It’s been a wonderful four years writing the tech column for The Pio. But all good things must come to an end. Since I’m going to be leaving campus and taking them with me, I figured I’d share my rules for understanding and contextualizing the technology industry. I’ve honed these from years of watching companies rise and fall, and they’ve come to serve me fairly well whenever I’m thinking about a new piece of tech. I think you’ll find them similarly useful.

1. If they aren’t charging you, they’re selling you to somebody else. There are two ways that a tech company sells you. The first is through advertising: For example, Facebook doesn’t make money by running Facebook; they make money by selling advertisements that can be targeted to you based on anything in your profile. If a particular product isn’t selling you ads (“monetizing” in industry lingo), then that means it probably plans on building its userbase, and then selling the product to a bigger company, who will then start selling ads based on your personal information.

2. Bad things happen to good products. In the tech industry, longevity is the exception, not the rule. Case in point: Google recently announced that it’s going to shut down Google Reader this summer. Reader is a hugely popular product with a vast userbase. I’m not exaggerating when I say Reader became the RSS reader ecosystem after its launch. Look at Myspace, or Lotus Notes. These are products that are past their prime and in decline. Facebook certainly thinks that it has the longevity, userbase and clout to maintain itself as a force online, but I’m not so sure.

3. Not every product is for you. I’m not the target audience for kids’ software on the iPad. I already know my ABCs, and I’m not looking to become a parent anytime soon. But just because I’m not the target audience doesn’t mean the product is bad. Before dismissing a new piece of tech, try to figure out if you’re the intended user. There’s a chance that product you think is useless is actually a valuable tool for someone who isn’t you.

4. Competition between platforms doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. Just as the existence of Coke doesn’t necessitate the annihilation of Pepsi, competing technical platforms don’t have to knock one another out of the market in order to be successful. It’s possible for the Mac OS and Windows to continue competing with one another without one destroying the other. In fact, I’d say that it’s actually better for there to be competition in a given sector because that will drive all of the parties involved to do a better job of innovating. So please, stop bickering.

5. If it hasn’t shipped, take any words with a grain of salt. This industry has no shortage of visionaries with great ideas. Actually taking those ideas and turning them into a shipping product takes an entirely different degree of effort, one which doesn’t always happen. It’s great to get hyped about something that might turn out to be the next big thing, but until it actually shows up in your hands, don’t get too excited.

And there you have it: my five rules for understanding technology. May they serve you well in your travels.

Illustration by Eduardo Vazquez

When I wrote my election season column last semester, the Associated Students of Whitman College (ASWC) was in dire straits. A disjointed communications strategy and ineffectual leadership made for a political entity that seemed distant from the students it was supposed to represent.

There’s good news, though. ASWC has made vast improvements since last year, especially in the realm of communications. The work of Sally Boggan ’13 and the Department of Communications has improved ASWC’s reach by leaps and bounds. It’s been a big year for ASWC as well, with huge victories regarding international travel and student representation with the Board of Trustees. But there’s always room to improve.

Now, ASWC needs to take those successes and convince the Whitman campus it is worth it to care. I love the constant emails through the ASWC listserv, but some of my friends find them tiresome. Now that its communication is on track, ASWC needs to reach out to those people who aren’t predisposed to pay attention to everything that comes out of their office.

That’s not an insurmountable problem, but it won’t be solved simply by writing better emails. ASWC needs to give the student body an opportunity to get some skin in the game, and that means radically rethinking some of the key assumptions behind the existence of a Senate and Executive Council. With an incoming Senate class that represents a wide swath of the Whitman community, I think it’s an excellent time for ASWC to turn over a new procedural leaf and become more welcoming to those who aren’t a part of Senate or EC.

My recommendations for next year are twofold: ASWC should provide greater opportunities for students to directly influence the political process and work hard to make that process more accessible.

Having a Senate that’s able to direct policy and handle housekeeping of ASWC as a system is important and useful. We’re a busy campus with hardworking students, and when it comes to discussing policies with members of the administration, or managing ASWC’s bylaws, having an elected political elite on campus to represent us makes sense.

