The mugshot was invented in the 1880s. A century later, face surveillance has gone digital but remains as flawed as ever.
Technology
Editor: Mona Sloane
How to See Silicon Valley: Talking with Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner
"The ways in which the community itself is breaking down felt like end game capitalism."
The Future Is Not a Solution
How might we learn resilience, care and community in the face of crisis–climate, political, cultural, economic or otherwise?
The Planet Needs Collective Action—not Tech
Digital tech cannot stop climate change merely by “greening” individual consumption.
Prison Tech Comes Home
Landlords’, bosses’ and schools’ intrusion of surveillance technologies into the home extends the carceral state into domestic space.
The Manifest Destiny of Computing
Today is overwhelmingly defined by white-supremacist violence and the whiteness of AI technology. Can seeing them together help defeat them both?
The Ten Thousand Things
“I am supposed to be writing this essay, ostensibly on technology, but not for the first time, I believe I am unable to write; and not writing, doubt that I will I ever write again.”
Can Algorithmic Bias Teach Us about Race?
Machines learned racism from humans. Perhaps humans can now learn about that racism from the very machines they taught.
Public Thinker: Meghan O’Gieblyn on God, Machines, and Intelligence
“We can’t always explain how algorithms reach their decisions. The reasoning of algorithms, like the will of God, is unfathomable.”
No Cure
Tech promises to cure any ailment, whether an unwelcome feeling or a global pandemic. But what if tech itself is ill? And what is a cure, anyway?
What Does a “Click” Count For?
In the digital world, metrics mean everything. But who interprets just what they mean changes across organizations, countries, and cultures.
Eugenics Powers IQ and AI
Both the definition of “intelligence” and the tech industry are deeply entwined with white domination. Will white-supremacist AI be the result?
Can Free Assembly Survive the Internet?
When the internet is in everything, its problems are everywhere.
Users of the World, Unite?
Critical examinations of the internet too often focus on the successes and failures of corporate leaders, rather than on the real constituents of online communities.
Shoptalk: Overheard at the Virtual Conference
In this parodic installment of Shoptalk, we salute the year of conferences that have tried to be.
The Limits of Telecommuting
Perhaps the lesson to take from this year of living online is not about making better technology. It’s about recognizing technology’s limits.
“We Don’t Want the Program”: Jill Lepore on How Tech Can’t Fix Democracy
“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”
Experiments in Feral Futuring
Two futurists ran an experiment: What happens when a room of strangers plan for the future together?
The DJ Is a Time Machine
Let’s rupture and reject the “timeline,” a flawed and colonial form of teaching history.
Let’s Polarize Together
Humans can adapt to almost anything. So if social media forces us into permanently hostile camps, we will learn to stop seeing any other way.