Technology Archives - Page 2 of 9

A Globe, Clothing Itself with Ears

Stories of speaking with animals are as old as human history

November 3, 2022 • by Karen Bakker

Human ambivalence about animal language persists and is linked with our uncertainty about human status: Are we one animal among others, or does something truly set us apart? Debates over animal language are a touchstone for human uncertainties about our role in the cosmos....

Technology

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

February 7, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...

Technology

Facebook’s Data Center Fluff

A snazzy new public relations push can’t cover up the truth

September 27, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Last week Facebook rolled out a new website dedicated to the awesomeness of its data centers, the large facilities it builds to house all the data it collects from you, me, and everyone else it surveils on the internet. I’m not kidding. Facebook built and published an entire website extolling the virtues of ...

Capitalism

Welcome to the Chip Wars

Intel wants another HQ2 contest, this time for chip manufacturers.

September 15, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ The Amazon “HQ2” contest—in which hundreds of cities threw everything including the kitchen sink at Amazon in the hopes of landing a new facility—was a national embarrassment showing just how tight corporate America’s grip on economic development policy is (at least until New York said no way). In a recent interview with ...

Columnists

“What Can I Do to Help?”—Said No Software Solution Ever

Re-hiring human beings for clerical, secretarial, and other traditional pink-collar work would create good jobs and make our offices more attuned to human needs

July 14, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ Is there anyone working for a large organization who doesn’t dread the announcement of a new “technology solution?” There’s a hard truth lurking behind every cheerful email about a new platform with a perky name and great graphics. That truth is: more work that used to be done by a ...

“What Can I Do to Help?”—Said No Software Solution Ever

Past Present

Peloton and the History of Product Recalls

Past Present Podcast, Episode 279

May 12, 2021 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Peloton, the digital fitness company made famous by its internet-connected stationary bike, is complying with a federal voluntary recall of its Tread+, which has killed one child and injured many other children and pets. Natalia referred to historian Richard Bushman’s ...

Democracy

Detroit’s Project Green Light and the “New Jim Code”

Why video surveillance and digital technology intensify racism

October 1, 2020 • by Vince Carducci

————— Over the last three and a half years, the City of Detroit has greatly expanded Project Green Light, an initiative of the Detroit Police Department (DPD), along with local businesses and other organizations, to use video surveillance and digital technology to fight crime. Since the first cameras went live in ...

Detroit’s Project Green Light and the “New Jim Code”

Economy

We Won’t Have a Truly Global Economy Until We Start Taxing It That Way

Reconstructing our tax system is an integral part of future national industrial policy as we restart the economy

July 2, 2020 • by Marshall Auerback

Taxation is one of those areas that exposes the contradictions at the heart of globalization. Globalization of goods has proceeded quickly, as has the harmonization of industrial standards across countries. Harmonization of taxation? Not so easy. The power to tax is the ultimate national prerogative, one that very few sovereign nations would ...

We Won’t Have a Truly Global Economy Until We Start Taxing It That Way

Politics

Another Media Regime is Possible

From the liberal public sphere to the information commons

January 29, 2020 • by Dan Hind

‘Media regimes’ can be described as distinct historical combinations of technology, regulation and professional norms that have come to seem natural but are the result of an intensely political and fiercely contested process. (1) Until recently, English-language media regimes were characterized by a mixture of regulated broadcasters and privately owned ...

Politics

Can the Internet Be Governed By Its Users?

A response to Dan Hind

January 29, 2020 • by Micah L. Sifry

Consider Wikipedia, the global encyclopedia that is open to anyone to edit, which is the only nonprofit website that ranks in the top ten most visited in the world -- let alone the top 100. It is all the things that Hind wants: a public platform, transparent in its operations ...

Can the Internet Be Governed By Its Users?

Activism

A Public Service

Whistleblowing, Disclosure and Anonymity

December 12, 2019 • by Tim Schwartz

In 1965, 28-year-old Peter Buxtun was hired by the U.S. Public Health Service in San Francisco as a venereal disease investigator. Shortly after starting his job, Buxtun began hearing about a little-known, ongoing study on African-American males with syphilis. To Buxtun’s ears, this didn’t sound right -- by the late ...