But that system separates average students from the mechanics of governance. Representation means that it’s possible to vote a couple times and then ignore what ASWC is doing for the rest of the year. Senators already propose measures in committees: Why not allow students to make their own proposals? I’m sure it would require some creative changes to the bylaws, but a more direct democratic system would provide an excellent opportunity for students to influence ASWC’s process in a tangible way, and make us feel like we matter in our student government.

In order for those changes to be effective, though, ASWC’s meetings need to become more approachable. The current obsession with strict parliamentary procedure has to go. I understand that running a tight meeting is important, but the mechanisms ASWC has in place to do that exclude everyone but the initiated few. It seems that there are even times when the Senate gets confused by its own parliamentary acrobatics, as shown by the fact that the Senate voted on the same amendment three times in a row last Sunday.

If the Senate can’t grasp its own procedures, how can a student be expected to understand them? Moreover, the jargon-filled language of parliamentary procedure isn’t even helping the people it’s supposed to keep organized. That should be a signal that it’s high time to reevaluate the way things get done, especially because a more accessible, more human Senate is better for everyone involved.

ASWC has made some great strides to bring its message to Whitman’s campus. Now it just needs to put the hard work in to actually make its process more engaging.

A couple months ago, Jamelle Bouie published a piece examining why it is that so many members of the tech press are white. What he said, essentially, is that the way the tech press is structured subtly excludes people of color, especially African-Americans and Latinos.

Of course, the tech industry would like to see things differently. Jason Calacanis got into an argument with Bouie on Twitter, arguing that all it takes to succeed is putting in hours and hours of work. As Calacanis put it: “There isn’t a race wall in tech.” Calacanis’ view is not a unique one. After all, tech is supposed to be the great equalizer. Code doesn’t care what race you are, or so the story goes. But if you look around at who’s helming the hot new startups, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

As Bouie points out in his article, African-Americans and Latinos are “huge [I]nternet users,” and according to a survey done by Nielsen, are more likely than whites to own smartphones. So clearly, the problem isn’t that people of color don’t use technology.

We’ve created this myth that anyone with sufficient talent and vision will be able to succeed in the tech industry. After all, Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed to build Apple. There are plenty of rags-to-riches stories involving enterprising software developers who built an app in their spare time and managed to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars selling it independently, or who managed to parlay their creation into venture capital funding and create a successful company.

What Bouie made clear in his article is that a system that requires a lot of investment of time and personal capital into a career that may or may not prove profitable is only an option for those of us who have a backup plan. For many students at Whitman, it’s possible to move back in with our parents and spend the time it takes to get a job in our field rather than have to go and get any job immediately in order to pay the bills.

Actually sitting down and building proficiency in a programming language is a process that takes a very significant amount of time. If you come from a background where you need that time in order to pay for your education, or support yourself and your family by working multiple jobs, you’re not going to have four hours at night to devote to hacking away on a potentially revolutionary iPhone app.

Another problem is that when the tech industry promotes itself at conferences and company keynotes, there’s a good chance the voices on stage will be primarily white and primarily male. As a white guy, I can look at Tim Cook on stage at an Apple keynote and identify with him. He’s like me at least in some way. Those role models don’t exist in tech for a number of communities of color yet. And that’s important. We need to do a better job of promoting the work of people of color who are doing great things in this industry.

It’s not enough to just expect that the best will spontaneously rise to the top. We’ve tried that, and look at where we are now.

I care about this so much because I want the tech industry to live up to its promises of an egalitarian meritocracy. We’re not there yet, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work to get there. There’s a lot going for us: We’re a young industry, with fewer barriers to entry than older markets.

But we have to do a better job of outreach. This is an industry built on the idea that if you have the free time and willpower, you can do well. That only goes so far. We have to be proactive about creating opportunities and resources for people of color who are under-represented in this field, and do a better job of recognizing that just putting faith in the idea of a meritocracy will not, in itself, create one.

Blair Frank ’13, a self-described “hipster with self-control problems,” defenestrated his laptop earlier today. Photo by Marie von Hafften.

I’ve thrown out my laptop. While I adored my MacBook Pro while it lasted, it’s time for me to move on. Sure, it has some amazing processing power, and I love the user experience, but let’s face it: Computers are too mainstream.

Today, instead of my usual computing device, I’m now using a manual typewriter from the 1960s. My instrument of choice is a Royal Safari, which, in addition to sounding like something a ruler of the British Empire would do, is also a real workhorse. Well, if all you need to do is type.

