I joined Salon in 2002, and since then I’ve written about, among other things, Smart Cars, robotic vacuum cleaners, muffin toasters, voting machines, architecture and 9/11, Tower Seven, Bill Clinton, Terri Schiavo, Florida’s elections, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” Malcolm Gladwell, Linux, Daniel Levitin, the copyright industries, Lawrence Lessig, The New York Times, Martha Stewart, a mnemonic to remember the Solar System’s planets, Google, garlic, stem cells, Comcast, Apple, Speedo, taxes, Social Security, Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama, the robots’ plan to take over the Earth, Howard Stern, Stringer Bell, Current TV, campaign finance reform, MoveOn, Howard Dean, Nintendo, Total Information Awareness, Java, Alice Waters, “The West Wing,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the Washington Post, Judy Miller, and Hurricane Katrina.

I’m pretty sure there’s no other news outlet on the planet which would have given me such latitude, and I thank everyone here at Salon for that. I also want to thank all the readers who’ve read my work, not to mention praised me, hounded me, kept me up late at night swearing at the screen. Don’t ever change.

– Farhad Manjoo

It was thrilling not only for the splendor of the place — even their commodes are computerized — and the welcoming attitude of my hosts at the Authors@ program (the company buys your books and hands them out to employees for free), but also because Googlers seemed to intuitively grasp my argument and posed many penetrating questions.

Google records these things and posts them up on YouTube, so if you’re looking for something to watch while eating a sandwich at your desk, have at it:

Another thing on the book: I’ll be reading and signing at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Building next week — 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 17.

If you’d like to talk about facts, rumors, conspiracy theories, and spin in the digital age, do stop by.

They were all fans of the first model, and they’re pretty happy about the new model’s new features. The reviewers say the phone’s 3G network access leads to a much zippier Internet experience, that its audio quality has been dramatically improved, and that it cozies up to Microsoft’s corporate e-mail system.

But there are some drawbacks, too: Mossberg finds the battery life lacking, and Pogue says that that the phone’s GPS antenna is too puny to be of much use.

Here’s Mossberg on the battery life:

More important, in daily use, I found the battery indicator on the new 3G model slipping below 20 percent by early afternoon or midafternoon on some days, and it entirely ran out of juice on one day. I overcame this problem by learning to use Wi-Fi instead of 3G whenever possible, turning down the screen brightness and even turning off 3G altogether, which the phone permits.

The iPhone 3G’s battery life is comparable to, or better than, that of some other 3G competitors. But they have replaceable batteries. The iPhone doesn’t.

And Pogue on GPS:

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.

Instead, all it can do at this point is track your position as you drive along, representing you as a blue dot sliding along the roads of the map. Even then, the metal of a car or the buildings of Manhattan are often enough to block the iPhone’s view of the sky, leaving it just as confused as you are.

None of the reviewers were provided with applications that third-party developers are creating for the iPhone (these will go on sale at Apple’s online App Store). Mossberg, though, writes that he tried out some of these apps on an older phone, and was pleased with the results:

I tested a game that used the phone’s motion sensors to control the action, and I tested several programs from America Online (TWX), including AOL Instant Messenger; AOL Radio, which streams music from the Internet; and AOL’s Truveo video search engine. All worked very well.

These apps will also work on old iPhones as well as on the iPod Touch.

The iPhone 3G goes on sale Friday at 8 a.m. But some enterprising folks have gotten a hold of them already — check out the Boy Genius Report blog’s unboxing photos.

I talked about how to get an iPhone in my video for Current TV this week:

It wasn’t hard work. Dolan popped into Potomac Video one afternoon and asked if he could look at Bork’s movie file. “There sure are a lot of them,” the assistant manager replied. “Is it OK if I make a Xerox copy?”

That was OK with Dolan; weeks later, he published Bork’s rental history in the D.C. alt-weekly the Washington City Paper.

Bork’s taste in movies was itself unremarkable (“First off, despite what all you pervs were hoping, there’s not an X in the bunch, and hardly an R,” Dolan wrote). But the publication sparked outrage from groups on the right and the left — including the ACLU and People for the American Way, which had vehemently opposed Bork’s nomination.

In 1988, Congress, spurred by the fear that the press might now easily unearth all politicians’ movie habits, passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, which remains one of the strongest privacy laws in the nation. The law prohibits stores from disclosing video histories unless ordered to do so by a court — and even then, customers must be given “the opportunity to appear and contest the claim” of any party seeking to learn what you watched.

I tell you all this as a historical wind-up to yesterday’s shocking news: In the ongoing copyright battle between Viacom and Google, a judge ordered Google’s subsidiary YouTube to hand over an enormous trove of data identifying who watched what and when on the video-sharing site.

Viacom’s lawyers argued that they needed this data to prove that “infringing” videos — e.g., clips of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” — were more popular than non-infringing user-generated videos. Presumably, if it proves this, Viacom might prevail in its argument that YouTube’s bread-and-butter was illegal videos, and thus owes some of its success — and billions of dollars — to media companies.

