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 Emily Perper Highlight Online harassment is as serious as offline harassment, and it rarely stays “only” online.
What Happened to eBay? By Emily Perper Highlight I haven’t peeked at eBay in years, and apparently I’m not the only one who’s forgotten it exists.
The Dream of a Perfect Android By Michelle Legro Highlight Hiroshi Ishiguro has spent his career creating robots. But does he know enough about humans to make them lifelike?
The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again By Longreads Feature The mysterious creator of bitcoin asks a journalist to help reveal his identity.
Mark Zuckerberg Would Like the Authority to Rule, Please By Ethan Chiel Commentary The Facebook CEO is in control of his company. He could just use a little more confidence.
‘What Do You Say To People Who Think They Have Nothing to Hide?’ By Longreads Feature Nathan Wessler, a lawyer with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, monitors a government that increasingly monitors its citizens.
My Journey to the Heart of the FOIA Request By Spenser Mestel Feature Fifty years ago, the Freedom of Information Act gave the public access to government secrets — all you had to do was ask. How a simple request became a bureaucratic nightmare.
Two Ex-Googlers Want to Make A Lot of Viral Tweets By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary The internet is not pleased with start-up bros who want to “disrupt” bodegas.
