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"Don't you wonder sometimes?" So go the lyrics to iconic musician David Bowie's song "Sound and Vision," in which the singer ponders the radio and television waves that fill his ears and eyes with wonder and entertainment.

Technology has developed rapidly since that song was released 40 years ago, but the isolation of technology hasn't changed much. Similar to the narrator of that song, we grow increasingly focused on the technology touted to break down the walls of communication, and yet we couldn't be more disconnected. 

The following articles in this month's Hanson Headlines constitute the 12th edition I have curated, and while I don't like to break the fourth wall, I wanted to just take a moment and say "thank you" for reading. Happy fall.

-Colin Helton
Client Communication Specialist

 

Apple is on a roll: from announcing the new iPhone 8 and X series (the latter featuring a facial recognition unlock feature), to the new iOS 11, it seems the Cupertino behemoth can't be stopped. 

Unfortunately, within the new iOS' control panel, you can't actually turn off the WiFi or the Bluetooth settings. It looks like they're off when you select the buttons, but they aren't. According to Apple, this is in an effort to "maintain access to cloud-based services such as AirDrop." In our estimation, this is a major security flaw being touted as a feature. Read more on the new iOS from Vice.

At Hanson: Our Systems Administrators are experts in the field of Security. Have questions about your business's security needs? Call us today!

The Sound of Light

 

Electrons move quickly, and yet we all complain about the speed of our computers and their associated networks. So what are we to do? We transfer information via photons (light) instead of electrons (electricity), of course. It sounds like science fiction, and maybe in our lifetimes it is, but researchers are hard at work to make these conversions happen in real time.

By converting light into sound using a special microchip, the speed of data we can transfer multiplies to be actually ten times slower than the speed of light! Will any of this affect the speed of app downloads on the iPhone X? Probably not, but that's what wishful thinking is for.

Read more from Gizmodo.

In which artist and musician David Byrne (yes, the founder of seminal New Wave band Talking Heads, that David Byrne) discusses the many wonderful technological conveniences we have developed and begun utilizing en masse within the last decade or so, and how these may be eroding the social structure of humanity. Is that intentional or unintentional, Byrne wonders? Bug or feature?

"Our random accidents and odd behaviors are fun—they make life enjoyable. I’m wondering what we’re left with when there are fewer and fewer human interactions. Remove humans from the equation, and we are less complete as people and as a society," says Byrne. "'We' do not exist as isolated individuals. We, as individuals, are inhabitants of networks; we are relationships. That is how we prosper and thrive."

Read more from the MIT Technology Review.