The database in question is astonishingly broad: Viacom asked for 12 terabytes of logs (approximately 12,000 GB) that detail each instance in which someone pressed Play on a YouTube video, plus the YouTube username of the viewer who watched it, the date and time at which the user pressed Play, and the IP address of the viewer’s computer. The database covers videos seen both on YouTube as well as those embedded on other pages: If you’ve never visited YouTube but have clicked on a YouTube video from your daily newspaper’s Web site, you’re in the database.

Google objected to Viacom’s request on the grounds that producing the database would be expensive, time-consuming, and would invade YouTube users’ privacy. The judge — Louis Stanton of the Southern District of New York — Judge Stanton dismissed all Google’s arguments. The company’s “privacy concerns are speculative,” he wrote. (PDF here.)

Such pat reasoning should give you a general sense of the depth of bone-headedness in Stanton’s ruling. As Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, the Robert Bork-inspired Video Privacy Protection Act applies not just to video cassettes but to “audio visual material” in general. Clearly it should apply here, and clearly, millions of YouTube users ought to have been given a chance to fight this invasion of our privacy.

But the real villain here isn’t Judge Stanton — it’s Viacom. I’ve previously raked the company over the coals for suing, rather than enjoying the fruits of, YouTube’s success (for instance last year, when it sacrificed potentially millions in ad dollars by pulling down the popular MTV clip of Britney Spears’ poor performance at the Video Music Awards).

But now Viacom’s sinking lower: Not content to fight just Google, the company looks to be manning the deck against us all. Sure, Judge Stanton might call this “speculative,” but think on it a bit: If Viacom’s willing to take on Google, what qualms will it have in suing you or me, recording industry-style, now that it knows what we did on YouTube? (Update: Viacom says it can’t use this data to sue you.)

All’s not lost. Google might manage to reverse this decision on appeal, and Viacom, gauging the outrage, could decide to withdraw or limit its request.

But our real hope here is legislative or regulatory action. Indeed, optimistic sorts might see a silver lining here.

As privacy scholar Jeffrey Rosen has written, “The politics of privacy tends to be largely reactive, fired by heartstring-tugging anecdotes that capture the public imagination.” Just as the airing of Robert Bork’s video history was the kick-start Congress needed to fix a clear privacy hole born out of then-new technology, this ruling might backfire on copyright holders, pushing lawmakers, finally, to curb the privacy-invading reach of copyright fights.

What we watch on YouTube is every bit as personal as what one rents from a store like Potomac Video. Indeed, it might be more private, and more salacious — imagine the fun you’d have if you were looking for unsavory data about a future Supreme Court nominee in 12 terabytes of YouTube logs!

In his floor speech in favor of the Video Privacy Protection Act, Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy argued that new database technologies capable of tracking private behavior called for new privacy regulations. That was two decades ago — and it remains true, still.

——

Update: A representative for Viacom e-mailed me to say that I’m overreacting. “We have no ability (and absolutely no desire) to use this data to sue end-users,” he argued, pointing out that all discovery documents in the case are bound by this confidentiality agreement.

Under this agreement, no one at Viacom will get to see these YouTube logs — only Viacom’s outside lawyers and experts, as well as court personnel, will have access to the data. The agreement also restricts the data to this case alone, which would seem to prevent the company from using the logs to sue users individually.

Michael Fricklas, Viacom’s counsel, told the New York Times, “I can unequivocally state that we will not use any of this information to enforce rights against end users.” He added that the company is looking into ways to “anonymize” the logs “to enhance the security of information that will be produced.”

The Smart’s automatic transmission, too, is simply awful, shifting from first to second as haltingly as a band geek on a blind date with a cheerleader. The brakes are squishy, sinking deep into the floor before they engage. And the tiny ride’s suspension leaves something to be desired — namely, a bit of protection for your throbbing, pothole-crushed behind.

But traverse the city for just 10 or 20 minutes in the Smart and the truth will hit you like a Hummer on its way to the repo lot. While just large enough to realize, on the inside, the comforts of a sedan, the Smart is perhaps the first modern, street-legal car small enough to completely upend your relationship with the city.

You feel it as you squeeze into that first too-tight parking space, a twinge of pride and schadenfreude that tickles your gut while passersby watch in wonder and amazement. And there it is again as you merge easily into an exit lane packed with unyielding commuters, or pull circles on a street so narrow another car would have to settle for a 13-point turn — it’s the sense that you’re unstoppable in this thing, that no corner of the city is off-limits, that this is the future of driving.

True, the fruits of the Smart revolution are circumscribed in time and space: The car will alter life most thoroughly for those of us who inhabit densely populated urban areas, places where parking, not gas, remains the most precious automotive commodity. And though it’s inarguable that the Smart’s era has arrived, the clock is ticking — within a few years, we’ll likely have smarter Smarts, or other companies’ improved takes on the concept, and this vehicle will look like the first iPod, a good idea superseded by better implementations.

