WeChat: From Medium to Mediator
China’s omnipresent app regulates much of society. Will it be a blueprint or cautionary tale?
Print Preview: Issue #4 | Fall 2019
Our fourth print issue—covering issues of identity, censorship, Internet infrastructure and more—is about to ship nationally.
The World Wired Web
Despite marketing imagery to the contrary, the “cloud” remains very much grounded in physical infrastructure, including unfathomable miles of wires.
The False Promise of Hydroelectric Dams
In part two of a series on dams, reservoirs and catastrophic failures displace and destroy whole communities and ecosystems.
Podcast #28: Jonathan Taplin on Internet Aggregators
Jonathan Taplin, former music and film professional, tells first-hand what the new rentier economy of Internet aggregators like Google and Facebook has done to the creative arts, journalism, and democracy.
Podcast #21: Betsy Brunner on Circumventing Censorship
Betsy Brunner of Idaho State examines social media and social movements, particularly in China, where she’s looked at the creative ways people get around the limits of surveillance and censorship.
The Apex of Technological Birth
In many places, birth by emergency surgery–the C-section–is increasingly the norm. Part three in a series on technological childbirth.
Genetic Testing Kits: Unprecedented Privacy Risks
Consumer genetic testing puts sensitive, irreplaceable data about you—and unwitting members of your family—in places you can’t control.
Podcast #16: Tomaso Poggio on the State of AI
After a long so-called winter, artificial intelligence has recently made amazing gains. Tomaso Poggio, Director of MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, explains why this success is still a long way from the dystopian fears of robot overlords, but that the threat to jobs is real.
Podcast #15: David Greenfield on Internet Addiction
Psychiatrist, professor, and author David Greenfield, founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, was one of the first medical professionals to recognize and study the addictive qualities of the Internet. He explains what we know, what it means, and what can be done.