Tag: Technology

The algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps don’t know when your life changes course — and can keep up a stream of painful memories.

Children Of QAnon believers are desperately trying to deradicalize their parents.

“I think there is a better-than-good chance that our behaviors will change as a result of this pandemic. I am currently creating a ledger and thinking about opportunities, not just for innovation, but for a better humanity.”

Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There’s no Dropbox plan that will let us upload body and soul to the cloud. We are still here on the ground, with the same people and on the same planet we are being encouraged to leave behind.”

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.

In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Are we sacrificing our childrens’ inner lives by protecting them too much?

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.

Lucie Greene’s new book “Silicon States” is about the danger of concentrating so much power in so few hands.

Facebook’s botched war against propaganda campaigns.

The precarious future of messaging apps.

What does it mean to experiment with technology that we know will kill people, even if it could save lives?

Have technological advances left many of us with jobs devoid of meaning? Are we bullshit?

Neko Case talks about collaboration, women warriors, women inventors, men with excellent falsettos, losing her home to a fire, and feeling lucky in ‘a great sea of loss.’

Is it possible to be queer, lefty, and a Latter-Day Saint? After leaving the church, Sarah Scoles sets out to understand liberal Mormons.

High-stakes time travel adventure from sci-fi writer Jo Lindsay Walton.

What happens to taste when machines become the tastemakers? Kyle Chayka meditates on style, algorithms, and our generic yet lullingly unobjectionable future.

The more work that journalists create for the internet, the more work is rendered obsolete.

For the men and women who use the Deep Space Network to talk to the heavens, failure is not an option.

The popular online tool is great at rapid decoding. Extracting meaning? Not so much.

Why a rare Pepe meme is now easier to authenticate than a Leonardo.

The cryptocurrency gold rush has made millionaires out of those obsessed with changing the world order.