The information ecosystem is broken. Our political conversations are happening on infrastructure—Facebook, YouTube, Twitter—built for viral advertising. The velocity of social sharing, the power of recommendation algorithms, the scale of social networks, and the accessibility of media manipulation technology has created an environment where pseudo events, half-truths, and outright fabrications thrive. Edward Murrow has been […]
Read MoreHandmaid garb is the Guy Fawkes mask of 2019. Women dressed in red robes and blinkering white bonnets—the uniform of reproductive slavery in Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel turned Hulu show, The Handmaid's Tale—have become symbols of dissent across the internet and the world. The handmaids are ominous, silent, semi-faceless, and the most powerful protest costume […]
Read MoreCampaign finance laws prohibit businesses and even many nonprofits from directly contributing to political campaigns. They can’t even send pizza. Now, the United States Federal Election Commission may apply the same laws to block a cybersecurity firm from offering free or low-cost defense services to campaigns, at a time when those protections are badly needed. […]
Read MoreIn its 880 pages, Neal Stephenson's Fall; or, Dodge in Hell navigates many of the themes the science fiction author has become known for. The history, and future, of science. How knowledge engenders power, and how that power perpetuates itself. How technologies that sound far-fetched are in fact inevitable, derived as they are from a […]
Read MoreOn a bright Florida morning, a cylinder of thin ice the size of a grain silo is hanging 50 feet above the ground. The frost had started forming in the middle of the floodlit night, when the technicians at Cape Kennedy had started to fill the great tank at the top of the first stage […]
Read MoreIn an investing world glamorized by Shark Tank, Silicon Valley, and “unicorns,” simple, straightforward communication about what drives VC decisions is rare. At the early stage of venture investing, raw data is very hard to come by. Obviously! At that point, the company usually hasn’t gone to market yet in any real way. So at […]
Read MoreLast week the Canadian social media company Kik—and an array of prominent backers in the crypto world—launched a $5 million campaign to fund an impending legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CEO Ted Livingston said the fight, which centers on Kik’s $100 million initial coin offering in 2017, was worth funding because it […]
Read MoreMany Americans think Big Tech and Silicon Valley have too much power and need to be reigned in. Six weeks ago, it was hard to believe Washington had the political will to do much about that. Facebook had just said it would take a charge of up to $5 billion for an expected Federal Trade […]
Read MoreToday, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer's Conference in San Jose, California, executives whizzed through all of the software that's going to power your iDevices in the coming year. Some highlights: iOS is going dark, the iPad is becoming a viable laptop replacement, and the Apple Watch is growing into the only health-tracking device you'll need. […]
Read MoreApple has a Huawei problem. Of the myriad issues raised by the evolving and intensifying US-China trade Cold War, the knock-on effects on Apple have been perhaps least appreciated. And not just Apple, of course, but a slew of American companies that have both shifted production to China over the past two decades and, more […]
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