This may seem an unusual step for the technology columnist, but my foray into asceticism has one goal: to eliminate distractions. See, there’s no way for me to distract myself with multitasking when the machine I’m working at can do only one task.

My typewriter is a knight in shining armor, fending off distraction after distraction. Twitter and Facebook no longer hold any power over me. I laugh in the face of video games, because I don’t even have the capability to make vertical lines and play Tic-Tac-Toe. My productivity has gone through the roof.

I realize that it’s possible to think that I’m an overreacting hipster with self-control problems. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You see, it’s my firm belief that all this new tech is overwhelming us, and making it harder for us to work. We need to go back in order to move forward in a productive manner.

In addition, my time with a typewriter has given me a greater connection with my writing. Even though I have to go through dozens of copies of the same essay just to make sure that I don’t make any typos, that tactile sensation of hitting keys in order to produce a printed letter is something you just can’t get anywhere else.

It gives my essays a great throwback look. Even if my professors end up frustrated with me because my margins are a bit off and my bibliographies are … inconsistently designed at best, it doesn’t really matter, because my essay is going to be standing out from all the other Times New Roman clones.

Finally, there’s the matter of self-defense. When I was carrying a laptop, I was constantly concerned for its well-being. But now, I’m using a machine made of steel that has survived for decades, and what’s more, it makes for a great bludgeoning weapon. So please, tell me about how silly I am for using this typewriter. I dare you.

With their backs against a wall, the purple team sends one of their own with a last-second clutch play. The competitors take off their headsets and stand up from behind their computers. The crowd goes wild.

Welcome to competitive video gaming, or eSports, as it is known to its enthusiasts. Week after week, millions of fans follow the exploits of their favorite professional gamers both in major tournaments and on professional ladders. As of this writing, a petition to get competitive gaming into the Olympics boasts more than 80,000 signatures from over 200 countries.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s possible for anyone with a computer and a decent connection to hook themselves into international competition. The developers of games in the modern eSports scene maintain ranked ladders that track the performance of every player in every region of the world that plays the game.

Playing competitively isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for a certain subset of gamers, the challenge of putting your abilities to the test against an opponent is irresistible. That drive is not all that different from the same competitive spirit that drives others to be successful in their fields, it just happens to involve video games in this case.

Live streams of major tournaments can often garner hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers, with organizations like Major League Gaming and the Global Starleague fielding large production teams complete with groups of broadcast commentators to bring viewers expert opinions on the fast-paced action on their screens.

Whitman fields teams that compete in the Collegiate Starleague, or CSL, which pits colleges and universities from around the country against each other in digital competition. In essence, the CSL allows schools like Whitman to field club eSports teams, alongside their meatspace-based brethren on campus. For the members of those teams, there are clear parallels between eSports and more traditional, physical sports.

“Pretty much all the same principles of a regular sport apply to any type of eSport,” said Jamie Edison, the captain of Whitman’s Starcraft II team. “You obviously have to have a lot of motivation and dedication to get better and play well.”

The Heart of the Swarm

For Edison and others, their game of choice is Activision Blizzard’s Starcraft II. A member of the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre, Starcraft places players in the role of a military commander, who has to manage resource gathering, unit construction, combat and overarching strategy, often all at the same time.

Starcraft features three races for players to choose from: Terrans, the last remnants of humanity; the Zerg, a swarm of monstrous creatures; and the Protoss, a race of psionically powered alien humanoids. Each race comes with its own unique units and strategies, but the objective for all three is the same: Wipe your opponent off the map.

Players are judged by their ability to manage their army’s growth and their ability to control individual units in combat with split-second timing. Top players are able to use keyboard shortcuts to control their production while simultaneously controlling units in combat.

Edison, who describes himself as naturally competitive, found the game after he stopped playing water polo.

“I was really grasping for any sort of competition I could get at,” he said. “It’s the same type of excitement I’d experienced in water polo.”

That same competitive drive is what brought sophomore Natty Baird to the game. Baird is a Zerg player in Master League, which places him among the top two percent of North American Starcraft players. For him, the skill-intensive nature of Starcraft makes for a worthwhile experience.

