technology

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• SOURCE: The Conversation
  10/11/2021
  

  Computer Space Launched the Video Game Industry 50 Years Ago. Why Haven't You Heard of It?

  by Noah Wardrip-Fruin

  The first effort at a commercial arcade video game didn't fail because it was too complicated. It couldn't deliver a quality game-playing experience because it relied on technology developed for television instead of the new, but expensive, processors for computers. 

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• SOURCE: The Guardian
  8/30/2021
  

  "Selling a Promise": What Did Silicon Valley Learn from Theranos?

  Tech historian Margaret O'Mara offers insight on the culture of Silicon Valley and the safeguards against hype and fraud as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes goes on trial. 

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• 8/22/2021
  

  Can the Nuclear Genie Be Put Back In the Bottle? Must It?

  by David P. Barash and Ward Wilson

  We won't eliminate nuclear weapons by expunging the science behind their creation but by comprehending their uselessness and letting them join the ranks of abandoned technologies.

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• SOURCE: Public Books
  8/18/2021
  

  Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

  by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

  Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

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• SOURCE: Electronic Frontier Foundation
  7/29/2021
  

  It’s Time for Police to Stop Using ShotSpotter

  by Matthew Guariglia

  Surveillance systems intended to detect the auditory signature of a gunshot are inaccurate, meaning "police officers routinely are deployed to neighborhoods expecting to encounter an armed shooter, and instead encounter innocent pedestrians and neighborhood residents."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/16/2021
  

  The Rise and Fall of an American Tech Giant

  Writer Kaitlyn Tiffany considers the impact of the Kodak company's product on American culture and the city of Rochester where she grew up, and the way that digital technology has changed both. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  5/20/2021
  

  Colorizing Photos From the Past: The Ethics of Making History

  by Tara Tran

  Digital technology allows historians to change images, raising a host of ethical dilemmas. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/18/2021
  

  Children of the Holocaust Who Are Anonymous No More

  Researchers using digital enhancement have been able to identify some passengers filmed on a train transporting them to concentration camps; some of those identified are survivors. 

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• SOURCE: Wired
  5/2/2021
  

  Josh Hawley’s Virtual Reality

  Writer Gilad Edelman says that Josh Hawley's book twists the history of antitrust policy to fit the needs of today's Republican culture war against the social media giants. 

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• SOURCE: Data & Society
  4/14/2021
  

  House Arrest: How An Automated Algorithm Constrained Congress for a Century

  In 1929, Congress adopted a formula for apportionment based on the Census. While made political disputes a matter of law, it also capped the size of the House, which has not kept up with population growth and contributed to the disproportionate influence of small states in the House and the Electoral College.

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• SOURCE: Democracy
  3/14/2021
  

  Why America Needs a Tech New Deal

  by Nicol Turner Lee

  The pandemic has shown that internet technology is key for how Americans work, connect, and access learning and services. Making access more equitable and widespread should be at the center of economic recovery programs following the example of the Tennessee Valley Authority. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  3/10/2021
  

  Your Loved Ones, and Eerie Tom Cruise Videos, Reanimate Unease With Deepfakes

  Emerging technology has captivated many with facial animations based on old photos, but it raises serious questions about the integrity of source materials and the news media, and about the way the technology could further destabilize trust in the news. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  3/2/2021
  

  Reading A Letter That's Been Sealed For More Than 300 Years — Without Opening It

  A new digital technique can allow researchers to virtually read letters, folded by the senders to thwart tampering, without having to open or damage the artifacts. 

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• SOURCE: Phi Delta Kappan
  2/22/2021
  

  A History of Technological Hype

  by Victoria E.M. Cain and Adam Laats

  The history of education shows a series of episodes of hasty, ill-considered investment in hyped technologies that failed spectacularly. Will that history convince administrators to look (and research) before they take the next leap?

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  2/9/2021
  

  How Will Jeff Bezos Spend His Billions Now?

  by Margaret O'Mara

  John D. Rockefeller used philanthropy to blunt harsh criticism of his business practices and the social dysfunction represented by his immense wealth. What will his 21st-century analogue Jeff Bezos do for an image-burnishing second act? And will it be about service to the public or service to Bezos? 

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• SOURCE: Vice
  1/12/2021
  

  Archivists Are Mining Parler Metadata to Pinpoint Crimes at the Capitol

  Before it was removed from Amazon Web Services, researchers archived a significant number of the posts on Parler, the network favored by many on the far right. That data could prove useful in figuring out what happened around and inside the Capitol on January 6. 

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/11/2020
  

  ‘On the Books’: Machine Learning Jim Crow

  by William Sturkey

  Lawyer and activist Pauli Murray undertook the arduous task of identifying racially discriminatory laws across the United States, and published a volume cataloguing them in 1950 as a took for attorneys working to dismantle Jim Crow. A University of North Carolina project uses technology to complete that task and demonstrate the historical pervasiveness of racism in the law.

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• SOURCE: War on the Rocks
  9/4/2020
  

  Terror and Technology, From Dynamite to Drones (Review)

  Audrey Cronin's new book warns that terrorist networks are less likely to employ cutting-edge technology than to adapt widely-available tools to new destructive ends; security experts are still surprised by this repeating pattern. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  9/8/2020
  

  The Anti-Democratic Origins of Voter Prediction (Review)

  A review of Jill Lepore's "If Then," which finds the roots of contemporary political messaging in a 1960s company's pioneering efforts to apply computer modeling to voter behavior. 

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• SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
  8/27/2020
  

  Not ‘Glorified Skype’

  The extensive labor required to develop new online courses or shift existing ones to a virtual or mixed delivery is not always obvious to higher ed critics.