The Great Fiber-Optic Fraudster of Alaska By Krista Stevens Highlight To this day, only Elizabeth Pierce knows why she defrauded partners and investors by forging contract signatures.
McDonald’s Starts Serving McTech to Survive in the Modern Age By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Rapidly modernizing has caused the McDonald’s company some growing pains, but embracing Big Tech might just save them from their old analog self.
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance By Longreads Feature In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
Paul Clarke Wants to Live By Rebecca Tan Feature When a promising student left a neighborhood full of heroin for the University of Pennsylvania, it should have been a moving story. But what does an at-risk student actually need to thrive — or even just to survive?
We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Very Beginning By Longreads Feature Early electric cars performed better in cities than internal combustion vehicles, but didn’t give riders the same illusion of freedom and masculine derring-do.
We All Work for Facebook By Livia Gershon Feature Digital labor is valuable even when we do it for free. Should we get paid?
The Man Who’s Going to Save Your Neighborhood Grocery Store By Joe Fassler Feature American food supplies are increasingly channeled through a handful of big companies: Amazon, Walmart, FreshDirect, Blue Apron. What do we lose when local supermarkets go under? A lot — and Kevin Kelley wants to stop that.
This Is Why No One Answers the Phone Anymore By Michelle Weber Highlight Robocalls are a scourge, and it’s only a matter of time before the technology learns to spoof your mother’s voice.
Zuckerberg’s Trash Is a Subculture’s Treasure By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight An entire subculture of Bay Area residents survives by reselling wealthy residents’ trash.
‘Intelligent Education’ and China’s Grand AI Experiment By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Seven schools in China have installed facial recognition technology in classrooms to monitor — and score — their students. At The Disconnect, Yujie Xue reports on this “intelligent education” initiative.
What’s a Good Hourly Wage for Developing PTSD? By Michelle Weber Highlight Asking for a friend called Facebook.
‘Stanford Is the Valley’: On Grooming Tech’s Next Generation By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Amid controversies and unethical practices, tech giants like Facebook and Google are no longer dream companies to work for.
Repairman-man-man-(wo)man By Catherine Cusick Highlight Lauren Hough recounts a decade of misadventures as a female cable tech in the DC Metro Area.
Defrauding the Competition By Catherine Cusick Highlight As competitors prank each other into account suspensions, the business of reinstating Amazon Marketplace businesses is booming.
‘Mommy, Are We Famous?’: On the Rise of Kid Influencers on Instagram By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Kids are a growing part of Instagram’s influencer marketing industry. At Fast Company, Katharine Schwab reports on the rising stars of the platform — and the parents managing their “careers” behind the scenes.
The Rich Man and the Sea By Michelle Weber Highlight Laurie Penny spends four days on a boat confronting the archetypal story of “man vs. blockchain.”
You Have to Make Money to Make Money By Michelle Weber Highlight Is that not how the saying goes? Someone tell Amazon.
Sign On the Dotted Line to Ensure Your Own Destruction By Michelle Weber Highlight New York’s court system aids and abets predatory lenders who prey on small business owners.
Bread, Disrupted By Michelle Weber Highlight Bread: it was so terrible, right? Thank goodness the tech industry finally iterated on it so we can make a decent piece of toast after 6,000 years.
A Stimulus Plan for the Mutual Aid Economy By Livia Gershon Feature Policymakers’ neglect of caregiving harms a major force in American labor.
The Minefield of Facebook Support Groups By Krista Stevens Highlight If you’re going on Facebook to join a support group, be wary of trolls and those who want to profit from your misfortune.
Searching for Insights from Her Father’s Delusions By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight When a journalist tries to understand her father’s claims of CIA surveillance, she learns to see her digital world in a very different light.
The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing By Rebecca Schuman Feature How ’90s webzines heralded the best — and worst — of today’s online media landscape.
We’re Not Ready for Mars By Justin Nobel Feature Elon Musk can’t wait to send humans to the Moon and Mars. But before we land ourselves on other worlds, we need to remember how we’ve treated our own.
Facebook Isn’t the Same as “The Internet” Except When It Is By Michelle Weber Highlight What happens when a tool created by a bunch of developers in California becomes the main news source of a country 7,000 miles away? Nothing good.
