The Head of Design for Google Hardware Talks Hardware

Google’s Hardware division extends beyond the industrial design of their many products like the Pixel and Google Home, and into the realm of voice-activated assistants, user-experience design for phones and more. The division’s Head of Design, overseeing roughly 100 team members, happens to be Ivy Ross. Once a jewelry designer who shifted to fashion and then kids’ toys, Ross doesn’t believe that design (or even …

Ayahuasca Quests in the Peruvian Jungle

Author Wells Tower delivers a compelling and honest recounting of his ayahuasca experience in Iquitos, Peru. Beginning with an understanding that ayahuasca “ceremonies” have cropped up all over the world but the truly adventurous head to its home in the Amazon jungles around Iquitos, Tower settles in at the camp of Shaman Percy. A curandero (healer), Percy conducts Tower’s night on the hallucinogenic “medicine.” It’s …

Dubai’s Electric Autonomous Volocopter Coming in 2017

Between recognizing Dubai as a pioneer of urban innovation and understanding that the city is an ideal “extreme climate” testing ground for their autonomous electric multicopters, Germany’s Volocopter will be launching a five-year-long test program there—starting in the fourth quarter of 2017. The made-in-Germany air taxis feature eighteen rotors and a fully redundant power train. Quiet and emission-free flying, the vehicles are deemed safe thanks …