The Big, the Bad, the Un-American… In 2020, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill set out to answer a salient question: how dependent are we on Big Tech? Working with a technologist, Hill designed a virtual private network that blocked all internet addresses controlled by tech’s five largest companies: Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, […]
Tag: tech
Technology as a Masculinist Institution
On August 10, 2019, prison guards found a man dead in a jail cell in Manhattan. The way he died stood in sharp contrast with the power and vanity he once wielded in the city, fraught with both splendor and squalor. Jeffrey Epstein, a prominent financier with a keen interest in obtaining immortality through eugenics […]
The Dangers of Techno-Optimism
It’s no secret that the internet age has given rise to a generation of clickbait articles, which aim to draw people in with eye-catching, irresistible headlines. Amongst these are ‘news’ posts documenting humanity’s technological progression, where sites like Futurism tease their audiences with topics on stopping aging or bionic eyesight. While this journalistic niche seems […]
Whole Foods in the Rust Belt
“Bright” is the word that might best describe the United States’ economic powerhouse: Silicon Valley. Yet while San Jose and Palo Alto sparkle in the political spotlight, Midwestern towns of Detroit and Dayton have been left in the dark. For the last two decades, while manufacturing towns in the Rust Belt have declined, Silicon Valley […]
AI (Part I): Anew Infrastructure
“Artificial intelligence” (AI) is sometimes jokingly used to label tasks that computers cannot yet do. Among these is possessing a sense of humor, which “requires self-awareness, spontaneity, linguistic sophistication, and empathy,” and extends beyond the wonky errors of Google Translate and auto-generated YouTube captions. However, in spite of its apparent shortcomings, AI has silently yet […]
The Conflict of Curation
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell in his dystopian 1984 warns that the mediums through which individuals receive their news, political history and current events hold influential power. Today, while sources of news have never been as present, the mediums in which individuals receive the […]
Trump vs. Tech
How the President has incited political action from Silicon Valley “This is truly an amazing group of people,” President Donald Trump said in a meeting with prominent executives during his presidential transition. “I’m here to help you folks do well.” The executives weren’t the Wall Street bankers or oil magnates Trump is often criticized of […]
The High Cost of Threats: Sino-Israeli Relations
Say “economic sanctions” and three countries come to mind: Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Sanctions are usually reserved for historically hostile regimes, not long-time allies. Yet Obama administration and other Western European nations are threatening to impose sanctions on Israel, with the assumption that Israel is so dependent on Western markets that it will have […]