“If you can just control more units in more places at once, you can feel your opponent just collapsing,” Baird said.

While that may sound simple, the mental agility needed to pull off such feats is what makes Starcraft enjoyable.

“It’s hard, honestly,” Baird said. “I think part of the reason I like it so much is because it’s hard and so unforgiving sometimes. It just makes it really rewarding when you succeed at all.”

The Fields of Justice

League of Legends, developed by Riot Games, is another popular title among eSports enthusiasts. Unlike the army management and large-scale combat that defines Starcraft, LoL gives the player control of only one character, known as a champion. The game is played by two opposing teams of five players each, fighting to be the first to destroy the other team’s “Nexus,” on one of three maps, known as Fields of Justice.

In order to get to the nexus, players have to build up their champion’s power by earning experience points from killing AI-controlled minions and opposing champions, and using gold from those kills to buy items from an in-game shop to boost their characters’ stats.

Games will often take upwards of a half-hour to complete, and often hinge on “teamfights” with both teams bringing their champions’ powers to bear in an attempt to kill members of the other team, and keep them off the map until they respawn.

While there isn’t quite as much to micromanage in League as there is in Starcraft, teams’ success is often dictated by how well they can successfully execute their strategies.

Sophomore Ethan Scardina, the captain of Whitman’s LoL squad, said that the multifaceted nature of LoL is what keeps him interested.

“It’s like a test of skill, I get to be social, [and] it’s got a good balance of individual creativity and team play,” he said.

For Scardina, that social aspect of the game has helped him keep up with friends from high school because they get together to play LoL. As he puts it: “The only thing that changed when we went to college is that we all have better Internet connections.”

Ethan’s roommate, sophomore Peter Segre, found the social connections beneficial to his development as a player.

“I started playing with [Ethan’s] friends, and his friends were a lot better than me,” he said. But that skill disparity helped motivate him to push himself as a player.

“As I progressed, I constantly wanted to get better, and through that, I started to get better,” he said.

While teammates can make for good motivation, they can also prove to be a liability.

“You can do well, and then your teammates can do horribly, and it’s frustrating because you can only do so much for your team,” Segre said.

But, according to Segre, a team’s lowest lows can also lead to some of the most worthwhile moments in the game.

“You can get incredibly frustrated, but then if you feel like your team’s behind and you make a good play, it’s very satisfying,” he said.

For Scardina, part of the challenge is not just playing the game but also playing his opponents.

“It’s definitely satisfying to predict what the enemy is going to do and respond to it and be successful,” he said.

Getting Started

Of course, getting to the point where you can predict your opponents’ actions takes work. But Edison says that the lack of a strenuous physical requirement makes it a bit easier to join the world of competitive gaming.

“It’s just so much more approachable and so much more accessible than traditional sports,” he said.

That approachability helped Edison in his growth as a Starcraft player, when his practice regimen finally clicked.

“I [realized I] can actually get good at this game; all I have to do is sit and focus and play and figure out what’s going wrong and analyze my mistakes and then build from them,” he said.

For Segre, his experience playing League of Legends got off to an auspicious start.

“The first time I ever played a game of League, I played Fiddlesticks, and I couldn’t figure out that right-click is for moving, and left-click is for using your abilities, so I’d try to use an ability and then right click towards a person and then just die,” Segre said.

Over the course of his past two years playing LoL, Segre has greatly improved. He now has his eyes on continuing his progression up the ranked ladder towards tougher competition.

The Pro Circuit

For those who can turn pro, eSports is serious business. Major tournaments often boast prize pools in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the Season 2 League of Legends World Championships holding the current record for largest total prize pool at five million dollars. The most popular stars also support themselve by live-streaming their practice time on sites like Twitch.tv to thousands of fans.

Teams of players will sometimes get together to live in a “gaming house” in order to hone their skills with one another around the clock. While their salaries certainly don’t rival those of professional athletes, pro gamers are able to make a comfortable living at playing video games.

But in addition to being a day job for the lucky few who can make it pay, the professional side of Starcraft and LoL make for excellent inspiration.

“You see [pro players] do these amazing things with this game that you yourself can’t even do, and you can barely think of how it could be done, and it’s amazing to watch,” said Edison.

