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.
Search results
The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing
How ’90s webzines heralded the best — and worst — of today’s online media landscape.
These Truckers Work Alongside the Coders Trying to Eliminate Their Jobs
“We basically have people from two worlds, neither of which has ever talked to each other.” At Starsky Robotics, a driverless trucking startup in San Francisco, truck drivers and software engineers work side by side.
‘Why Pay for Therapy When the Advice of Strangers Has Proven to Be Helpful and Free?’
Ben Popper takes a look at Koko, a startup with an app that helps people connect and provide emotional support to peers and, in the process, allows them to recognize and “rethink” their own problems.
Suburbanizing Survivalism
Inside the booming business of survival food.
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re sharing stories from David Dobbs, Rachel Aviv, Max Read, Holly George-Warren, and Bianca Bosker.
Longreads Best of 2017: Science, Technology, and Business Writing
We asked writers and editors to choose some of their favorite stories of the year in various categories. Here is the best in business, tech, and science writing.
The Queen Bee of Downtown Durham
A profile of fifth-generation beekeeper Leigh-Kathryn Bonner, whose startup, Bee Downtown has 100 sponsored hives on the roofs of old tobacco warehouses in Durham, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The hives house thousands of bees who do their part to pollinate the cucumber, apple, and berry crops that are staples of North Carolina’s economy. […]
Blockchain Just Isn’t As Radical As You Want It To Be
On how a new administrative technology is being conflated with radical politics.
The Billionaire Philanthropist
It’s American tradition for CEOs to stockpile their wealth, avoid taxes, and participate in the theater of giving. Will Jeff Bezos make it scale?