But if you choose to plunge into the Smart now, you won’t be sorry. You should know, though, that traveling in this car is a strangely exhibitionistic affair; during the week that I drove it around San Francisco, no fewer than a dozen people interrogated me at gas stations, in parking lots and even while I stopped at red lights. The Smart elicits such curiosity that owners have taken to printing up FAQs to hand out to people they meet.

One of the main questions you’ll field is, Does it feel like a normal car? Inside, it certainly does — at least, it feels like the front half of a normal car. Though its interior design is a bit too ostentatiously youth-targeted — mine sported 1970s-era orange cloth seats — there’s more than enough legroom, headroom and elbowroom for two large people (or one person and a child’s car seat; it’s the ideal car for the single parent ¹).

Once you sit down, you quickly forget you’re in something that looks goofy. The Smart sits high, so you feel taller than others on the road, but unless you peek behind you — where there’s space for three or four grocery bags or two carry-on suitcases, but not much more — you’ll feel as if you’re riding in any standard, lower-mid-range sedan. There’s a lot of hard plastic, but the instrumentation is nicely designed, and nothing looks cheap. It even has some nice bonus features: A large moon roof offers a clear shot of the night sky; you can enjoy the view while listening to your iPod, which connects to the car’s stereo through a built-in audio jack.

People also want to know, Can it go on the freeway? When you tell them that it can — that it has no trouble going up to 70 — they interject, but is it safe? This is a tougher question. The Smart, which has passed all U.S. safety tests, includes four air bags — two in the front, two on the side — as well as force-limiting seat belts, antilock brakes and electronic stability control, a lifesaving feature not usually found on very small cars. On the other hand, you’re a small, inconsequential speck, a golf cart riding among Escalades, and as you take to the highway, you feel your vulnerability powerfully. Perhaps in time one might get used to this sensation; for me, it smacked too much of high school.

Does it run on gas, people want to know? What’s the mileage on that thing? Yes, the motor’s all gas, but the Smart is far less efficient than its size would suggest. It’s rated at 33 MPG in the city and 41 on the highway, which is better than almost any other car manufactured today, but not nearly as great as the hybrid Toyota Prius (48 city, 44 highway).

I drove almost exclusively in the city, and when I paid attention to my habits — accelerated slowly, coasted to a stop, slipped into neutral going downhill (not the safest thing to do) and so on — I managed to eke out 33 miles per gallon. The Smart has a faux-manual-transmission mode that lets you shift gears with two paddles that are set behind the steering wheel; when I used this function, I got marginally better mileage. Less careful driving yielded MPGs as low as 28. I calculated these numbers manually, by the way. Unlike the Prius, the Smart lacks an MPG gauge to let you know how much gas you’re using at any moment. Considering the potential audience for this car — Al Gore fans — this is a crucial omission.

The Smart, of course, will set you back much less than the Prius. The manufacturer’s base price is $12,000, though the model I tried — with the moon roof, power steering, premium sound and a few other knickknacks — was priced at nearly $16,000, excluding tax, licensing and other fees. To be sure, that’s not cheap: You can probably pick up a Honda Fit or Toyota Yaris, which are both easy on gas and drive wonderfully, for less than you’ll pay for the Smart. (The Prius starts at $21,000, but you’ll be lucky to get one from a dealer for less than $25,000.)

But the Fit and the Yaris are both at least 3 feet longer than the Smart (which is just under 9 feet long) — and size matters. San Francisco is one of the toughest parking cities in the country, and I drove the Smart to some of the city’s most nightmarish neighborhoods, places where I could never venture in my own car, a compact VW Jetta: Russian Hill and North Beach on a Saturday night, the Mission after work on a weekday, the Marina shopping district on a Sunday afternoon.

In every place, at any time of day, I found a spot, usually several, often within five minutes. The spaces were certainly odd — little scraps of pavement between garages, in otherwise unparkable corners jammed up against hydrants — but they were all legal. And I had one of the only cars in the city that could fit in these out-of-the-way areas. At times it felt like cheating — like I was the mayor or a diplomat or I had a secret key to every neighborhood, like a metropolitan god had blessed my weary soul. Seriously, it was heady.

So, sure, the Smart car feels underpowered compared with a John Deere, so its gas efficiency isn’t as great as you’d imagine, so it won’t come in handy if you decide to go on an Ikea shopping spree — so what?

Driving, these days, is an endeavor fraught with guilt and hassle, every turn of the key a vote in favor of global warming or Osama or suburban sprawl. The Smart returns pragmatism to the road: It’s not fancy, and as a driving machine, it’s not fun, but who said transportation should be?

Counting the time you save while parking, in the Smart, you’ll often get from place to place faster than you would in a Porsche. What more could you ask for from a set of wheels?

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¹ Readers have pointed out that it isn’t safe to place a child seat in the front passenger seat — a fast-deploying airbag can seriously injure your child. This is good advice for most cars. Fortunately the Smart detects whether there’s an adult or a child sitting in the passenger seat. When the weight falls below a threshold, the airbag turns off (there’s an indicator light which tells you it’s off, too). Back to top.