|
|
Zavrieť Schovať lištu | ||||||||||||||
Dear Readers,
The OneZero family is expanding. Today, we’re launching two new publications, Debugger and Future Human, to serve readers new perspectives on consumer technology and science.
Debugger explores how we use gadgets, apps, and services. Future Human is all about the science that will shape our survival as a species. And OneZero will continue to explore what we call the undercurrents of the future; technology topics like surveillance, automation, and platform moderation.
A publication can’t be all things to all people. Yet many try. Boxed in by the business imperatives of online advertising — how many pageviews, how many banner ads can fit next to the autoplay module — websites jockey for traffic on the same news hits. In some ways, the internet has started to feel like a Baskin-Robbins with 31 takes on vanilla. (Or, as the New Republic put it last week: “Variety was once the calling card of internet journalism, but now it is defined by a crushing sameness.”) …
Try as I might to get the Biden campaign to respond to the House’s big tech antitrust report, I came up empty this week. After multiple emails — and a tweet — it was crickets from Team Biden on what could be one of his most significant policy decisions, if elected.
No doubt, Joe & Co. were busy. The Vice Presidential debate approached on Wednesday, and a second debate with the Covid-stricken President Trump loomed. …
OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts with notable figures in and around the tech industry.
This week, Kantrowitz sits down Tristan Harris, the star of the Social Dilemma film on Netflix. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast.
You won’t find a more controversial film in Silicon Valley than The Social Dilemma. …
Just weeks into the Covid-19 lockdown, Elizabeth Barajas-Román was alarmed to learn that incidents of intimate partner violence were increasing in countries around the globe. Approaches that support organizations had previously relied on to reach people in abusive relationships, like running a hotline or providing safety planning in the workplace, were proving difficult to implement while people were stuck at home, often in close quarters with the person perpetrating violence.
Barajas-Román, who is the president and CEO of the Women’s Funding Network, a global philanthropic network dedicated to women and girls, wondered: How could survivors reach out and get the help they need in a safe way? The solution she landed on, with the help of a WFN partner group, was Signal for Help, a simple hand gesture that people experiencing abuse could silently use during video calls to tell friends or loved ones that they’re in trouble. …
Students learning remotely for the first time are now being surveilled as they take tests by software that can lock parts of their computer and watch them through the webcam.
It’s a troubling system even when the software works correctly. But in a recent New York Times report, students say that they’re scared of being penalized for disorders, caring for siblings, or just having darker skin.
“I cannot imagine any larger disaster than spending the last four months of my life unemployed and uninsured during a global pandemic in order to study for an exam that I cannot take on exam day because of racist technology,” said one student.
Read more here:
In the latest edition of Pattern Matching, OneZero’s weekly newsletter, senior writer Will Oremus digs deep into the background of Palantir, “a shadowy Silicon Valley unicorn” that shares some DNA with Google.
Read the newsletter today:
If you know the name Palantir, you probably know that it’s associated with Peter Thiel, that it contracts with defense and law enforcement agencies, and that it works with data somehow, including data from surveillance systems. You might get that it’s named, creepily enough, after the magical “seeing-stones” in Lord of the Rings.
But what exactly it is that Palantir does has not always been clear from media coverage. …
Whenever big tech employees protest their companies’ policies, there’s always a contingent of people who demand they leave their jobs. “Quit, you losers!,” one such critic said last month, speaking of whistleblowers at Facebook. “At this point working there shows you have no values.”
Whether it’s Facebook employees standing up for election integrity, or Amazon employees protesting warehouse conditions, some people will suggest these employees are ‘complicit’ in wrongdoing if they continue to draw a paycheck from the companies they decry.
But leaving in protest may actually do more harm than good. While quitting may feel comforting in today’s all-or-nothing world — and telling someone to quit especially so — the people most likely to bring about change are those who push diligently from the inside. …
OneZero is partnering with Big Technology, a newsletter and podcast by Alex Kantrowitz, to bring readers exclusive access to interviews with notable figures in and around the tech industry.
This week, Kantrowitz sits down with three reporters, Bloomberg’s Eric Newcomer, the Financial Times’ Hannah Murphy, and OneZero’s Brian Merchant. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Overcast.
When the Big Technology Podcast debuted last month, I spoke with The Verge’s Casey Newton about why people can’t stand the tech press. Our wide-ranging discussion explored how tech reporters should be more upfront about their values, how algorithms and social media reframe their work, and why some go astray in the quest for retweets. …
When Amazon announced the Ring Always Home Cam, an indoor camera drone for your house, tech critics’ instant reaction was to decry it as a terrifying spy tool. (I took it seriously as a consumer surveillance gadget in my own Pattern Matching column on Saturday.) …
