‘It’s An iPad, Not An usPad’: Douglas Rushkoff on Digital Isolation By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight “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.”
It’s Time To Talk About Solar Geoengineering By Longreads Feature 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.
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.
‘We Live in an Atmosphere of General Inexorability’: An Interview with Jia Tolentino By Hope Reese Feature 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.
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long By Longreads Feature 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?”
Technology Is as Biased as Its Makers By Longreads Feature 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.
We All Work for Facebook By Livia Gershon Feature Digital labor is valuable even when we do it for free. Should we get paid?
Against Hustle: Jenny Odell Is Taking Her Time at the End of the World By Rebecca McCarthy Feature 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.
‘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.
‘We All Live in the Great Database in the Sky’: On Silicon Valley and UFO Culture By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight “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.
Parenting in the New Age of Anxiety By Aaron Gilbreath Highlight Are we sacrificing our childrens’ inner lives by protecting them too much?
“Welcome to the House of Horrors”: When IP Address Mapping Goes Wrong By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight 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.
Not Quite Democracy: Lucie Greene on the Civic Aspirations of Tech Giants By Bradley Babendir Feature Lucie Greene’s new book “Silicon States” is about the danger of concentrating so much power in so few hands.
The Menace and the Promise of Autonomous Vehicles By Jacob Silverman Feature What does it mean to experiment with technology that we know will kill people, even if it could save lives?
TPS Reports All Day Long By Katie Kosma Highlight Have technological advances left many of us with jobs devoid of meaning? Are we bullshit?
‘I Love What Human Voices Do Together’: An Interview with Neko Case By Will Hermes Feature 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.’
Meet the New Mormons By Sarah Scoles Feature Is it possible to be queer, lefty, and a Latter-Day Saint? After leaving the church, Sarah Scoles sets out to understand liberal Mormons.
‘They’ve Forked Baby Hitler’ By Michelle Weber Highlight High-stakes time travel adventure from sci-fi writer Jo Lindsay Walton.
Do These Pants Make Me Look Like Everyone Else? Be Honest, Alexa. By Michelle Weber Highlight What happens to taste when machines become the tastemakers? Kyle Chayka meditates on style, algorithms, and our generic yet lullingly unobjectionable future.
Digital Media and the Case of the Missing Archives By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary The more work that journalists create for the internet, the more work is rendered obsolete.
Welcome to the Center of the Universe By Shannon Stirone Feature For the men and women who use the Deep Space Network to talk to the heavens, failure is not an option.
Translation is Messy, Which is Why Google Translate Will Never Be Very Good at It By Ben Huberman Highlight The popular online tool is great at rapid decoding. Extracting meaning? Not so much.
Art in the Age of Blockchain By Michelle Legro Commentary Why a rare Pepe meme is now easier to authenticate than a Leonardo.
Money For Nothing in the Bitcoin Bubble By Michelle Legro Highlight The cryptocurrency gold rush has made millionaires out of those obsessed with changing the world order.
The Encyclopedia of the Missing By Jeremy Lybarger Feature She keeps watch over one of the largest databases of missing persons in the country. For Meaghan Good, the disappeared are still out here, you just have to know where to look.
The Digital Age Won’t Kill Paper By Ben Huberman Highlight Just like handwriting survived long after the introduction of print, paper is still very much part of our internet-era economy.
Longreads Best of 2017: Science, Technology, and Business Writing By Longreads Reading List 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 Fight to Escape “A World of Anonymous Abuse” By Em Perper Highlight Online harassment is as serious as offline harassment, and it rarely stays “only” online.
