Stories by Mike Elgan

It was a loony week in Silicon Valley. Four major technology companies announced expensive and risky programs to become less like themselves and more like their competitors.

The world of fast food is getting faster - and redefining the future of mobile payments. Just look at what several US fast food retailers, including Taco Bell and Chipotle, are doing.

This week, Google Glass got a new app called 'Refresh' that seems small, but it represents the future of wearable computing.

Google is selling Motorola to Lenovo. The deal makes Google better, Lenovo bigger and Motorola gets a new lease on life.

The two major social sites, Facebook and Google+, are embracing opposite strategies for the future, but they are heading to the same place: To add social intelligence to everything you do.

Lifelogging and lifestreaming got a boost from wearable computing and the quantified self at International CES this week. Welcome to the future.

In the technology press, every year is the year of this and the year of that. Much of this kind of prediction is based on expectations or wishful thinking and is essentially meaningless.

Mobile payments have still not caught on as U.S. users stick with their credit cards. Now the innovation is coming in the form of new debit cards.

Trends in social, search, mobile, wearable and the Internet of things will alter our perception of reality. Change is in the air, says columnist Mike Elgan.

The future was supposed to be automated and computerised. But it turns out that automation is creating demand for the human element.

Passing laws to minimise accidents caused by distracted drivers is a good idea. But let's not dump advanced technology prematurely just because we assume it's a distraction, says Mike Elgan.

A thriving industry of paid-for user comments pollutes social networks with fake opinions. Let the reader beware.

Columnist Mike Elgan tries out the new Google Glass eyewear and uses 'glogging,' a new social medium for sharing experiences that takes blogging to a new level.

Many of today's hottest products do something similar -- they get their value from the collective actions of users. Mike Elgan explains why crowdsourcing and all that user data is so successful and valuable.

Everybody's talking about PRISM, the US government's electronic surveillance programme
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