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The Perils of Personality
This is another installment in an ongoing meditation on Matt Jones’ admonition that robots should BASAAP. photo credit: Andreas Kristensson It was my term for a bunch of things that encompass some 3rd...
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The Freelance Panoptiswarm
Here’s a glimpse of the future: Ubiquitous cheap sensors. Perpetual freelance surveillance. Relentless sunlight, directed by shoals of shadowy interest groups. It has been a bounteous season for...
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He's not Houseless; He's Technomadic
There is a stupid but recurring joke that we should give fake bluetooth headsets to the homeless. That way, when they talk to themselves they won’t seem crazy. The Washington Post covered this...
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Murmuration of Malware - An Endless Sea of Compromised Drones
Recently, researchers in Austin demonstrated to The Department of Homeland Security that they could take control of a UAV by spoofing a GPS signal. It’s one of what will surely be thousands of...
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On the Leakiness of Surveillance Culture, the Corporate Gaze, and What That...
When David Rowe put a smart meter in his home, it wasn’t so that he could spy on Amy, his teenage daughter. But that’s what happened anyway. 800KM from home, with the same idle curiosity that has me...
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Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie
It is June 2, 2010 and Mark Zuckerberg is sweating. He’s wearing his hoodie—he’s always wearing his hoodie—and he’s on stage and either the lights or the questions are too hot. His hosts are asking him...
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The Corporation Who Would be King
…if a firm, partnership, company, or corporation owns real property within the municipality, the president, vice president, secretary, or other designee of the entity is eligible to vote in a...
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Algorithmic Rape Jokes in the Library of Babel
1. On March 2, 2013, the KEEP CALM and DO WHATEVER meme reached peak terrible. A t-shirt company called Solid Gold Bomb was caught selling shirts with the slogan “KEEP CALM and RAPE A LOT” on them....
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Coursera Launches Revolutionary E-Learning Device
SHANGHAI—Promising to “truly revolutionize education, in every sense of the word.” MOOC startup Coursera today announced the launch of their first physical product, a personal digital learning device...
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Controlled by Guns
On January 20, 2000, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a preliminary injunction against the distribution of DeCSS, an algorithm that descrambled DVDs in violation of the DMCA. In essence, Kaplan ruled that...
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Eton
Tony Little, headmaster of Eton College, emailed HuffPost UK and said the school does not favour “any particular political viewpoint”. Eton College’s Exam Asks Boys To Justify The Army Shooting...
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OB298 — A Preliminary Atlas of Drone Strike Landscapes
A Dronestagram Family Portrait It is difficult to describe a drone strike accurately. On October 24, 2012, Bibi Mamana and her grandchildren were gathering firewood or picking okra outside their home....
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The Singularity Already Happened; We Got Corporations
One of my favourite recurring tropes of AI speculation/singulatarian deep time thinking is mediations on how an evil AI or similar might destroy us. Here’s a recent example, Ross Anderson on human...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About What We Talk About When We Talk About...
1 I tell this story a lot. In 2011, I attended a conference for artists and designers interested in collaboration as a practice. I had a lovely time. We shared stories and projects, we tried out new...
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Cassandra Plays the Stock Market
Adapted from a talk I gave at Design Against Denial a conference put on by The City College of New York April 8, 2017. So, after the election, I spent a bunch of time reading the literature on how...
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