• #mangobot

    Coming Soon from China: Dystopic Futures, the Next Steve Jobs, and a World Full of Drumming Androids

    Welcome back to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. I'm a total sports nut. Olympic season makes my bones shiver with excitement. But this year, I took my mind off record-breaking swim relays and super-twisty gymnastics routines for a minute to consider the host country's techno-socio-political future. The opening ceremony confirmed my theory that China is breeding robots. (We already know that the cute girl who performed the patriotic song was lip-syncing and that the fireworks shown on TV were fake. I'm pretty sure that the 2008 drummers who kicked off the five-hour technological spectacularity were androids, too.) But what else is up in the giant nation that many believe will be the next world superpower? I called some experts and came away with a list of five predictions for China's next half-century. More »
  • #triviagasm

    A Brief History of Reality Distortion Fields, Starring Steve Jobs

    Steve Jobs is the first non-science fiction character to possess a reality distortion field (RDF). Apple's MacWorld 2008 conference kicks off tomorrow with a keynote from Jobs, which leaves gadget lovers and iPod fiends white-knuckled on Tuesday morning as news of the next "insanely great" thing trickles out of Moscone Center in San Francisco. Why does this speech cause such furor (and fury) every year? RDF, of course. We've got the scoop on how Jobs came to posses the RDF, and we've got four other famous RDFs from science fiction for you to contemplate as you await the mind-control ray that will emanate from MacWorld tomorrow. More »