Year in Review: 2016
Year in Review: 2016
What should we make of 2016? This week Paul Ford and Rich Ziade recap the year, with a focus on the big tech trends of the past 12 months. Topics covered include virtual and, augmented reality, Pokémon GO, Facebook’s fake news problem, Apple’s terrible wireless headphones, self-driving cars, cybersecurity, conversational interfaces, Rich’s eternal optimism, Paul’s fears for the future, and the things for which they are both grateful.
Rich: First off, it looks like a place where there are, buried inside of Gramercy Park, are the bodies of Civil War soldiers, I’m fully convinced. I’ve never seen a child playing in there, I’ve never seen a ball get thrown.
Paul: It’s an ugly little park.
Rich: Anyway.
Paul: Even the pigeons suck.
Rich: This isn’t about Gramercy Park. [laughter] The pigeons are jerks.
Paul: They’re horrible.
Rich: In Gramercy Park.
Paul: There’s a raccoon in there.
Rich: Yeah.
Paul: It’s racist.
Rich: Ugh! He wears slacks! You ever seen a raccoon wear slacks?
Paul: I’ll also point out, like, the Civil War was pretty bad. Half the states, people owned slaves, and then we went to war with each other.
Rich: And killed each other terribly.
Paul: Truly —
Rich: A lot of bad things about it.
Paul: America was an unbelievable disaster at that point. Luckily we had Abraham Lincoln as our president, who got us through that. And we didn’t end up in that situation this time.
Rich: Yeah. And to quote Lincoln, he just sort of looked around and said, “Guys are you serious??”
Paul: Yeah, that’s what he said. That’s actually his epitaph. [laughter] You go to the Lincoln Memorial and you walk along and, “Guys. Are you serious?”