Society

With remarkable creativity, young Kenyans used technology to organise nationwide protests. The state’s digital response has been equally remarkable, but for all the wrong reasons.

Rounding up migrants. Lists of “friendly” sheriffs. Debating political assassinations. Internal messages reveal AP3's journey from Jan. 6 through the tumultuous lead-up to the 2024 election. One member predicts: “It’ll be decided at the ammo box.”

The DOJ brought the right kind of case against an Aggregator, which stagnates by being too nice; the goal is for companies to act like they actually have enemies.

Some practical ideas for how to manage population shrinkage. But will neoliberalism get in the way?

I ran across the alarming phrase intellectual menopause a few months ago in John Gall’s Systemantics, and it naturally stuck in my brain given I’m pushing 50 and getting predictably ang…

Twelfth in the News Commons series Last week at DWeb Camp, I gave a talk titled The Future, Present, and Past of News—and Why Archives Anchor It All. Here’s a frame from a phone video: DWeb C…

At Foundation for Economic Education (“The Ego vs. the Machine,” February 24), self-described “techno-optimist” Dylan Allman dismisses recent controversies over AI as a simple matter of wounded egos. “They feel, on some instinctual level, that if machines can do what they do — only better, faster, and more efficiently — then what value do they...

Here’s the hard pill to swallow: Your insecurities should not hold back the tide of innovation.

Trumpist county election officials are preparing to throw the process into chaos.

In this bonus episode, Rohan Grey speaks with Philip Diehl about #MintTheCoin in the wake of this season’s debt limit showdown. Director of the United States Mint under President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2000, Diehl is best known today as the person most responsible for 31 U.S. Code 5112(k).

Whodunit and what to do about it

Good afternoon from summertime Washington, where I am writing this dispatch along the Anacostia River. Alex Howard here, with another civic text. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed and amplified this series so far, particularly the folks who have signed up for a paid membership. This newsletter will need to

In a column four years ago, I recounted the experience of a friend in academia with the godawful “learning management software” which her institution required for designing exams. She complained  that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into sections, can’t...

AI critics are right about the industry’s challenges — but they risk missing the larger story

The Convivial Society: Vol. 5, No. 10

AI cameras can use this one weird trick to sidestep privacy restrictions to follow people around

Last week, in the midst of the slow, painful collapse of the generative AI hype cycle, something incredible happened. On Monday, a Federal Judge delivered a crushing ruling in the multi-year-long antitrust case filed against Google by the Department of Justice. In 300-pages of dense legal text, Judge Amit Mehta

The FRED Blog has discussed how the increased popularity of video streaming over the internet gradually decreased employment in video tape and disc rental establishments. Today we explore a related topic: how consuming news over the internet has reduced employment in the print media industry.

Americans certainly remember Sputnik. At a time when the world was larger and scarier, the Soviets had a metal basketball flying over the United States and the rest of the world. It made people ner…

“Five thousand quatloos that the newcomers will have to be destroyed.” Quatloos. Credits. Euros. Dollars. Dogecoin. Wait, Dogecoin? At some point in your life, you’ve probably asked yourself, “What…

In April of this year, I published a fairly long piece in The New York Times, arguing that Democrats should be thinking hard about how to roll out President Biden’s multi-trillion dollar Build Back Better agenda without exacerbating inflationary pressures.