Baird’s experience watching professional eSports led him to some rather strange sleeping habits.

“In 11th grade, my mom was getting really concerned because I would go to bed at eight p.m. so I could wake up at four in the morning to watch my favorite player play in the GSL,” Baird said. “And it was totally worth it to me; it was the most exciting thing ever.”

Along with the high levels of competition, the personalities of players also play a major role in how they’re perceived by the overall eSports community.

“At this point, there’s practically tabloid drama,” Baird said.

For Whitman’s eSports enthusiasts, reaching the bright lights and massive stages of the professional circuit isn’t necessarily what motivates them, especially with the pressures of Whitman’s academics.

For competitors like Edison, the time commitment needed to excel at a game can prove difficult.

“It really is like any other sport; you truly do need to devote two to three hours a day just simply to practicing, or else you just can’t compete because you’re just too far behind anybody else,” he said.

But carving out that practice time while staying on top of the other commitments in their lives is sometimes a difficult choice to make when faced with everything else Whitman students have on their plate.

“Because ‘eSports,’ with some fingerquotes, is such a blossoming new thing, it’s really hard to even convince yourself that it’s a worthwile investment of your time,” Edison said.

Baird, who is on the border of the highest tier of the North American Starcraft ladder, said that the time commitment plays a huge factor in his decision to not actively seek a professional career at the moment.

“Trying to do anything pro is an enormous sacrifice. I’m not really sure I can devote that kind of time, or if I even want to,” he said.

While he doesn’t plan on turning pro either, Edison said his passion for Starcraft will endure.

“I’ll probably follow it for as long as it’s around,” he said. “I just feel like I won’t ever not care.”

Get Involved

If you think competitive gaming is for you, here’s how to get involved:

To download League of Legends, check out bit.ly/piolol.

For a free trial of Starcraft II, visit bit.ly/PioSC2

To get involved with Whitman’s CSL teams, contact Jamie Edison.

To hear the pundits tell it, we should be entering the age of wearable technology. Pebble, a smart watch that was funded through Kickstarter, currently holds the site’s record for most funded project with a total pledge of more than $10 million.

Rumors are swirling about the potential of an Apple smart watch, and Google is working on rolling out its new Google Glass hardware to a small group of hand-picked “Explorers” who are willing to pay $1,500 for the privilege of being on the cutting edge.

In short, wearable tech is big in the hype business right now.

As we begin to spin up the hype machine for the proposed iWatch, it’s important to remember what came before. Remember Microsoft’s SPOT watches? How about the Fossil FX2008? They were smart watches that were supposed to revolutionize the way we interacted with our wrists. (They are also but two examples of the growth of the smart watch idea, which has roots in the calculator watches of decades past.)

Those watches are long gone, and for good reason: They underperformed for their price. They were small, slow and bulky without providing enough functionality. As we look to the future of wearable computing, it’s important to keep these failures in the back of our minds. We’re not all wearing smart watches today because they have been a losing proposition in the past.

But since then, a lot has changed. Wearable tech doesn’t need to be capable of doing everything, because we’re carrying around these computers in our pockets that rival the capabilities of some of the best tech of the last decade. With a Bluetooth connection, a smart watch can act essentially as a second display for the processing package in a smartphone.

Fitness trackers are a great example of that symbiotic relationship at work. Nike, Jawbone and Fitbit have all created what are essentially enhanced pedometers that can interface with your smartphone, and they seem to be catching on. As a part of the ongoing hunt for an iWatch, observers noticed that Apple CEO Tim Cook tends to wear a Nike FuelBand in his daily life.

But even though wearables are able to do more with less, tech firms that want to sell them as consumer products need to be ready to pitch them as valuable consumer goods. I’m not sure that wearable tech is quite at that stage yet.

Case in point: Google Glass. While the technology behind it may be revolutionary, Google needs to actually make a case for why consumers should bother to plunk down hundreds upon hundreds of dollars on an experimental piece of tech to stick on their faces. Early adopters already picked up earlier iterations on the smart watch concept, and it seems Glass has already piqued the interest of people who are interested in technology.

While I’m living proof of the success of wearables (I can’t get enough of my Fitbit One), I’m still not certain that the world is going to take the leap to using wearable tech. While it’s certainly becoming more prevalent, only time will tell if this is just a fad directed at nerds, or a new frontier in consumer tech.

