Departments

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technology

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    4/6/2022

    The Automation Myth (Review Essay)

    by Clinton Williamson

    Neither utopian nor cataclysmic predictions about the effects of automation made in the 20th century have come exactly to pass; technology has changed, but not replaced, work. Several new books try to connect the past and future of work.

  • SOURCE: Fast Company
    3/13/2022

    Jill Lepore Debunks Elon Musk's Futurism

    Is Elon Musk's worldview based in a singularly weird interpretation of the sci-fi books he devoured as a kid? Jill Lepore discusses the rise of the self-styled comic book hero CEO as a matter of confusing dystopia for a how-to guide. 

  • 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. 

  • 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."

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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. 

  • 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.

  • 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. 

  • 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?

  • 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? 

  • 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.

  • 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.