As a part of the wild experiment known as Verge Hack Week 2014, we turned the keys to the site over to some of the great, smart people working across every part of our parent company, Vox Media. We issued a simple challenge: write about the future. Here are the wonderful stories that we got in response.
Aug 23, 2014, 6:00 PM UTCMike Case
Our future government will work more like Amazon
There is a lot of government in the United States. Several hundred federal agencies, 535 voting members in two houses of Congress, more than 90,000 state and local governments, and over 20 million Americans involved in public service.We say we...
Aug 22, 2014, 6:46 PM UTCRyan Gantz
The future of self-driving cars: welcome to Autocon 2035
Good evening ladies, gentlemen, and fellow Sentients! Welcome to the 20th annual Autocon, presented by Google Motors and Lockheed-Uber. I know you’re all excited for new product demos, and to learn what the pending merger of our two companies...
Aug 22, 2014, 6:21 PM UTCDan Rubenstein
In the future, we'll all be like my grandfather
As essentially impossible as it is to be completely encouraged about the future of media or technology, there may be nothing that drives my optimism and ability to (hopefully) put things in their proper perspective than my grandfather Ben, who passed
Aug 22, 2014, 3:20 PM UTCRuss Frushtick
Will owning a FitBit finally make me cool?
In the early 1990s, the power of the slap bracelet was unquestioned. It was a dangerous tool, wielded by the most popular and fashionable members of my second grade class. Wannabes would cluster around, ogling the latest acquisition, be it a...
Aug 22, 2014, 2:06 PM UTCLeslie Price
Screw perfection: the new normal on social media is just normal
Aesthetically driven, the fashion, beauty, and health industries have glommed on to Instagram and other visual-sharing platforms, with users uploading streams of inspirational, FOMO-inducing photos. Whether it's hot dog legs on the beach; a pretty...
Aug 21, 2014, 7:19 PM UTCChristopher Grant
Why 'P.T.' is more exciting than 'Silent Hills,' and the future of the video game demo
A mysterious new horror game for PlayStation 4 — simply titled P.T. — was revealed last week during Sony's Gamescom press conference in Germany. Not only that, it was in development by the wholly unknown 7780s Studio... and a demo was available...
Aug 21, 2014, 4:56 PM UTCAmanda Kludt
Can the restaurants of the future be good to people?
The future of the restaurant industry — if all the startups and venture firms have their way — will be devoid of inefficiencies. Apps like Foursquare, Yelp, and many others aim to improve discovery, getting diners to the food they want when and...
Aug 21, 2014, 1:28 PM UTCJoe Alicata
The future of the home screen isn't about apps
"Have you seen this?""This" could be anything; a song, a video clip, a great gallery of photos. Regardless, if that seemingly innocuous question leads me to an app store where I search for 10 minutes through 50 variations of the same name and...
Aug 20, 2014, 7:38 PM UTCCory Williams
I'm the victim of a Spotify bully
Spencer Hall has been been laughing at me for weeks.Spencer qualifies highly on my list of coworkers that I am genuinely excited to see in the Vox Media office. Having not seen him in months, I spotted him rummaging through our snack bin in...
Aug 20, 2014, 6:30 PM UTCLockhart Steele
The retro-futuristic future of blogging
I've been thinking about ecosystems lately. As we're digging deeper into YouTube at Vox Media, I'm coming to appreciate the ways YouTube personalities interact with each other, recommending each other's work with in-video shout-outs. It feels a...
Aug 20, 2014, 1:47 PM UTCEzra Klein
The future is awesome, unless you're following politics
The future looks good when I read The Verge. The watches are smarter, the televisions are curvier, and the buckets of ice are icier.But honestly, the future looks less good from where I sit in Washington.
Aug 19, 2014, 7:33 PM UTCAmy Schellenbaum
Hey architects, the future of architecture is not about you
Architecture is largely a discipline that sits on stilts, away from the floodlands of the people that use it in everyday life. These supports, which keep the art and science of building design (and, to some extent, the appreciation of buildings...
Aug 19, 2014, 3:27 PM UTCSpencer Hall
The future of sports is drugs, gambling, and an immortal FIFA
The future of sports will be a nightmarish universe without bundled cable, meaning you will either pay individually for network’s programming or write a hefty check to ESPN (or its logical successor) in order to subsidize its production of league...
Aug 18, 2014, 7:03 PM UTCLauren Rabaino
If you have no surprises in your life, you’re doing it wrong
"I have no surprises in my life at all," my friend Ryan said. "We can’t go out and do anything anymore without knowing exactly how it’s going to go."I reflected on that statement for a moment. The night before, my Google Now notification told...
Aug 18, 2014, 4:58 PM UTCMandy Brown
Byron the bulb: how the velocity of journalism is changing
In Thomas Pynchon’s famous and famously unreadable 1973 novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, a short story about a sentient and immortal light bulb named Byron includes a moment when a technician is sent out to test Byron for irregularities. Wearing...
