The testimony of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen sparked the latest flare-up in a never-ending series of revelations on how companies and governments mine and commercialize our personal data. In an attempt to put consumers back in the driver’s seat, recent updates to data protection regulations such as the GDPR in […]
Category: Ideas
What Are You Going to Tweet After You Die?
Few people “plan for how their own deaths will impact social media,” says Katie Gach, a digital ethnographer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies how people manage, and don’t manage, post-mortem social media data. To some of her subjects, “legacies” are reserved for celebrities, so “regulars” like them […]
It’s Time to Fear the Fungi
There are plenty of things in this world that might keep you up at night. There’s COVID-19, of course, but if you’re anxious like me you could probably rattle off a very long list of additional fears: getting hit by a car, cancer, being poisoned by an ill-advised gas station […]
The Future of Digital Assistants Is Queer
Queering the smart wife could mean, in its simplest form, affording digital assistants different personalities that more accurately represent the many versions of femininity that exist around the world, as opposed to the pleasing, subservient personality that many companies have chosen to adopt. Q would be a fair case of […]
Humans Are On Track to Export Our Environmental Problems to Space
To be clear, space is not exactly the Wild West. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty—the Magna Carta of space law—set out a framework and key principles to guide responsible behavior in space. Negotiated and drafted during the Cold War era of heightened political tensions, the binding treaty largely addresses concerns […]
How Apps Commandeered the Age-Old Idea of Takeout
At the turn of this century, when Seamless was launched, mostly as a tool for offices to place large orders from restaurants and caterers, it didn’t register as a threat. Nor did Just Eat in Denmark (2001) or Grubhub (2004) or a host of others, which all began swallowing one […]
India’s New Rules for Map Data Betray Its Small Farmers
The geospatial data regulations are part of a bigger picture. They’re the latest in a series of reforms—land reforms, proposed farm laws, amendments to the Forest Act, new drone regulations and land digitalization schemes—that are all positioned as being beneficial to individuals, but which make it easier for private corporations […]
The Man, the Myth, and the Metaverse
Despite Mark Zuckerberg bloviating about the world-changing virtues of the metaverse for 87 minutes last month, his Connect 2021 keynote’s most truthful and telling moment came in a disclaimer that appeared before he even began speaking. “Actual results may differ materially than those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements,” […]
A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong?
Amazon is not the only one. This trend can also be seen with the rise of automated license plate reader systems for individual neighborhoods, Google’s partnership with ADT, and the company’s launch of “smart” security cameras that offer the ability to define “events” to record, recognize friendly faces, and detect […]
How Metadata From Encrypted Messages Can Keep Everyone Safer
The future is encrypted. Real-time, encrypted chat apps like Signal and WhatsApp, and messaging apps like Telegram, WeChat, and Messenger—used by two out of five people worldwide—help safeguard privacy and facilitate our rights to organize, speak freely, and keep close contact with our communities. They are intentionally built for convenience […]