Archive (Page 2 of 3)

Evgeny Morozov Keynote at Internetdagarna 2015

If you look at the appeal that Silicon Valley has to a lot of us, and to a lot of pub­lic insti­tu­tions espe­cial­ly, I think you can under­stand that the rea­son for that appeal is very sim­ple. They can offer ser­vices that work, that work in a very effec­tive man­ner, and that are offered more or less either very cheap or are most­ly offered for free.

Are We Living Inside an Ethical (and Kind) Machine?

This is a moment to ask as we make the plan­et dig­i­tal, as we total­ly envel­op our­selves in the com­put­ing envi­ron­ment that we’ve been build­ing for the last hun­dred years, what kind of dig­i­tal plan­et do we want? Because we are at a point where there is no turn­ing back, and get­ting to eth­i­cal deci­sions, val­ues deci­sions, deci­sions about democ­ra­cy, is not some­thing we have talked about enough nor in a way that has had impact.

Sleepwalking into Surveillant Capitalism, Sliding into Authoritarianism

We have increas­ing­ly smart, sur­veil­lant per­sua­sion archi­tec­tures. Architectures aimed at per­suad­ing us to do some­thing. At the moment it’s click­ing on an ad. And that seems like a waste. We’re just click­ing on an ad. You know. It’s kind of a waste of our ener­gy. But increas­ing­ly it is going to be per­suad­ing us to sup­port some­thing, to think of some­thing, to imag­ine something.

Kenneth Goldsmith at The Influencers 2016

I think that what I want to say is that the polemics around the dis­course of the Web are too bina­ry. I think that one of the prob­lems that we have in the­o­riz­ing the Web is that we tend to mor­al­ize it in bina­ries. I get it. It’s bad. The Web is bad for you. Or the sort of free cul­ture is always like, It’s real­ly good. It’s great. Free cul­ture is great.” It’s neither.

Malia Lazu, Black Reality 2.0: Creating and Making in the Digital Age

I became tired of knock­ing on the same doors and either see­ing the same peo­ple or dif­fer­ent peo­ple. But I real­ly just felt like I was in this cycle of faux lib­er­a­tion, where I would feel a vic­to­ry, and the vic­to­ry was prob­a­bly formed around the RFP for the grant that we need­ed to get in order to do our work.

Building Your Own Personal Truth

I think we are grop­ing towards this idea of truth. And even the word truth can be defined in mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent ways. So we are by its very nature deal­ing with a very slip­pery topic.

Forbidden Research: Why We Can’t Do That

Quite often when we’re ask­ing these dif­fi­cult ques­tions we’re ask­ing about ques­tions where we might not even know how to ask where the line is. But in oth­er cas­es, when researchers work to advance pub­lic knowl­edge, even on uncon­tro­ver­sial top­ics, we can still find our­selves for­bid­den from doing the research or dis­sem­i­nat­ing the research.

Online Platforms as Human Rights Arbiters

What does it mean for human rights pro­tec­tion that we have large cor­po­rate interests—the Googles, the Facebooks of our time—that con­trol and gov­ern a large part of the online infrastructure?

A Data Manifesto for Generation Open

We asked our six thou­sand mem­bers to write to their can­di­dates and say, If you get elect­ed, do you promise to take sta­tis­ti­cal train­ing from the Royal Statistical Society?” 

Douglas Rushkoff WebVisions Portland 2016 Keynote

Google just has to grow. It has to keep grow­ing. But Google grows at its own per­il. Google grew so much that what hap­pened? It out­grew Google. Google had to become what? Alphabet. Now what is Alphabet? Alphabet is not Google. Alphabet is a hold­ing com­pa­ny. So Google’s new busi­ness as Alphabet is to do what? It’s to buy and sell tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. So, once a com­pa­ny becomes just too big to flip any­more, it becomes a flip­per of oth­er companies.