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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Shoptalk: Overheard at the Virtual Conference
In this parodic installment of Shoptalk, we salute the year of conferences that have tried to be.
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The Limits of Telecommuting
Perhaps the lesson to take from this year of living online is not about making better technology. It’s about recognizing technology’s limits.
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“We Don’t Want the Program”: Jill Lepore on How Tech Can’t Fix Democracy
“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”[none-for-homepage]
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Experiments in Feral Futuring
Two futurists ran an experiment: What happens when a room of strangers plan for the future together?
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The DJ Is a Time Machine
Let’s rupture and reject the “timeline,” a flawed and colonial form of teaching history.
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Let’s Polarize Together
Humans can adapt to almost anything. So if social media forces us into permanently hostile camps, we will learn to stop seeing any other way.
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Can Tech Ever Be Good?
Companies like Uber and Airbnb rely on the exploitation of users and workers—and some investors are pushing back. Welcome to the “techlash.”
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Reading Resources: The Internet
A resource for teaching and discussing the internet, including a reading list, podcast, and discussion questions.
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A Tale of Two Valleys
To understand Silicon Valley, first examine the stories it tells about itself; just like, to understand the Victorian age, first read writers like Dickens and Dreiser.
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Public Thinker: Virginia Eubanks on Digital Surveillance and People Power
“We have to build against the legacy of inequality. Intentionally. We have to build our values into our design practices.”[none-for-homepage]
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The Dark Matter of Digital Health
Digital health is solidifying the divide between those whose health is valued and those whose health is ignored.
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The Danger of Intimate Algorithms
We must reimagine our algorithmic systems as responsible innovations that serve to support liberatory and just societies.
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Silicon Valley Is Not a Place
Silicon Valley has no mystical powers. It gets away with being thought of as apolitical simply because few have called its bluff.
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Facial Recognition Is Only the Beginning
Does the relationship between power and AI mean that all people will be monitored all the time?
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Understanding Race with AI
Racial categories are, by definition, unequal categories. They reflect not universal truths but historical processes that have linked racial status to …
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Does Chernobyl Still Matter?
Since it first announced electricity “too cheap to meter,” in the 1950s, the nuclear industry has promised bountiful futures powered by a peaceful—and safe—atom …
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Disrupting the “Startup Hustle”: An Interview with Margaret O’Mara
Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, John Doerr, Jeff Bezos …
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Designing AI with Justice
I will discuss three concepts in this talk: first, the idea of design justice; second, how people are already resisting oppressive AI; and third, the ten principles of design justice …
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Can Fair Use Make for Fairer AI?
Artificial intelligence has a copyright problem, and this problem is deeply related to questions of ethics and justice. Increasingly, AI is adopted by our banks …
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What I Learned on Medieval Twitter
Most of the people I follow on Twitter are medievalists, even though I’m not a medievalist myself. Far from it: my research focuses on the 20th and 21st …
