Over the past three years since the internet industry first had to respond to the so-called “Techlash,” various comments on the theme that “the internet didn’t turn out like we expected” have generally shared one common flaw—a failure to acknowledge that the expectation itself was folly. Whether parties are debating the amount of moderation that should or should not be done ...
In a new, must-read article at MIT Technology review, Professor Zeynep Tufekci at the the University of North Carolina describes How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump. Beginning with the euphoric naivete of just a few years ago that universally assumed Facebook and Twitter would save democracy, Tufekci details the mechanisms by which social media became a ...
The underlying premise of this blog—indeed its title—is a rejection of the tech-utopian pursuit of more as a virtue unto itself. It is true that the presumed benefit of more access to more content happens to be one of the commonly-alleged rationales for mass copyright infringement, but the destructive power of more goes far beyond the interests of authors of ...
I finally had a chance to read Move Fast and Break Things by Jonathan Taplin. A former music manager and film producer from the period I would describe as America’s true golden age, Taplin is now director emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. The book, which debuted a few months ago, explains how the ...
Image by miflippo This past July 4th, NPR posted the Declaration of Independence in a series of 113 consecutive tweets; and in response, a number of supposed Trump supporters took issue with the news organization, having no idea what they were reading, assuming for instance that statements denouncing the tyranny of George III were directed at the president. And while the ...
