Archive (Page 2 of 6)

Architectures of Quarantine & Containment

One very inter­est­ing addi­tion to the pub­lic space is how we are con­di­tion­ing and defin­ing the pub­lic space with regards to even­tu­al attacks. And it’s chang­ing the land­scape rad­i­cal­ly. And the very first knee-jerk reac­tion was con­crete blocks in front of many insti­tu­tions. Now they’re try­ing to design these con­crete blocks so they seem some­thing which is part of the land­scape but the pres­ence and the robust­ness is still so vio­lent that it’s hard to hide the intention.

The Real Name Game

Citizenship, after not think­ing about it for a while, feels like some­thing we’re all think­ing about quite a lot these days. In the words of Hannah Arendt, cit­i­zen­ship is the right to have rights. All of your rights essen­tial­ly descend from your cit­i­zen­ship, because only coun­tries will pro­tect those rights.

Transaction Records in Interactive Services: Who Watches the Servers?

First of all, let’s rec­og­nize that the pri­va­cy of trans­ac­tion records is not a brand new issue at all. We have many decades of expe­ri­ence, and I think it helps to under­stand that we have two types of con­sumer trans­ac­tion records that we’re talk­ing about. 

Decentralize, Democratize, or Die

You might be more com­fort­able think­ing about deploy­ing math and code as your tac­tic, but I want to talk to you about the full suite of tac­tics that we use to effect change in the world. And this is a frame­work that we owe to this guy Lawrence Lessig.

The Conversation #61 – Rainey Reitman

As we’ve moved into increas­ing­ly dig­i­tal spaces, so online worlds, we’re mov­ing away from your tra­di­tion­al phys­i­cal spaces where you have pub­lic streets; where you have pub­lic squares; where peo­ple can go to protest, and into areas, if you would call them that, that are entire­ly con­trolled by corporations.

Projecting the Future of Cyberspace

What we’re try­ing to do is to see over the hori­zons, look­ing at essen­tial­ly a five-year time frame, and iden­ti­fy what will be the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty land­scape in that context.

Hacking the Internet of Dongs
Hacking Sex Toys for Fun and Absolutely No Profit

A large num­ber of IoT research firms…yeah, they don’t want to look at this. Because there are stig­mas around sex. We have a very weird thing in North America about sex. We’ll watch all the vio­lence we want on tele­vi­sion but you can’t see two peo­ple have sex.

Artificial Intelligence is Hard to See: Social & Ethical Impacts of AI

The big con­cerns that I have about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence are real­ly not about the Singularity, which frankly com­put­er sci­en­tists say is…if it’s pos­si­ble at all it’s hun­dreds of years away. I’m actu­al­ly much more inter­est­ed in the effects that we are see­ing of AI now.

You Are Not a Digital Native (and that’s OK)

You may have heard peo­ple come up to you and say like, Hey, you’re young. That makes you a dig­i­tal native.” Something about being born after the mil­len­ni­um or born after 1995 or what­ev­er, that makes you sort of mys­ti­cal­ly tuned in to what the Internet is for, and any­thing that you do on the Internet must be what the Internet is actu­al­ly for. And I’m here to tell you that you’re not a dig­i­tal native. That you’re just some­one who uses com­put­ers, and you’re no bet­ter and no worse than the rest of us at using computers.

Your Body is a Honeypot
Loving Out Loud When There’s No Place to Hide

We have to ask who’s cre­at­ing this tech­nol­o­gy and who ben­e­fits from it. Who should have the right to col­lect and use infor­ma­tion about our faces and our bod­ies? What are the mech­a­nisms of con­trol? We have gov­ern­ment con­trol on the one hand, cap­i­tal­ism on the oth­er hand, and this murky grey zone between who’s build­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, who’s cap­tur­ing, and who’s ben­e­fit­ing from it.