Abeba Birhane has written an excellent historical overview of the original Artificial Intelligence movement, including Weizenbaum’s aboutface, and the current continuation of technological determinism. adactio.com/links/20534 | Continue reading
Everything old is new again: In our current “information age,” or so the story goes, we suffer in new and unique ways. But the idea that modern life, and particularly modern technology, harms as well as helps, is deeply embedded in Western culture: In fact, the Victorians di … | Continue reading
The timeless, futile effort to fix circadian rhythms with tech | Continue reading
The consultancy-futurism Jane McGonigal offers in Imaginable is part of the problem it is meant to fix | Continue reading
A fantasy life of push-button convenience and technological coddling is just as much a “virtual world” as any metaverse | Continue reading
The internet is decaying all around us | Continue reading
Cyberneticists like Stafford Beer sought the balance between large-scale systems and individual autonomy | Continue reading
The metaverse is just another way to “go online” | Continue reading
Why does Google still have that “I’m Feeling Lucky” button? | Continue reading
Creating more owners doesn’t make for collective ownership | Continue reading
What does it mean to think of the internet as a color? | Continue reading
The concept of “offline” is built on the earlier concept of “wilderness,” inheriting its flaws and hazards | Continue reading
Algorithms are changing how we experience nostalgia | Continue reading
Half a century ago, Lewis Mumford developed a concept that explains why we trade autonomy for convenience | Continue reading
Redeeming the endless, unreadable novel that Slack wrings from our working lives | Continue reading
Why “planetary computing” and “data-driven governance” will not solve the world’s problems | Continue reading
It’s hard to live with some objects, and even harder to get rid of them | Continue reading
Trying to automate environmentalism alone won’t resolve political barriers to conservation, but it might help us think differently | Continue reading
What makes a strictly utilitarian object luxurious? | Continue reading
Tech elites’ supposed indifference to fashion is a contempt for the commons | Continue reading
Of all the tech “disruptions,” the platformization of housing is among the most catastrophic | Continue reading
Podcasts and other forms of “parasocial” media reframe friendship as monetized self-care | Continue reading
We like to think that our digital impressions are measurable and within our control. They aren’t | Continue reading
People pay a premium for tracking technologies that get imposed unwillingly on others | Continue reading
“Creator” and “influencer” aren’t different jobs. Who does it serve to pretend they are? | Continue reading
Parenting tech domesticates state surveillance | Continue reading
A phrase for the limits of self-objectification | Continue reading
Changing the tech we use is not enough to mitigate the environmental and social harm of mass technology | Continue reading
The emerging dream of an internet where every interaction is a financial transaction | Continue reading
A new field of study aims to reveal the complexity and devastation of global supply networks | Continue reading
Calling tech companies “cults” distracts from the social and economic conditions that empower them | Continue reading
What happens when you need an app to access anything | Continue reading
Your gaming chair is trying to kill you | Continue reading
In prioritizing clarity and smoothness in its representation, Google Earth supports how we are consuming the planet | Continue reading
For proponents of “smart cities,” urban complexity can simply be coded away | Continue reading
The private home is not an isolated unit, but a living system within a mass of systems, requiring the labor of many | Continue reading
Indoor plants need what your domestic life needs | Continue reading
The value of reintroducing friction into our interactions with computers | Continue reading
The datafication of affect in the call-center industry | Continue reading
Has technology made us more susceptible to misophonia, the inability to tolerate the sounds other people make? | Continue reading
Digital connectivity has turned the “social factory” into a global battlefield | Continue reading
How do we remember when apps never forget? | Continue reading
Walter Benjamin’s posthumous work as a blueprint for living online | Continue reading
The uneasy pleasure of having thoughts without having to think | Continue reading
Why are objects allowed to remain in public spaces where people aren’t? | Continue reading
Calling data “the new oil” takes its exploitation for granted | Continue reading
The “smart city” makes infrastructure and surveillance indistinguishable | Continue reading