Author Archive
Ideas
The Sneaky Genius of Facebook's New Preventative Health Tool
The feature looks likely to fill gaps in care—and to further draw users into Facebook’s ecosystem.
Emerging Tech
Did Body Cameras Backfire?
Body cameras were supposed to fix a broken system. What happened?
Emerging Tech
The Endless Aerial Surveillance of the Border
New reports suggest that drone activity at the southern border is spreading to nearby cities, erasing the line between police procedures and immigration enforcement.
Digital Government
The World Wants Less Tech. Amazon Gives It More.
The world’s largest online retailer is diving headfirst into the techlash.
Ideas
Algorithms Are People
The secret sauce of search engines gives tech companies an abundance of plausible deniability.
Cybersecurity
Why Hong Kongers Are Toppling Lampposts
For protesters, claims of Chinese surveillance are politically useful, even when they can’t be proved.
Artificial Intelligence
People Are Starting to Realize How Voice Assistants Actually Work
The secrecy surrounding AI products makes even basic information about them a scandal.
Ideas
FaceApp Is Everyone’s Problem
It feels good to call out people for being duped by the Russian app, but the individualist framing of privacy is the bigger culprit.
Artificial Intelligence
The AI That Could Help Curb Youth Suicide
For many reasons, parents and teachers may fail to intervene when they spot LGBTQ teens in trouble. Can Google help?
Emerging Tech
ICE and the Ever-Widening Surveillance Dragnet
ICE agents have used facial-recognition technology on state driver’s-license photos, turning a public database into a de facto criminal database.
Emerging Tech
You No Longer Own Your Face
Students were recorded for research—and then became part of a data set that lives forever online, potentially accessible to anyone.
Featured eBooks
Artificial Intelligence
The AI Supply Chain Runs on Ignorance
Tech companies often fail to tell users how their data will be employed. Sometimes, the firms can’t even anticipate it themselves.
Digital Government
Your Online-Shopping Experience Was Grown in a Lab
How companies are using biofeedback to sell more products
Artificial Intelligence
Why the New Zealand Shooting Video Keeps Circulating
Teaching AI to filter out banned content isn’t the solution advocates hoped for—or the one Silicon Valley promised.
Digital Government
Your Health Data Are a Gold Mine for Advertisers
In the hospital and at home, illness data can be lucrative.
Emerging Tech
The Microphones That May Be Hidden in Your Home
The controversy around Google’s Nest home-security devices shows that consumers never really know what their personal technology is capable of.
Emerging Tech
The Quiet Ways Automation Is Remaking Service Work
Workers may not be replaced by robots anytime soon, but they’ll likely face shorter hours, lower pay, and stolen time.
Emerging Tech
The City of the Future Is a Data-Collection Machine
In Toronto, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, hopes to create the sensor-filled metropolis of tomorrow.
Emerging Tech