last year, as he set out to write his first book, “Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore,” he found his iPhone and other technologies were getting in the way of his productivity, so he simply got rid of them. “I found it was more important and more productive for me to be daydreaming and jotting down notes,” he said. “I needed my idle minutes to contribute to the story I was doing, not checking my e-mail, or checking tweets.”

Even in Silicon Valley, Mr. Sloan has company.

As every aspect of our daily lives has become hyperconnected, some people on the cutting edge of tech are trying their best to push it back a few feet. Keeping their phone in their pocket. Turning off their home Wi-Fi at night or on weekends. And reading books on paper, rather than pixels.

I’ve experienced this, too.

Two years ago, when the iPhone and iPad were spiking in popularity, when I dined with other technology bloggers and reporters we enthusiastically passed our phones around the table, showing off the latest app or funny YouTube clip.

Now, even as our gadgets can hold more apps and stream faster videos, when I’m at dinner with technologists we play a new game. Attendees happily place their smartphones in a stack in the middle of the table, and the first person who touches his or her phone before the meal is over has to pay the bill.

Some couples who work in tech seem to be trying to step back the most.

“At least once a month my wife and I jump in our car and drive until cell service drops off (yes, this is possible) and spend the weekend engaged with all things analog,” Evan Sharp, a founder of Pinterest, said — on e-mail. “We read, we walk all over the California hills, we cook, we meet people who don’t work in technology.”

Other couples have told me of a “no gadgets in the bedroom” rule. (Kindles are sometimes an exception.) Some say they leave their phones at home when they go for Sunday brunch. Rather than take a picture of their bacon and eggs to post to Instagram, they can now enjoy each other’s company, and do that strange thing called talking.

There could even be a business model in products that encourage us to step away from our gadgets.

Last Tuesday, Penguin Press published “The Pocket Scavenger,” a book both physical and digital that encourages readers to go on an unusual scavenger hunt, collecting random objects, drawing and smudging on the book’s pages, then documenting them later with a smartphone.

“We’re not going to get rid of technology,” said Keri Smith, the author. “I feel like we’ve lost touch with noticing smells and tactile sensations, and I’d just like to offer some kind of antidote to what’s out there.”

As for Mr. Sloan, who has since published his book, he said his break from technology was a resounding success. He still checks his e-mail, but not while he’s getting coffee with someone or going for a stroll.

Although he isn’t rushing off to buy the next iPhone, he said he wouldn’t rule it out. But he would use such a device differently than he did before downgrading his cellphone.

“It sounds silly because we all used to do this all the time, but after getting rid of my smartphone I am now so much more comfortable just leaving the house without any phone at all,” he said. “I feel like I kind of learned how to do that again, and I would do the same thing if I had a fancy new smartphone too.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: New Motto for Silicon Valley: First Security, Then Innovation

The Twitter account of The Associated Press was among many recently hacked.

At Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., are stark white posters with bright red statements like “Done is better than perfect” and “Move fast and break things.”

These disruptive philosophies embody the spirit not just of Facebook but of Silicon Valley. Yet today, when technology companies have become the prime targets of rogue governments and hackers, the ideologies that drive these companies to provoke could end up disrupting these companies.

Conversely, the signs sitting in security research firms across the country warn, “Carelessness causes security incidents.”

Although technology companies say they take security seriously, protecting their customers seems to come second to announcing new products. Take Twitter, where people’s accounts are frequently hacked. In the last few months alone, this has happened to Burger King, BBC, NPR, The Associated Press and a slew of celebrities and users. In that time, Twitter has proudly announced updates to features on its mobile and desktop apps, introduced a music Web site and redesigned its company blog. But it still hasn’t released two-factor authentication, a security tool used by the rest of the industry to deter hackers.

Although Twitter declined to comment, I’m sure most of the people on the site who have seen their accounts pilfered over the last several years would rather have two-factor authentication than a shiny new Twitter blog.

One solution is a bill crawling through Congress over the last two years, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known as Cispa. The bill would make it easy for tech companies to share information about computer security threats with government agencies, helping fortify against cyberattacks.

But privacy groups say that Cispa is not a solution to the problem, and that instead it hands the highly sensitive personal data we want protected to the government.

“It has to be the obligation of these tech companies to build in security from the very beginning before we start moving into solutions about bringing the government into the private sector,” said Leslie Harris, president and chief executive of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group financed by a broad coalition of technology and telecommunication companies. “You want to see these very innovative companies step up and become the leaders in security solutions first.”

