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The Verge

Enjoy the archives of this retired, award-winning series from Christopher Thomas Plante and The Verge that explained technology bit by bit. The series finale aired December 6th, 2016, shortly before Chris re-joined Polygon as its executive editor. For more on what’s happening now (and next) in technology and gadgets, listen and subscribe to The Vergecast.

What's Tech?

The Verge's Business Editor and drone expert Ben Popper explains drones, the flying unmanned aerial devices flying over battlefields, metropolises, and Popper's own backyard.
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What are drones?

The Verge's smartwatch expert Dan Seifert explains smartwatches. People have been clamoring for something like the smartwatch since the days of Dick Tracy, but will the new crop of smartwatches meet our futuristic expectations?
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What are smartwatches?

The Verge's Entertainment Editor Emily Yoshida explains fan fiction. This past week's Fifty Shades of Grey film adaptation made a staggering amount of money, but did you know the series began as Twilight fan fiction? And that fan fiction owes its prominence to technology?
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What is fan fiction?

The Verge's Executive Editor Dieter Bohn explains smartphones. The iPhone and Android have made smartphones ubiquitous. But when did cell phones become smartphones? And what makes them so smart anyway?
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What is a smartphone?

The Verge's Editor-in-Chief explains net neutrality. The recent historic vote by the FCC in favor of net neutrality will have a decisive impact on the future of the internet. But when did the pursuit of net neutrality began? And what exactly is it?
Portions of this episode are excerpted from the State of the Net conference. http://www.stateofthenet.org
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What is net neutrality?

Hacks, exploits, and system security are regularly in the news, most notably with the hacking of Sony Pictures. Russell Brandom illuminates a culture that's more complex than how it's often portrayed, and explains the nitty-gritty in layman terms.
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What is hacking?

You might not Snapchat, but chances are your niece or nephew loses hours each week to the increasingly popular social media app. The Verge's Sam Sheffer explains the app once known for nude pics, and how it's become a respectable competitor amongst communication services worth billions of dollars.
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What is Snapchat?

Recently, VR's made a striking comeback. Last year, Facebook acquired Oculus, the frontrunner in VR hardware, for $2 billion. Since then, we've seen aggressive movement in the industry from Samsung, Sony, and Valve, to name only a few of the companies that see potential in VR headsets.
How has VR risen from the dead? On this week's episode, The Verge's VR expert Adi Robertson explains the history of the VR and what circumstances led to the crop of VR projects in development at many of the world's biggest tech companies.
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What is VR?

Our future will involve driverless cars. At this year's CES, car companies and graphics card manufacturers alike featured the technology that they believe will power the vehicles of tomorrow. But how soon will we be driving hands-free?
Is the country ready for driverless vehicles? This week, The Verge's car expert Chris Ziegler explains the history of the driverless car, and the incremental improvements that have led us to this moment. Strap in your seat belts! It's going to be a very smooth and safe automated ride.
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What are self-driving cars?

When Gary Schteyngart wrote about the äppärät, an iPhone-like device that could stream our thoughts and conversations while monitoring our popularity, the idea seemed like an extreme parody of real life. The gizmo plays a central role in his 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story; at the time, I found it distracting, seemingly cynical and implausible. I never thought the iPhone would come so close to the äppärät, let alone so within half a decade, but with Meerkat and Periscope, it seems the truth is even stranger than fiction. I invite The Verge's live streaming expert Ben Popper to tell me about the origins of live streaming, and what our future looks like on and off camera.
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What is live streaming?

The selfie gets a bad wrap. Labeled shallow and self-centered by its critics, self-portraiture has a rich history, dating back to humanity’s earliest works of art. What changed between artists painting themselves last century, and people snapping photos of themselves today?
I invited The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern to explain the selfie. Stern and I bonded at CES over our mutual love of the selfie stick — something we discuss late in the episode. Sadly, right after recording the episode, Disney announced a blow to the future of the greatest photo-snapping accessory. This one’s for you, selfie stick. You will be missed.
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What are selfies?

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