Among my peers who study the cultures and economies surrounding technology, I often find myself more tech-positive than most. On the whole I like computers, like the internet, and like in general the emergent human creativity that these things have enabled and revealed. A source of my appreciation is that I expend a lot of effort on the practice of “slow computing,” which is to say, choosing tools and technical communities that I can feel in right relationship with. I tend to approach new socio-technologies (like gig economies, blockchains, and social media) not from a perspective of why is this so bad? so much as asking how could we do this right?
How to be a wise optimist about science and technology?
I believe the central problem of the 21st century is how civilization co-evolves with science and technology. As our understanding of the world deepens, it enables technologies that confer ever more power to both improve and damage the world. There's currently much public discussion of this in the context of artificial superintelligence (ASI). However, it's a fundamental recurring challenge, affecting areas including climate change, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, geoengineering, brain-computer interfaces, and many more. How can we best benefit from science and technology, while supplying safety sufficient to ensure a healthy, flourishing civilization?
tech isn’t the future it’s just capitalism faster
responding with slowness in relations
From Chile to the Philippines, meet the people pushing back on AI
Individuals and communities are resisting the demands and practices of Big Tech's AI infrastructure — such as data centers and digital labor — due to their environmental and social costs.
The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution
This essay presents a processual model of the personal computing movement that depicts the PC's birth within the context of complex and often contradictory social strategies, each of which used the meaning of computer technology in a distinctive way. It suggests that innovators are constrained by such processes to depict new artifacts in culturally meaningful ways, so that it is difficult for them to conceive of their technologies in radical terms. The rhetoric of "revolution" aside, innovators found it expedient to draw from the stock of meanings at hand as they created new meaning-frameworks for their artifacts. The result is that the new artifacts did not express a coherent or effective political vision and failed to have the intended social effects. This study implies that new technologies frequently reproduce existing social and meaning systems; if they do bring about social change, the changes may differ from those intended by the innovators.
The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution
This essay presents a processual model of the personal computing movement that depicts the PC's birth within the context of complex and often contradictory social strategies, each of which used the meaning of computer technology in a distinctive way. It suggests that innovators are constrained by such processes to depict new artifacts in culturally meaningful ways, so that it is difficult for them to conceive of their technologies in radical terms. The rhetoric of "revolution" aside, innovators found it expedient to draw from the stock of meanings at hand as they created new meaning-frameworks for their artifacts. The result is that the new artifacts did not express a coherent or effective political vision and failed to have the intended social effects. This study implies that new technologies frequently reproduce existing social and meaning systems; if they do bring about social change, the changes may differ from those intended by the innovators.
Toward People’s Community Control of Technology: Race, Access, and Education
This field review explores how the benefits of access to computing for racialized and minoritized communities has become an accepted fact in policy and research, despite decades of evidence that technical fixes do not solve the kinds of complex social problems that disproportionately affect these communities.
New Studies: How Commercial Forces Make Science Less Reliable
Computational social science has been distorted by commercial forces, and AI is making it worse.
The Future of AI Should Serve People, Not Platforms - The Liquid Frontier
AI has begun to reshape every part of our digital experience. I keep coming back to Kranzberg’s first law of technology: “Technology is neither good nor bad;…
Something Big Is Happening
A personal note for non-tech friends and family on what AI is starting to change.
why I am AI sober
on walking away from AI and how you can mirror similar boundaries with big tech.
why I am AI sober
on walking away from AI and how you can mirror similar boundaries with big tech.
Why Is Everyone In Tech So Sad?
A lot of people seem to be realizing that knowledge work is mostly pointless. AI might give us the pleasure of finding out what happens if an entire class of workers loses faith in their careers.
Introducing Slow Social
I’d like to introduce you to Slow Social. Slow Social is my idea of what I wish social networks...
be diligent
For individuals It's challenging to work a process when it moves slower than feels appropriate. In the context of computer conversations, the tactic of s...