Cispa’s creators and defenders see it differently. They argue that companies are not simply fortifying against a child in his bedroom who is trying to get into their servers for fun. Today’s hackers hail from foreign governments like those in China, Syria and Estonia, and are adept at getting what they want.

Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who was one of the authors of Cispa, recently said that “our government, our industries and your personal information will be subjected to hundreds of thousands of attempts at hacking” in a single day. “We are in a stealthy cyber war in America. And we’re losing.”

He thinks the government can solve that problem.

Kelsey Knight, director of communications for Mr. Rogers, said in a phone interview that Cispa could stop “90 percent of the current security breaches” that happen today. “Then, in reverse, these companies would be able to share their threat of information and code back to the government and that will add to the list of zeros and ones that we can keep defending against together.”

Ms. Knight noted that start-ups cannot defend themselves against today’s advanced attacks because the cost can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. She said Cispa and other government groups can help.

One thing is clear: today’s tactics are not working.

During the State of the Union address this year, President Obama cited the need to protect “national security” and “privacy” while defending against cyber attacks. The president has also been meeting with chief executives to discuss ways to combat the threat of computer warfare and corporate espionage.

Cispa, now in the Senate, could take months, if not years, if it is to emerge at all from Congress. Until then, advocacy groups believe it falls to the start-ups to put more effort into security.

“The ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy is not a philosophy that has necessarily been good for our privacy,” Ms. Harris said. “I certainly believe that government and companies should be working together, but information sharing is just a very small part of the cyber security puzzle. It’s companies investing the resources to strengthen their own security first.”

Maybe it’s time for companies in Silicon Valley to replace those posters with ones that say, “Move slowly and protect your users.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Brain Computer Interfaces Inch Closer to Mainstream

Cadeau Creative Muse, a lightweight, wireless headband, can engage with computers, iPads and smartphones.

Last week, engineers sniffing around the programming code for Google Glass found hidden examples of ways that people might interact with the wearable computers without having to say a word. Among them, a user could nod to turn the glasses on or off. A single wink might tell the glasses to take a picture.

But don’t expect these gestures to be necessary for long. Soon, we might interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. In a couple of years, we could be turning on the lights at home just by thinking about it, or sending an e-mail from our smartphone without even pulling the device from our pocket. Farther into the future, your robot assistant will appear by your side with a glass of lemonade simply because it knows you are thirsty.

Researchers in Samsung’s Emerging Technology Lab are testing tablets that can be controlled by your brain, using a cap that resembles a ski hat studded with monitoring electrodes, the MIT Technology Review, the science and technology journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, reported this month.

The technology, often called a brain computer interface, was conceived to enable people with paralysis and other disabilities to interact with computers or control robotic arms, all by simply thinking about such actions. Before long, these technologies could well be in consumer electronics, too.

Some crude brain-reading products already exist, letting people play easy games or move a mouse around a screen.

Emotive A brain computer interface, developed by Emotive.

NeuroSky, a company based in San Jose, Calif., recently released a Bluetooth-enabled headset that can monitor slight changes in brain waves and allow people to play concentration-based games on computers and smartphones. These include a zombie-chasing game, archery and a game where you dodge bullets — all these apps use your mind as the joystick. Another company, Emotiv, sells a headset that looks like a large alien hand and can read brain waves associated with thoughts, feelings and expressions. The device can be used to play Tetris-like games or search through Flickr photos by thinking about an emotion the person is feeling — like happy, or excited — rather than searching by keywords. Muse, a lightweight, wireless headband, can engage with an app that “exercises the brain” by forcing people to concentrate on aspects of a screen, almost like taking your mind to the gym.

Car manufacturers are exploring technologies packed into the back of the seat that detect when people fall asleep while driving and rattle the steering wheel to awaken them.

But the products commercially available today will soon look archaic. “The current brain technologies are like trying to listen to a conversation in a football stadium from a blimp,” said John Donoghue, a neuroscientist and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. “To really be able to understand what is going on with the brain today you need to surgically implant an array of sensors into the brain.” In other words, to gain access to the brain, for now you still need a chip in your head.

Last year, a project called BrainGate pioneered by Dr. Donoghue, enabled two people with full paralysis to use a robotic arm with a computer responding to their brain activity. One woman, who had not used her arms in 15 years, could grasp a bottle of coffee, serve herself a drink and then return the bottle to a table. All done by imagining the robotic arm’s movements.

