Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies
Hard Fork29 Marras 2024

Hard Fork's 100 Most Iconic Technologies

This week, we’re bringing you a Thanksgiving special that’s great for a long car ride, a day of cooking or avoiding conversation with your family. We’re counting down the 100 most iconic technologies of all time, starting with No. 100: Boats. Our definitive list was carefully crafted using an advanced methodology of vibes-only decision-making. By “iconic,” we mean technologies that have either changed the world, ruined it or at the very least made life a little more interesting. And because we love chaos, we’ll explain why we chose each one in roughly 30 seconds or less.

Additional Reading:

This episode was inspired by the Iconic 400 list compiled by the podcast “Las Culturistas”; check it out.

We want to hear from you. Email us at hardfork@nytimes.com. Find “Hard Fork” on YouTube and TikTok.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jaksot(186)

A Surgeon General Warning + Is Disinformation Winning? + The CryptoPACs Are Coming

A Surgeon General Warning + Is Disinformation Winning? + The CryptoPACs Are Coming

The Surgeon General is calling for warning labels on social media platforms: Should Congress give his proposal a like? Then, former Stanford researcher Renée DiResta joins us to talk about her new boo...

21 Kesä 20241h 18min

Apple Joins the A.I. Party + Elon's Wild Week + HatGPT

Apple Joins the A.I. Party + Elon's Wild Week + HatGPT

This week we go to Cupertino, Calif., for Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference and talk with Tripp Mickle, a New York Times reporter, about all of the new features Apple announced and the co...

14 Kesä 20241h 13min

A Conversation With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada + An OpenAI Whistle-Blower Speaks Out

A Conversation With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada + An OpenAI Whistle-Blower Speaks Out

This week, we host a cultural exchange. Kevin and Casey show off their Canadian paraphernalia to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and he shows off what he’s doing to position Canada as a leader in A.I. ...

7 Kesä 20241h 15min

Google Eats Rocks + A Win for A.I. Interpretability + Safety Vibe Check

Google Eats Rocks + A Win for A.I. Interpretability + Safety Vibe Check

This week, Google found itself in more turmoil, this time over its new AI Overviews feature and a trove of leaked internal documents. Then Josh Batson, a researcher at the A.I. startup Anthropic, join...

31 Touko 20241h 19min

ScarJo vs. ChatGPT + Neuralink’s First Patient Opens Up + Microsoft’s A.I. PCs

ScarJo vs. ChatGPT + Neuralink’s First Patient Opens Up + Microsoft’s A.I. PCs

This week, more drama at OpenAI: The company wanted Scarlett Johansson to be a voice of GPT-4o, she said no … but something got lost in translation. Then we talk with Noland Arbaugh, the first person ...

24 Touko 20241h 17min

OpenAI's Flirty New Assistant + Google Guts the Web + We Play HatGPT

OpenAI's Flirty New Assistant + Google Guts the Web + We Play HatGPT

This week, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o, its newest A.I. model. It has an uncannily emotive voice that everybody is talking about. Then, we break down the biggest announcements from Google IO, including the...

17 Touko 20241h 6min

Meet Kevin’s A.I. Friends

Meet Kevin’s A.I. Friends

Kevin reports on his monthlong experiment cultivating relationships with 18 companions generated by artificial intelligence. He walks through how he developed their personas, what went down in their g...

10 Touko 20241h 17min

AI at Your Jobs + Hank Green Talks TikTok + Deepfake High School

AI at Your Jobs + Hank Green Talks TikTok + Deepfake High School

We asked listeners to tell us about the wildest ways they have been using artificial intelligence at work. This week, we bring you their stories. Then, Hank Green, a legendary YouTuber, stops by to ta...

3 Touko 20241h 13min