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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“Just Use the Telephone, Please”: Hannah Zeavin on the Power of Teletherapy
“You can have really intense intimacy over distance, sometimes only because distance is there.”
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The 21st-Century Social Scientist
“If we want technologies that will not undermine our humanity, social analysts must join with other researchers.”
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The Art of Intelligence
Art made by AI subverts our usual understandings of creativity as a uniquely human power.
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Connecting Dots to Challenge E-Carceration
Whether tracking a migrant traveling thousands of miles or someone on parole at home, carceral tech is reaching into all walks of life.
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(A)I, Rapper: Who Voices Hip-Hop’s Future?
If we accept AIs crafting rap, we repeat the same exploitation that currently separates Black and brown artists from the fruits of their labor.
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The Healing Power of Virtual Cuteness
Violence underlies the whimsical colonizing of an island in “Animal Crossing.” But perhaps it holds promise for political repair, too.
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Face Surveillance Was Always Flawed
The mugshot was invented in the 1880s. A century later, face surveillance has gone digital but remains as flawed as ever.
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How to See Silicon Valley: Talking with Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner
“The ways in which the community itself is breaking down felt like end game capitalism.”
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The Future Is Not a Solution
How might we learn resilience, care and community in the face of crisis–climate, political, cultural, economic or otherwise?
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The Planet Needs Collective Action—Not Tech
Digital tech cannot stop climate change merely by “greening” individual consumption.[none-for-homepage]
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Prison Tech Comes Home
Landlords’, bosses’ and schools’ intrusion of surveillance technologies into the home extends the carceral state into domestic space.
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The Manifest Destiny of Computing
Today is overwhelmingly defined by white-supremacist violence and the whiteness of AI technology. Can seeing them together help defeat them both?
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The Ten Thousand Things
“I am supposed to be writing this essay, ostensibly on technology, but not for the first time, I believe I am unable to write; and not writing, doubt that I will I ever write again.”
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Can Algorithmic Bias Teach Us about Race?
Machines learned racism from humans. Perhaps humans can now learn about that racism from the very machines they taught.
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Public Thinker: Meghan O’Gieblyn on God, Machines, and Intelligence
“We can’t always explain how algorithms reach their decisions. The reasoning of algorithms, like the will of God, is unfathomable.”[none-for-homepage]
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No Cure
Tech promises to cure any ailment, whether an unwelcome feeling or a global pandemic. But what if tech itself is ill? And what is a cure, anyway?
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What Does a “Click” Count For?
In the digital world, metrics mean everything. But who interprets just what they mean changes across organizations, countries, and cultures.
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Eugenics Powers IQ and AI
Both the definition of “intelligence” and the tech industry are deeply entwined with white domination. Will white-supremacist AI be the result?
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Can Free Assembly Survive the Internet?
When the internet is in everything, its problems are everywhere.
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Users of the World, Unite?
Critical examinations of the internet too often focus on the successes and failures of corporate leaders, rather than on the real constituents of online communities.
