This week, we’re sharing stories from Drew Magary, Amy Wallace, Leif Reigstad, Pam Houston, and Ziya Tong.
Backchannel
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Befriending My Iranian Instagram Hacker
Professor Negar Mottahedeh gets some insight into her former homeland after an Iranian hacker steals her Instagram identity.
Posted inArts & Culture, Nonfiction, Quotes
Money, Beauty, Security: Online Dating in the Philippines
New technology and information access in the Philippines is shifting the online-dating power dynamic from Western men to Filipina women.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Was Virtual Reality?
The stakes of inventing and occupying fictional worlds have always been high — which explains why we were so fascinated with virtual reality already in the 1990s, when the technology was still in its pre-infancy.
Posted inEditor's Pick, Nonfiction, Quotes
What Was Virtual Reality?
The stakes of inventing and occupying fictional worlds have always been high — which explains why we were so fascinated with virtual reality already in the 1990s, when the technology was still in its pre-infancy.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The ‘Quasi-Celebrity’ Gene Editing Pioneer
The controversial genome editing technique Crispr-Cas9 has sparked some fascinating recent deep-dives, including Backchannel’s “Editing the Software of Life, for Fame and Fortune” in June, and Wired’s July cover story “The Genesis Engine,” which inspired the Twitter hashtag #crisprfacts. Jennifer Doudna, the biochemist who helped invent the breakthrough tool, often helps anchor the coverage. Andrew […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Power of Reddit as a Public Health Advocacy Tool
Writing for Backchannel, Andrew McMillen recently profiled a woman named Tracey Helton. Helton—a former heroin addict who now works as a public health advocate—has taken to Reddit to advocate harm reduction strategies among addicts and to distribute the overdose-reversing drug naloxone. Dubbed the “mother of r/opiates,” Helton’s program “illustrates the unexpected good that can emerge from darker corners of […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Understanding the ‘Swiss Cheese Model’ of Error
The human lapses that occurred after the computerized ordering system and pill-dispensing robots did their jobs perfectly well is a textbook case of English psychologist James Reason’s “Swiss cheese model” of error. Reason’s model holds that all complex organizations harbor many “latent errors,” unsafe conditions that are, in essence, mistakes waiting to happen. They’re like a forest […]