But that chip inside the head could soon vanish as scientists say we are poised to gain a much greater understanding of the brain, and, in turn, technologies that empower brain computer interfaces. An initiative by the Obama administration this year called the Brain Activity Map project, a decade-long research project, aims to build a comprehensive map of the brain.

Miyoung Chun, a molecular biologist and vice president for science programs at the Kavli Foundation, is working on the project and although she said it would take a decade to completely map the brain, companies would be able to build new kinds of brain computer interface products within two years.

“The Brain Activity Map will give hardware companies a lot of new tools that will change how we use smartphones and tablets,” Dr. Chun said. “It will revolutionize everything from robotic implants and neural prosthetics, to remote controls, which could be history in the foreseeable future when you can change your television channel by thinking about it.”

There are some fears to be addressed. On the Muse Web site, an F.A.Q. is devoted to convincing customers that the device cannot siphon thoughts from people’s minds.

These brain-reading technologies have been the stuff of science fiction for decades.

In the 1982 movie “Firefox,” Clint Eastwood plays a fighter pilot on a mission to the Soviet Union to steal a prototype fighter jet that can be controlled by a brain neurolink. But Mr. Eastwood has to think in Russian for the plane to work, and he almost dies when he cannot get the missiles to fire during a dogfight. (Don’t worry, he survives.)

Although we won’t be flying planes with our minds anytime soon, surfing the Web on our smartphones might be closer.

Dr. Donoghue of Brown said one of the current techniques used to read people’s brains is called P300, in which a computer can determine which letter of the alphabet someone is thinking about based on the area of the brain that is activated when she sees a screen full of letters. But even when advances in brain-reading technologies speed up, there will be new challenges, as scientists will have to determine if the person wants to search the Web for something in particular, or if he is just thinking about a random topic.

“Just because I’m thinking about a steak medium-rare at a restaurant doesn’t mean I actually want that for dinner,” Dr. Donoghue said. “Just like Google glasses, which will have to know if you’re blinking because there is something in your eye or if you actually want to take a picture,” brain computer interfaces will need to know if you’re just thinking about that steak or really want to order it.

Disruptions: How Deal Makers Put a Value on Start-Ups - Disruptions

Annie Tritt for The New York Times Otis Chandler and his wife, Elizabeth Khuri Chandler, the founders of Goodreads, a social media site that recently sold for a reported $150 million.

I have a vision of how suitors decide how much to offer for a start-up they want to buy. Several executives go into a conference room. Each scribbles a number on a piece of paper and places it in a hat. Then the chief executive pulls out a number, and there it is.

It might sound like a stretch, but given the seemingly random and sometimes nonsensical amounts for which start-ups with no revenue, or no users, or even no product are bought, I might not be far off.

But let’s say there is a logical way to value a company. During Bubble 1.0 there seemed to be — at least sometimes. Tech start-ups were valued by the number of eyeballs they attracted. When Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo for $5.9 billion in stock in April 1999, it was estimated that the company paid $10,000 per user.

Today, when eyeballs mean much less, how do start-ups with no revenue come up with a valuation? Well, it depends on a buyer’s reason for wanting the company.

One of the growing forms of acquisitions is an acqui-hire, in which a company is bought for its talent.

“If the company has no revenue and no users, then it comes down to the price of each engineer, which on average ranges between $750,000 to $1.5 million per person,” said Sam Hamadeh, chief executive of PrivCo, a firm that follows privately held companies, who noted that such acquisitions were up 91 percent from a year ago. “Facebook certainly pioneered and popularized this phenomenon as it made acquisitions to essentially snuff out competition.”

An investor report released by PrivCo in late March found that 12 of the acquisitions by Facebook last year were of this type. Often Facebook integrated the engineers and then shut the newly purchased company. The report also found that Twitter had acquired eight companies to get their engineering talent. Yahoo, Google, Apple, LinkedIn and Airbnb have also done transactions just for engineers.

Given Mr. Hamadeh’s estimate, we can begin to guess at a start-up’s value if it’s clearly an acqui-hire. If a company has 10 employees, no revenue and no users, it could be worth about $15 million. Throw in the cost of some office equipment, shutting down the technology and paying back investors, and it’s valued at $30 million.

Chris Dixon, a general partner at the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, said in an interview that although some of the recent start-up acquisition prices might seem high, many are amortized over four years, which makes some deals seem more rational. “If you’re paying $1 million per engineer in an acqui-hire, that’s split up over four years and ends up equaling the salary of other engineers in the Valley,” he said.

