archive

The debate over technology

Jonathan Zittrain (Harvard): Engineering an Election. Todd L. Belt (Hawaii): Leader or Follower? The President and Public Opinion in an Online World. Reza Mousavi and Bin Gu (ASU): The Impact of Twitter Adoption on Congressmen’s Voting Behavior. Is Twitter ruining politics? Chris Cillizza wonders. Casey N. Cep on whispering in the town square: Can Twitter provide an escape from all its noise? The appropriation of public space: The debate over technology and disruption is a red herring, writes Glenn Fleishman; the trouble with Uber is that it's a middleman that can control both ends of the market. Let’s nationalize Amazon and Google: Richard Eskow on how publicly funded technology built Big Tech. Andrew D. Selbst and Solon Barocas (Princeton): Big Data's Disparate Impact. J. Bradford DeLong assesses the ICT revolution's ongoing impact on the middle class. The “sharing economy”: masks a failing economy In the first of a series of monthly columns, Evgeny Morozov, the leading critic of the politics of the internet, argues that the benefits of the latest innovations are overstated and often risible. How to succeed in Silicon Valley without really trying: Tech investors gave Seth Bannon millions of dollars, even though they knew almost nothing about him. Consider the plight of the office drone: Such are the perverse rewards we reap when we permit tech culture to become our culture. Jesse Singal on 5 things you learn when you take a yearlong break from Facebook, Twitter, and work. David Roberts is against the “digital detox” metaphor. Reclaiming what we've lost in a world of constant connection: Soon enough, nobody will remember life before the Internet — what does this unavoidable fact mean? Anti-technology rant: Maria Bustillos reviews The Glass Cage: Automation and Us by Nicholas Carr. The new Luddites: Bryan Appleyard on why former digital prophets are turning against tech.