4Chan: destructive hoaxes and the Internet of Not Things

* Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The starting point for this article at first struck me as being so ridiculous that I wasn’t sure whether or not to write about it at all, let alone at length: that is, the claim that you can recharge an iPhone using iOS 8 ‘Wave’ technology in a minute and a half by putting it in your microwave oven. Is anyone really going to fall for that? But then, unlike Mark Twain’s Hank Morgan, who is enabled by his 19^th century understanding of technology and science to improve the lives of the 6^th Century subjects of King Arthur, most of us in the 21^st century have a pretty sketchy knowledge of technology that we don’t work with or use directly. Even Stephen Fry doesn’t know everything. In any case, knowledge of ...