Technology Commentary

By Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci and Ethan Zuckerman Social media has changed the way memes—cultural building blocks—are produced, transmitted, and selected. In particular, social media has expanded the diversity of memes and accelerated their evolutionary process. Framing social media as an evolutionary environment for memes is a useful analytical tool for understanding the digital public sphere. In […]

Integrating some non-computing science into reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) can give us the models we want.

Apple has a hit on its hands. Will it seize the opportunity?

Barb’s story It’s 12 noon on a Minneapolis Wednesday, which means Barb can be found at Quang. As the waiter sets down Barb’s usual order (#307, the Bun Chay, extra spicy), Barb&#8…

I looked at how much electricity ChatGPT is supposed to use and compared it to some other items. From that perspective, it doesn't seem that crazy.

Explore the poetic world of whales and their whalesong in Rebecca Giggs' profound book "Fathoms," diving into these giants' aquatic ambience.

School buses look nearly the same as they did almost 100 years ago despite cars totally changing, but that's not a bad thing.

No Longer Mine  When I write, I like to listen to music. Most of my first book was written to a series of CDs I purchased from Amazon and ripped to my Mac – early turn of the century electron…

Early in life, my parents got me one of these Commodore home computers and it transformed something deep inside my brain. Other kids saw it as another device where they could consume a never-ending stream of colorful games, a means to be entertained, and maybe an opportunity to visit other

Sapiens and Collective Fictions Recently I read Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Harari. The basic thesis of the book is that humans require ‘collective fictions’ so that …

They met by chance, got hooked on an idea, and wrote the “Transformers” paper—the most consequential tech breakthrough in recent history.

This is another post in our Code Health series. A version of this post originally appeared in Google bathrooms worldwide as a Google Tes...

The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Fred Hebert discusses various small approaches and patterns that influence how teams deal with reliability, and highlights some of the key interactions and behaviors.

My essay The Extended Internet Universe, where I coined the term “cozyweb” (probably in my top 5 most successful memes) is featured in this cute little collectible book, The Dark Forest Anthology o…

Opening up a few spots for my active advisory practice

Zapier for your browser Automate

Using local data to answer authorization questions with Oso Cloud

Somehow we forgot how to center rectangles and must find our way back

Enterprises and telco operators are preparing their networks for profound innovations to come.

Veteran AI programmer and entrepreneur Andrew Yeung on the difficulties and opportunities of building an AI-powered, interactive FAQ.

Marques Brownlee has tremendous power because he can go direct to consumers; that is possible in media, and AI will make it possible everywhere.

Data users have long sought the ability to query data directly in Kafka, and we’re getting close to finding that missing magic with SQL.

How the world of social media made it so you could reach more people than ever, but that 1,000 true fans concept hasn't really changed.

The Map Happenings series on the hugely impactful events that forever changed our world. This week: the story of a little known company called ‘Etak’. I think you’ll find it a fas…

Etak, Inc. was an independent US-based vendor of automotive navigation system equipment, digital maps, and mapping software. It was founded in 1983.[1] Competitor Navteq was founded in 1985.[2]

With backing from Atari’s cofounder, an engineer-navigator brought high-tech driving directions to cars–during the Reagan Administration.