Cross-posted from the Department of Alchemy blog. Last month, Ethan Zuckerman of the Center for Future Civic Media (MIT Media Lab) posted a great article on his blog called The Tweetbomb and the Ethics of Attention (constituting Part I to this story, so make sure you read it!), in which he calls into question the …
Continue reading The Ethics of Attention (Part 2): Bots for Civic Engagement
danah and I have a new piece in the Daily Beast. Summary: the more things change, the more they stay the same. In the last decade, we’ve studied how technology affects how teens socialize, how they present themselves, and how they think about issues like gender and privacy. While it’s true that teens incorporate social …
Continue reading Teens Text More than Adults, But They’re Still Just Teens
I’m not exactly sure when in the last few months I first noticed Google’s subway advertising campaign, but whenever it was, I was immediately confused. The ads relate to Google’s Good to Know initiative and focus on privacy, security and netiquette. More than anything, the ads reminded me of seemingly well-intentioned and yet always-already …
Continue reading Institutions, Infrastructure and Information
I am giddy with pleasure to share Jennifer Chayes' announcement that Microsoft Research is opening a new lab in New York City that will be filled with computational social science types. The New England lab that I call home combines qualitative social science, empirical economics, machine learning, and mathematics. We've long noted the need for …
Anonymous Hispano, the Spanish-speaking branch of the famous hacker collective, issued a statement a few weeks ago announcing that, despite their efforts, they "could not find any evidence of corruption" to incriminate the Mexican presidential candidate López Obrador. The group prefaced their message by clarifying that they "do not have any partisan agenda and do not support any one" of …
Continue reading Is Anonymous vetting presidential candidates?
Seven miles off the English coast in the North Sea stands a steel and concrete platform that was, for a time, the world's most impractical data center. A pair of American entrepreneurs launched HavenCo in 2000 as a "data haven"--a place for gamblers, freethinkers, and dissidents to put their bits far beyond the reach of …
I've been trying to work through some ideas on how fear operates in a networked society. At Webstock in New Zealand, I gave a talk called "Culture of Fear + Attention Economy = ?!?!" Building on this, I gave a talk at SXSW called "The Power of Fear in Networked Publics." While my thinking in …
Mike Daisey lied to us – but how much you think he lied depends on how you think about ‘truth’. Some background: in his one-man show ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,’ and a highly popular This American Life episode, Daisey tells several stories about how Apple manufactures products in China. He presents …
On Friday, Dharun Ravi - the Rutgers student whose roommate Tyler Clementi killed himself - was found guilty of privacy invasion, tampering with evidence, and bias intimidation (a hate crime). When John Palfrey and I wrote about this case three weeks ago, I was really hopeful that the court proceedings would give clarity and relieve …
To many people unfamiliar with Invisible Children, the Kony 2012 campaign looked like a brilliant example of "viral" media spread. The center of the campaign is a compelling 30-minute film where a father talks to his son about the evil practices of the Ugandan war lord Joseph Kony. The father makes it clear that his …
Continue reading The Power of Youth: How Invisible Children Orchestrated Kony 2012
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