Category: Technology

With physical distancing the order of the day as COVID-19 spreads, cultural locales — sites for communal experiences, like museums and theaters — are emptying out. What are we sharing if we’re not sharing these spaces? And were we really sharing them to begin with?

Trudging to the grocery store to laden up with milk and toilet roll may seem like a chore, but does it improve your health?

We’re developing high-tech genetic tools to pour new life into animals lost to human destruction. Deciding how — and whether — to use that power is as complex as the science behind it.

There’s no such thing as a 140-character exegesis: the (non)-discourse around “Joker” is the latest to prove that social media is designed for emotion, not dialogue.
 

We need to start talking about seemingly drastic approaches to the climate crisis, such as sun-dimming aerosols, right now — or we risk losing democratic control of the process.

From global capital to YouTube, carbon credits to indigenous land defenders in their own words, Will Meyer has compiled a reading list on who lit the match and how the fire might be stopped.

Is tech disrupting spirituality, or is spirituality finally disrupting tech?

Jia Tolentino talks about what kinds of personalities thrive online, why she is suspicious of her own self-narrative, and the pervading sense that everything’s spiraling out of control.

Here’s a 📖 list for 🗺️Emoji Day.

The Gorgon Stare, a military drone-surveillance technology that can track multiple moving targets at once, is coming to a city near you.

The science of medicine is based on male bodies, but researchers are beginning to realize how vastly the symptoms of disease differ between the sexes — and how much danger women are in.

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.

A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”

From exploding Ford Pintos to racist algorithms, all harmful technologies are a product of unethical design. Yet, like car companies in the ’70s, today’s tech companies would rather blame the user.

Digital labor is valuable even when we do it for free. Should we get paid?

The attention economy is killing us and the planet. Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive.

Robocalls are a scourge, and it’s only a matter of time before the technology learns to spoof your mother’s voice.

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.

Maybe it’s time for an internet break… after you read this.

What happens when you ride an e-scooter out of the city limits — until its battery dies?

“The idea seems to be that we all live in the great database in the sky, occasionally summoning aliens with our minds.” Emily Harnett explores Silicon Valley’s appropriation of UFO culture.

Amid controversies and unethical practices, tech giants like Facebook and Google are no longer dream companies to work for.

As a result of Trump-era immigration policies, fewer highly skilled and educated legal immigrants — like 26-year-old Akirt Sridharan from India — are being hired by U.S. companies, despite their qualifications.

John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.

Lauren Hough recounts a decade of misadventures as a female cable tech in the DC Metro Area.

As competitors prank each other into account suspensions, the business of reinstating Amazon Marketplace businesses is booming.

We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in science and tech.

Is that not how the saying goes? Someone tell Amazon.

Is “mindfulness” not the cure for anxiety we thought it was? Dang, neoliberalism wrecks everything.

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.