Josh CowlsinJosh Cowls“Severance”: Apple’s warped satire of… Apple?Warning: abundant spoilers for the first season (and speculation about the second season) of Severance follow.5 min read·Apr 18, 2022----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsTruth Social: App stores as a new front in the platform governance of Donald TrumpThe launch of “Truth Social” is the latest episode in the sorry saga of Donald Trump and social media, but one which implicates new sites…10 min read·Feb 21, 2022----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsA nervous onlooker’s guide to the 2020 presidential election, which will be fought in four…On the evening of November 8th 2016 I was sitting with friends in a Somerville, Massachusetts apartment feeling nervous but hopeful. For…8 min read·Oct 31, 2020----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsFlattening the curve forwards: The new speed of politics and the new politics of speedThe slow, deliberative nature of representative democracy seems ill-suited to the present moment. Can it survive the new politics of speed?13 min read·Apr 19, 2020----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsWant to stop no deal and five more years of Boris? The only answer is a tactical pactThe year is 2024, and in his final speech on the eve of the general election, standing next to his wife Carrie Symonds, Boris Johnson…6 min read·Sep 4, 2019----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsFour Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting a PhDI’m coming to the end of my first year* as a PhD student at Oxford University’s Internet Institute. It has been a challenging year, in…7 min read·Aug 20, 2019----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsDeciding how to decide: Six key questions for reducing AI’s democratic deficitArtificial intelligence (AI) has a “democratic deficit” — and maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. As Jonnie Penn and others have argued…16 min read·Mar 22, 2019--1--1
Josh CowlsinJosh Cowls“Free Solo” Review: A human-nature documentary as grounded as it is grippingThe extraordinary new documentary Free Solo profiles lifelong climber Alex Honnold as he embarks on an unprecedented feat: scaling Yosemit4 min read·Dec 18, 2018----
Josh CowlsinJosh CowlsForget elections — the data sharing that keeps me up at night is much more fundamentalSeveral weeks on from the initial story breaking, we are still feeling the fallout of revelations that data gathered from unwitting…5 min read·Apr 5, 2018----