But some of these transactions have people scratching their heads — like that of Summly, a news-reading app built by a 17-year-old with two employees, which Yahoo bought for a reported $30 million last month. As Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell, noted, Summly didn’t use any unique technology and has only a couple of employees.

When a company has users and it is a straight-up product acquisition, the numbers can be more difficult to figure out. Amazon recently purchased Goodreads, a social media site built around sharing books, for a sum said to be $150 million. Mailbox, which had not properly begun, sold for $100 million last month to DropBox. And, of course, there is Instagram, which was bought for $1 billion.

Thomas R. Eisenmann, a professor at the Harvard Business School, said that when companies weren’t being acquired just for their talent — like Goodreads and Instagram — three possible calculations were used to determine a valuation. The first requires exploring how much time and effort it would take to build the product from scratch and attract new users. The second is potential cash flow.

The third is “in the realm of, ‘What number do we need to put on the table to convince the management and investors to part with their dream?’ ” he said. “Often, they end up somewhere in the magic middle.”

Of course, all of this math starts to fall apart when a start-up receives an exorbitant amount of press and exposure on social networks. Then suitors become irrational, making the price people are willing to pay seem as if it were plucked out of a hat.

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Disruptions: Stuck With a Carrier for the Long Haul

Andrew D. Brosig/The Daily Sentinel, via Associated Press Consumers cannot easily switch carriers and keep their actual phones.

If dating were like the cellphone industry, you would have to sign a contract when you entered a relationship stating that you would remain monogamous for two years, even if you wanted to break up. That’s what cellular carriers have pulled off by successfully lobbying for a recent government ruling that you cannot take the phone you paid for and switch to another provider.

It’s the latest reminder that owning a cellphone on one of the biggest United States providers can sometimes feel like an unhappy relationship. Time and again, in the minds of many customers, these companies take advantage of us and there isn’t much we can do about it.

Srinivasan Keshav, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, who studies mobile computing, has found that cell carriers make more than a 4,000 percent profit on text messages. Sending a megabyte of text messages over the cell network costs customers roughly $1,500. What does it cost carriers? Close to nothing, as texts piggyback on other data transfers, including voice calls. The carriers combined make billions of dollars a year in fees on texting alone.

Then there was AT&T’s decision in mid-2010 to kill unlimited data plans on smartphones for new customers. As Felix Salmon of Reuters wrote at the time, “AT&T prefers to make life harder for its customers, if that’s going to give it a little bit more money.” For those who kept their unlimited plans and use larger amounts of data, like me, AT&T sometimes slows the data connection on its network.

As my colleague David Pogue wrote in 2009, carriers force people to listen to a 15-second message with instructions on how to leave a voice mail message before they can actually leave one, and charge them for that time. Let’s be realistic, if you don’t know how to leave a message in 2013, you probably don’t know how to use a phone. Phone companies have also hidden some charges in our bills in the past, disguising them as government fees, even though the money went directly to the phone companies.

CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, defended the latest move by wireless companies, saying that prohibiting people from taking their phones with them, a practice known as unlocking, would help protect carriers’ investments in subsidizing new handsets, and ultimately benefit customers.

“What we’re trying to do is good for customers — it is just not immediately apparent to them yet,” said Jot Carpenter, CTIA’s vice president for government affairs. He said cell carriers were trying to solve two issues: stopping people from selling stolen unlocked cellphones and helping keep down the cost of handsets by ensuring that phones that have been subsidized by carriers return their investment.

But members of Congress, the Obama administration and the Federal Communications Commission see it differently. Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, introduced a bill this month to overturn the ban on letting customers unlock their phones. The White House has said it is “common sense” for people to be allowed to do so. Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C.’s chairman, said the ban “doesn’t pass the common-sense test.”

Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit company that focuses on information policy, compares the phone companies to airlines, which have reduced the cost of flights but now charge passengers to check bags, board early or eat a meal. “The difference, though, is that with airlines, once you are finished with that flight, you can choose to never fly with them again,” he said. “With phone companies, you’re locked in with a two-year contract.” Of course, there are other plans that don’t require a contract.

Consumers cannot easily fight these sleights of hand because in 2011 the Supreme Court said customers could no longer file class-action suits against their cellular carriers. Mr. Carpenter of CTIA said that if customers were unhappy, they could easily switch providers. “There’s a tremendous amount of choice and competition in the industry,” he said.

