Published in OneZero·Dec 5, 2019Member-onlyNow Any Government Can Buy China’s Tools for Censoring the InternetBeijing’s ‘autocracy as a service’ is becoming the top choice for governments that want to control the internet — In 2010, Uganda passed a law that expanded the legal justifications for intercepting citizens’ communications. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni had begun to see the internet as a real threat, and after the 2016 election and protests the following year, he turned to foreign companies like Germany’s FinFisher to monitor the…China8 min readChina8 min read
Published in OneZero·Oct 8, 2019Member-onlyThe Internet Must Be More Than FacebookIf Big Tech becomes synonymous with the internet, we could lose free choice, democracy, and even the ability to imagine a different world — Big Tech wants to be the totality of what we see and do online. From Apple’s carefully curated user experience to the sprawling empires of Google/Alphabet and Facebook, the tech firms’ ultimate goal is to own everything we do up and down the technological stack. And if they win, we’ll…Internet8 min readInternet8 min read
Published in OneZero·Dec 4, 2018Member-onlyDo Tech Slogans Really ‘Make the World a Better Place’?The simple deception of Big Tech’s aspirations — Bringing people together. Changing the world. Making the world a better place. There’s a reason so many tech company slogans sound similar. It’s not just that they’re all trying to do the same thing — commodify human experience, sell it back to us, and pipe the tax-free profits offshore. It’s…Tech7 min readTech7 min read
Jun 25, 2018Member-onlyHow to Build A.I. We Can Relate toWriters are the key to creating a frictionless future worth having — My dog loves to play with his toy snake by repeatedly breaking its neck. He prefers traveling on the top of London buses so he can see what’s happening in the world, and he obsessively checks pee-mails and sex-messages from other dogs as we walk around the neighborhood. His seriousness…Artificial Intelligence8 min readArtificial Intelligence8 min read
Jun 7, 2018Member-onlyHow to Cope with the End of the WorldThe worst thing we can do is collectively lose faith in our future — I’m writing this on a train. Looking out the window, I reflexively scout for raised, defensible structures away from main roads. I’ve done this since I was 10, planning for when the time came. I thought a lot, then, about when the time came. I planned how, when the nuclear…Politics17 min readPolitics17 min read
Apr 2, 2018Member-onlyIf We Remember How Unity Feels, We Can Save DemocracyIt only takes 10% of your time to inspire change — The year I turned 10, Ireland had two general elections. Every day after school, a bunch of us walked the town, leafleting and running errands for canvassers. We were fearless. We owned the place. Think Lyra Belacqua racing round an Oxford no adult even suspects exists. …Politics9 min readPolitics9 min read
Mar 20, 2018Member-onlyOne Hell of a To-Do List for Saving DemocracyHere’s how we defeat economic inequality and political alienation — French economist Thomas Piketty used a century’s worth of data to show two terrifying things: The return on capital is higher than overall economic growth, so the rich tend to get richer and society becomes increasingly unequal over time. Only one thing quickly and reliably reduces inequality: war (or its…Politics6 min readPolitics6 min read
Mar 13, 2018Member-onlyEven the World’s Biggest Problems Aren’t HopelessLessons from history’s most intractable challenges — There’s a point at which disasters compound and multiply, when the worse it gets, the worse it gets. Motivations thicken. Events accelerate. The gunman’s shadow looms in the doorway as children hide uselessly under desks. The din of drones whining around the windowless apartment block kicks up half an octave…HIV5 min readHIV5 min read
Feb 19, 2018Member-onlyEven at the End of the World, There’s Still a Duty of HopeWe need to fix what we can and set fire to the rest — without a revolution. — What if we were to look right in the eye of the scary truth that even if most of us survive 2018, human civilization as we know it is about to squeeze through a decisive couple of decades and may not make it? What if we looked our potential extinction…Foreign Policy6 min readForeign Policy6 min read
