Browsing: Project Loon

The message arrives on my “clean machine”, a MacBook Air loaded only with a sophisticated encryption package. “Change in plans,” my contact says. “Be in the lobby of the Hotel ______ by 1 pm. Bring a book and wait for ES

I have such a complicated relationship with Google and Facebook that I sometimes find it hard to write about them. I don’t mean complicated in the sense of conflict of interest, although it is true that one of the organisations I do work for now receives funding from Google, so there is that, but what I am really talking about is

The future will be about getting more people online, sometimes in unexpected ways, about technology that interacts without our physiology, about reevaluating how education works, and about expanding our existing communications networks beyond our own planet

Human beings can be exasperating creatures. We go from amazement to bored entitlement so quickly that even rapidly evolving technology is soon passé. Geosynchronous satellites? Ho hum. Smartphones? Yawn. So it takes something quite special to remind us of the wonders of technology, and Google Loon

First it was self-driving cars, then Google Glass, and now with Project Loon, Google is turning its attention to … balloons. The company has begun a pilot project in New Zealand using high-pressure balloons in the stratosphere to provide Internet connectivity “at 3G speeds” and, if it goes well, Google wants to encircle