You may be noticing something new and different about the Pioneer’s website today, and it looks something like this:

We’re proud to announce that we’re partnering with a New-York-based startup called Echoed to bring you, our readers, a new way to interact with the Pio online. Echoed is a system that will allow you to easily share your stories with the community here on whitmanpioneer.com. While we work hard to cover news on campus, we can’t be everywhere, and we want to hear about the things that are important to our readers. Here’s a guide on how to get started posting your stories:

Before you get going, you’ll want to check out our Terms of Use at whitmanpioneer.com/echoed. That document lays out what is and isn’t kosher to post. If you’re interested in some tips about subjects, here’s some stuff we think would be interesting:

• Recaps of campus events (lectures, sports games, etc.) sharing your thoughts
• Photos from around campus–encounters with ducks, excursions into the wheat fields or just cool shots of daily life
• Thoughts on events or policies on campus, such as tuition increases, faculty benefits, student representation with trustees, or anything else that’s on your mind
• Reviews of local restaurants and other businesses

After checking out our terms, click on the plus button in the Echoed widget. If you haven’t posted with them before, you’ll be directed to a screen which will allow you to sign up. After that, you’ll be taken to a screen where you can enter a title.

Once you’ve saved your title, you’ll have a chance to enter the body text of your piece.

I’m a little bit wordy here. You certainly don’t have to write nearly as much as I did.

You can then choose to attach an image, add a subtitle, or add more text.

In this case, I used a photo from a video recording of one of the shows I talked about.

Once you click “Save and Publish,” you’re all done, and your story will be live on our site! Happy posting!

A few weeks ago, a good chunk of the game journalism world was fooled into believing a fake rumor about the future of the Xbox.

An anonymous source, claiming to have inside information, sent an email out to a bunch of gaming news outlets about the X-Surface, which the source claimed was the name for the upcoming iteration on Microsoft’s popular gaming console.

The X-Surface hoax was perfectly set up: The claims weren’t outlandish enough to arouse suspicion, with the hoaxer even confirming information from other rumor posts in order to continue to create a sense of legitimacy. The name X-Surface is just similar enough to existing Microsoft products to seem realistic, while still seeming new.

The hoax spread like wildfire, with dozens of blogs repackaging the concocted news in their own posts. When the hoax’s progenitor finally pulled back the curtain on the X-Surface sham, the Internet reacted with frustration. The overall response is probably best summarized by a Reddit commenter who said: “It truly is horrendous how the so-called gaming press gobbles up any nonsense thrown at them from any source whatsoever.”

Given that the first story was posted by a site that didn’t have any confirmation of the rumor’s accuracy, that indictment seems to be fair.

However, I find it overly simplistic to only lay the blame at the feet of the reporters who fell for the hoax. It’s true, they didn’t exercise due diligence in trying to corroborate the rumor they were fed, but at the same time, a number of somewhat perverse incentives in modern gaming media created an atmosphere that made publishing a fake rumor without any real attribution seem like a good idea.

Online journalism is largely paid for by serving ads to readers. The more eyeballs you bring to your site, the more ads they see (and potentially click on) and the more money you get paid. In order to bring people to your site, you need content that they want to read. Often, breaking news is a key part of drawing readers.

Unfortunately, when it comes to news like the X-Surface, readers don’t necessarily need to visit multiple sites to get a feel for what’s going on, because what’s really interesting about news stories is the news content itself. So, in order to keep a reader’s attention, most sites lift stories from other peer publications to stay up on the latest developments.

Speed is the name of the game in these re-blog wars. If you’re hours behind your competitors in posting the latest tidbit, odds are, any readers who would show up to view that content have already found it elsewhere, whether through social media or from another blog that they read. Those lost page views are money that your publication didn’t make.

The saga of the X-Surface shows just how easy it is to game that system with the right amount of finesse. But the reason why these rumors even went to press in the first place is that the consumers of gaming journalism can’t seem to get enough of the constant churning of the rumor mill.

Was bad reporting at fault in this case? Absolutely. But to only fault the poor judgment of the blogosphere avoids tackling the incentives that put the X-Surface to press in the first place. Want a better gaming media? Then consume better gaming media.