So will anything change? “The F.C.C. could push the industry to end a lot of these practices tomorrow,” Mr. Feld said.

Until then, consumers will have to decide whom they prefer for their monogamous but not always pleasant relationship.

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com
Twitter: @nickbilton

Disruptions: On Facebook, Sharing Can Come at a Cost

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press The way Facebook highlights or hides information on its site raises ethical questions.

7:23 p.m. | Updated

Something is puzzling on Facebook.

Early last year, soon after Facebook instituted a feature that let people subscribe to others’ feeds without being friends, I quickly amassed a healthy “subscriber” list of about 25,000 people.

Every Sunday morning, I started sharing my weekly column with this newfound entourage. Those posts garnered a good response. For example, a column about my 2012 New Year’s resolution to take a break from electronics gathered 535 “likes” and 53 “reshares.” Another, about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, owing me $50 after the company’s public offering, quickly drew 323 likes and 88 reshares.

Since then, my subscribers have grown to number 400,000. Yet now, when I share my column, something different happens. Guess how many people like and reshare the links I post?

If your answer was over two digits, you’re wrong.

From the four columns I shared in January, I have averaged 30 likes and two shares a post. Some attract as few as 11 likes. Photo interaction has plummeted, too. A year ago, pictures would receive thousands of likes each; now, they average 100. I checked the feeds of other tech bloggers, including MG Siegler of TechCrunch and reporters from The New York Times, and the same drop has occurred.

What changed? I recently tried a little experiment. I paid Facebook $7 to promote my column to my friends using the company’s sponsored advertising tool.

To my surprise, I saw a 1,000 percent increase in the interaction on a link I posted, which had 130 likes and 30 reshares in just a few hours. It seems as if Facebook is not only promoting my links on news feeds when I pay for them, but also possibly suppressing the ones I do not pay for.

Facebook proudly informed me in a message that 5.2 times as many people had seen my post because I had paid the company to show it to them. Gee whiz. Thanks, Facebook.

This may be great news for advertisers, but I felt slightly duped. I’ve stayed on Facebook after its repeated privacy violations partly because I foolishly believed there was some sort of democratic approach to sharing freely with others. The company persuaded us to share under that premise and is now turning it inside out by requiring us to pay for people to see what we post.

Facebook takes a different view, saying that it is still finding the right balance for the algorithm that decides what people see in their news feeds.

“The two aren’t related; we don’t have an incentive to reduce the distribution that you send to your followers so that we can show you more ads,” said Will Cathcart, product manager for Facebook’s news feed.

“The impact ads are having on engagement is relatively low, and we’re really pleased with how low that is,” he said. “Over time, we’ve shipped a number of changes to our algorithm that may cause content to go up or down.”

Facebook said in a statement that “the median amount of feedback on posts (likes, comments, shares) from people who have more than 10,000 subscribers is up 34 percent from a year ago.” But Facebook has also said that there has been a 2 percent drop in interaction on the news feed, and is now replacing free content with paid content, which means a large number of free posts will disappear from people’s feeds as sponsored ads float to the top.

Eben Moglen, a professor at Columbia who specializes in Internet law, said that although Facebook’s decisions to prioritize paid content could be seen as unethical, the company is not breaking any antitrust laws, yet.

“While the effort that is being characterized is problematic, no one has defined Facebook as dominant in a market,” he said, adding that the competition among social networks leaves it open to operate of its own devices.

In the past, lawmakers have gone after big companies that favor their own products and suppress others.

Microsoft in the late 1990s took advantage of its hold on PCs to force Internet Explorer onto people. Recently, Google has caught the attention of the Federal Trade Commission and a number of European regulators for highlighting its own products in search results. But in both instances, the companies were monopolies. Although Facebook has one billion users, there are plenty of other social networks and billions of people still not on the site.

“Certainly Facebook has changed its policies and adjusted its products in order to squeeze as much revenue out of all of the openings of the business model in a way that they didn’t have to do before they went public,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research and author of the book “Digital Disruption.” “It’s very possible there’s now a giant pendulum swinging within Facebook, where every division is under pressure to find revenue and advertising solutions.”

But for those who use Facebook for business needs, like restaurants, news outlets and local mom-and-pop shops that rely on the site to update customers, the changes could be damaging.

“It’s not just that people will feel nickeled and dimed by this, it’s that ultimately the value of the product disappears as the stream of information in your social network, one that used to be rapid and friction-free, is no longer there and now consumed by advertising,” Mr. McQuivey said.

