Voice Profiling and Freedom
January 9, 2023
Joseph Turow— Voice profiling is a gateway drug to a new era of hyper-personalized targeting. Since Apple introduced Siri for the phone in 2010 and Amazon debuted Alexa in 2014—with… READ MORE
Category: Technology
Space Spirits and Quarantine Cocktails: A Conversation with Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall
July 19, 2022
In Distilled, their follow-up to A Natural History of Wine and A Natural History of Beer, authors Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall again use alcoholic beverages as a lens through which to gain… READ MORE
“Napalm Girl”
September 20, 2021
Tarleton Gillespie— Titled The Terror of War but more commonly known as “Napalm Girl,” the 1972 Pulitzer Prize–winning photo by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut is perhaps the most indelible… READ MORE
Nineteenth-Century Smartphones?
September 17, 2021
Laura Forsberg— It is a truism, by this point, that smartphones have revolutionized our lives. In less than fifteen years, we have developed new ways of communicating with friends and… READ MORE
The Voice Catchers
August 12, 2021
Joseph Turow— Public attention to the voice industry has centered primarily on smart speakers. Dubbed “voice first” devices by marketers, these are cylinders (or more recently other shapes) that sometimes… READ MORE
Invasive Mice and Engineered Genes
August 2, 2021
W.M. Adams and K.H. Redford— On Gough Island, a steep speck of land deep in the South Atlantic, giant mice eat albatross chicks as they sit on their nests. They… READ MORE
Venmo’s “Social Feed” as Financial Scrapbooking
January 8, 2021
Lana Swartz— In2017 New Yorker comic, Olivia de Recat presents a series of hand-drawn Venmo transactions and decodes what they really mean. Venmo, currently the most widespread person-to-person payment app… READ MORE
The Pan-Asian Dream
December 7, 2020
Jonathan E. Hillman— In 1995, Mahathir revived a plan for a “pan-Asian” railway network. Versions of the idea have existed since the early 1900s, when British and French colonialists built… READ MORE
Slow Motion
July 30, 2020
Barry Perlus— Those in the Northern Hemisphere who have recently stepped outside just after nightfall to view Comet Neowise know that the window of time in which to view this… READ MORE
Do We Need More Google Cities?
June 22, 2020
Carlo Ratti— One of the lesser-known casualties of COVID-19 has been a new, large-scale urban development in Toronto, led by Google sibling company Sidewalk Labs. Several years in the making,… READ MORE
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