Section
Technology
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It’s Not Optimal
Four books about a new age of AI tell stories of sluggish processes, ambiguous outcomes, emotionally charged issues, and generous margins for error.
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In Search of Logged Time
When we leave the work of remembering to digital tools, we risk the loss of our histories to technological obsolescence.
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To Counteract Apocalyptic Technoscience, We Need New Myths
If there is contentment on the artist’s face, it is because she knows that she has left Babylon behind and is on her way to Zion.
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See Me like a State
As stories about flashy new technologies eclipse more measured coverage, it becomes easy for foreign audiences, particularly those in America, to lose track of the actual harms inflicted by China’s surveillance state.
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The “Diet Soda” of Data
Synthetic data promises to fix racial bias in algorithms used in AI. But its promise is false.
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The Encyclopedia Project, or How to Know in the Age of AI
In an age when AI regurgitates the blather of meaningless content, seeking its audience in the attention marketplace, it’s a small wonder that it is hard to tell what is really real anymore.
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“Costs on All Sides”: Annie Dorsen on “Prometheus Firebringer”
“Technology creates the potential for conflict from the very start.”
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The Multiplication of Monsters: Misinformation from Gutenberg to QAnon
Throughout history the introduction of new technologies has increased the circulation and acceptance of rumors and disinformation.
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Politics—Not Tech—Can Save Black Jobs from AI
Don’t plan to make individuals retrain for new jobs. Instead, build a society that upholds the lives of everyone.
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Developing AI Like Raising Kids
“In terms of the machine learning programs or robots that we have now, I basically think of them as being comparable to thermostats.”
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Dead Links
Tech titans gained power and wealth from the accumulation of data, but that doesn’t mean they are equipped to be long-term stewards of personal and collective memories.
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Who Picks the Next Kings of Tech?
“I’m looking for [companies] where, you know, at the end of it, there’s some big payoff… You know, would that excite me?”
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Weaving a Feminist Cyberlaw
Women invented cyberspace. Yet today’s internet rewards misogyny with fame, wealth, and power. Could it be otherwise?
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Protean Environment and Political Possibilities
As the planet warms, environmental destruction obliges us to revise the technoscience expertise and institutions once based on colonial legacies.
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The Low-Tech Side of Agri-Food Innovation
Is “low-tech” a more sustainable alternative to moving fast and breaking things? Or just a new iteration of the neoliberal fantasy?
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Dual Use: When Technology Both Helps and Hurts
The struggle between the use of math for benevolent or malevolent purposes carries from at least WWII into today’s debates on AI.
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Protesters of the World, Unite
Individual protests, like those in Hong Kong, may be defeated. But the global protest movement is only beginning.
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Data Free Disney
Each day, 50,000 people enter Disney’s theme parks, along with their phones, purchases, locations, and photos. What happens to the data?
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Are Spotify’s Vibes the End of Segregated Listening? (That’s Not What the Data Says.)
What kind of world does Spotify—through its algorithmic sorting of millions of users’ desires, through our aggregated listening—produce for us to hear?
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“Democracy Depends on It”: Carissa Véliz on Privacy and Ending Data Surveillance
“There is nothing shocking or radical about ending an economic practice that has too many negative externalities.”
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“Content” Erases Wall Between Fact & Fiction
“We’ve never had a period like this in modern American history,” lamented Governor DeSantis in April 2020, one with “such little new content.”