When I asked Avichal Garg, another product manager for Facebook’s news feed, why my interaction count dropped so sharply, he said the company clearly needed to improve its algorithm.

“It’s really not in our best interest to take out the most engaging stuff and replace it with ads,” he said. “We want to make sure we show the right content to the right people.” Facebook’s ability to control the algorithm puts it in a different position from its competitors.

Twitter has the same type of advertising module, the sponsored tweet, but although it might highlight the ad in a user’s stream, it does not suppress other people’s content in the process. Everything just falls into a time-based stream.

Facebook may become dominant enough that its actions vex regulators, then it may be forced to change what it highlights. Or, maybe its users will grow so tired of what seems like another bait-and-switch that they will decide to stop sharing, even if it seems to be free.

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com

Disruptions: Disruptions: Google Flu Trends Shows Problems of Big Data Without Context

Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency Google’s Flu Predictor overestimated how many people had the flu this flu season.

Several years ago, Google, aware of how many of us were sneezing and coughing, created a fancy equation on its Web site to figure out just how many people had influenza. The math works like this: people’s location + flu-related search queries on Google + some really smart algorithms = the number of people with the flu in the United States.

So how did the algorithms fare this wretched winter? According to Google Flu Trends, at the flu season’s peak in mid-January, nearly 11 percent of the United States population had influenza.

Yikes! Take vitamins. Don’t leave the house. Wash your hands. Wash them again!

But wait. According to an article in the science journal Nature, Google’s disease-hunting algorithms were wrong: their results were double the actual estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which put the coughing and sniffling peak at 6 percent of the population.

Kelly Mason, a public affairs spokeswoman for Google, said the company’s Flu Trends site was meant to be only one source in addition to the C.D.C. and other flu surveillance methods. “We review and potentially update our model each season,” she said.

Scientists have a theory about what went wrong, as well.

“Several researchers suggest that the problems may be due to widespread media coverage of this year’s severe U.S. flu season,” Declan Butler wrote in Nature. Then add social media, which helped news of the flu spread quicker than the virus itself.

In other words, Google’s algorithm was looking only at the numbers, not at the context of the search results.

In today’s digitally connected world, data is everywhere: in our phones, search queries, friendships, dating profiles, cars, food, reading habits. Almost everything we touch is part of a larger data set. But the people and companies that interpret the data may fail to apply background and outside conditions to the numbers they capture.

“Data inherently has all of the foibles of being human,” said Mark Hansen, director of the David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University. “Data is not a magic force in society; it’s an extension of us.”

Society has encountered similar situations for centuries. In the 1600s, Dr. Hansen said, an early census was recorded in England as the Great Plague of London killed tens of thousands of Britons. To calculate the spread of the disease, officials started recording every christening and death in the city. And although this helped quantify the mortality rate, it also created other problems. There was now an astounding collection of statistical information for scientists to review and understand, but it took time to develop systems that could accurately assess the information.

Now, as we enter a world of big data, we have to learn how to apply context to these numbers.

Dr. Hansen said the problem of data without context could be summed up in a quote from the playwright Eugène Ionesco: “Of course, not everything is unsayable in words, only the living truth.”

I experienced this firsthand in the spring of 2010, when I was an adjunct professor at New York University teaching graduate students in the Interactive Telecommunications Program.

I created a class called “Telling Stories With Data, Sensors and Humans,” with the goal of determining whether sensors and data could become reporters and collect information. Students built little electronic contraptions with $30 computers called Arduinos, and attached several sensors, including ones that could detect light, noise and movement.

We wondered if we could use these sensors to determine whether students used the elevators more than the stairs, and whether that changed throughout the day. (Esoteric, sure, but a perfect example of a computer sitting there taking notes, rather than a human.)

We set up the sensors in some elevators and stairwells at N.Y.U. and waited. To our delighted surprise, the data we collected told a story, and it seemed that our experiment had worked.

As I left campus that evening, one of the N.Y.U. security guards who had seen students setting up the computers in the elevators asked how our experiment had gone. I explained that we had found that students seemed to use the elevators in the morning, perhaps because they were tired from staying up late, and switch to the stairs at night, when they became energized.

“Oh, no, they don’t,” the security guard told me, laughing as he assured me that lazy college students used the elevators whenever possible. “One of the elevators broke down a few evenings last week, so they had no choice but to use the stairs.”

E-mail: bilton@nytimes.com