Bart Custers (Leiden) et al.: Lists of Ethical, Legal, Societal and Economic Issues of Big Data Technologies. Michal Saliternik (Netanya): Big Data and the Right to Political Participation. Boudewijn de Bruin (Groningen) and Luciano Floridi (Oxford): The Ethics of Cloud Computing. Sonia Katyal (UC-Berkeley): Technoheritage. Ben Thompson on tech’s two philosophies. It’s not the technology: The winners and losers of technological advancement are determined by very deliberate policy choices — namely patents and copyright law — not the technology itself. Andrew Feenberg on his book Technosystem: The Social Life of Reason.
Airbnb and the unintended consequences of “disruption”: Tech analysts are prone to predicting utopia or dystopia — they’re worse at imagining the side effects of a firm’s success. Tech billionaires are building their utopias without asking us. Tech has no moral code — it is everyone’s job now to fight for one. Is cyclical time the cure to technology’s ills? Anil Dash on 12 things everyone should understand about tech.
John Thornhill reviews The Digital Ape: How to Live (in Peace) with Smart Machines by Nigel Shadbolt and Roger Hampson, Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, and The People vs Tech: How the Internet is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett.
