Society

Data & Society advances public understanding of the social implications of data-centric technologies and automation.

Infamous British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher espoused a fusionist ideology which sought to weld pseudo-individualism to the traditionalist collectivism of the nuclear family and the nation state in a manner not unlike her American counterpart Ronald Reagan. Unsurprisingly, this ideological chimera led to an incoherent world view that rhetorically championed the freedom of the individual,...

Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in every one of these articles for months. I am not upset, but just stating an obvious truth. The current state of affairs effectively pushes against the boundaries of good sense, logic and reason,

Posted on Friday 2 Aug 2024. 481 words, 8 links. By Matt Webb.

Many top porn stars on OnlyFans hire ‘chatters’ to impersonate them online. These impostors have boosted the site's growth – but some subscribers call it fraud.

The U.S. Army and NATO made key strategic, funding and production mistakes that led to shortages of a pivotal weapon Ukraine needs to thwart Russia's advances.

Reuters penetrated the illicit fentanyl trade, buying chemicals and gear online to make millions of pills. Cost: $3,600. Why the opioid crisis is so hard to stop

The illegal synthetic opioid industry is built on surprisingly simple chemistry. Here’s the science behind fentanyl, and how underworld “cooks” put it to work.

In case you hadn't noticed, over the course of the first week of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, when it was hard to know what was real or what was happening, "weird"

The outage is another consequence of companies’ sacrifice of resilience for expediency.

It took a full-scale invasion for the world to begin talking about this swindle in international politics, but a year later, the problem still hasn’t been addressed

Nvidia's pre-Computex keynote address was certainly something, and none of it felt good.

Without EV credits, Elon Musk's Tesla would be in much worse shape

Here’s why we’ve failed to respond to a crisis in plain sight.

The Supreme Court puppetmaster suggests Democrats should focus on “the real corruption," and ends up disclosing his own tricks for influencing judges.

Get ready for instant payments, in which money moves from your account to another immediately

Get ready for instant payments, in which money moves from your account to another immediately

Low-key vigilantism is the new Crime Stoppers. I’m pretty ambivalent about this new law enforcement effort (with the emphasis on “lack of effort”), but this is how things are goin…

I was a child in the 1960s, and those days weren’t better—but in one way, they were sweeter.

In many ways, a world built for cars has made life so much harder for grown-ups.

The political parties are more divided by their views on gender than they are divided by gender itself.

But that doesn’t mean it poses an empty threat to musicians.

Tech executives are acting like they own the world.

Tech companies are spending as if AI’s transformative uses are a foregone conclusion. They’re not.

I found myself disagreeing with some of the points made in co-blogger Josh Blackman's post this morning entitled "I could…

Throughout the last year I’ve written in detail about the rot in tech — the spuriousness of charlatans looking to accumulate money and power, the desperation of the most powerful executives to maintain control and rapacious growth, and the speciousness of the latest hype cycle — but at the end of