Top Tech Long Reads of 2016
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Sure, the digital economy crashed and most tech journalists spent the year selling flash drives on the street. But 2016 may still have been the best yet for longform writing about tech. Here are Backchannel’s 10 favorite reads.
1.
Slacker Nation
Eight thousand beautiful words documenting how Slack destroyed America’s productivity and GDP, and workers’ sense of agency.
Mother Jones
2.
OY!
How an out-of-work rabbi literally turned around Silicon Valley’s most useless app, Yo, to become the preeminent platisher of lovable mishaps and gaffes.
Tablet Magazine
3.
Applied Piper
Risking their careers, credit scores, and red carpet dreams, the entire staff of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” quit to start a company around middle-out compression. Then Google came knocking.
Hollywood Reporter
4.
Software Is Eating My Chicken Parm
Marc Andreessen went from fat cat VC to “The Biggest Loser” after software started eating his dinner. Night after night. Ceaselessly.
California Sunday Magazine
5.
Why I’m Leaving Medium
Senior Contributing Baby Maxima Zuckerberg weaves academic studies and personal anecdotes to explain why she’s moving on to the next big thing.
Wilson Quarterly
6.
“I Took Acid at CES.”
Nine reporters did LSD and imitated Hunter S. Thompson in an attempt to get a fresh angle at the annual tech event. “And then I took off the Oculus Rift….and NOTHING WAS DIFFERENT.”
VICE
7.
Baby Got Back Seat
On the heels of Lyft’s successful ‘Bieber Mode,’ Uber launches UberSTORK for the delivery of on-demand babies — and becomes the Valley’s go-to for fresh talent.
Pando Daily
8.
The Cardboard King
How one man built his dream house on a SoHo sidewalk with thrown-out New York Times VR headsets. “People got damn dizzy.”
New York Magazine
9.
WeWork Gets to Work
Expecting to see co-working spaces filled with bright young things sipping lattes and playing foosball, a reporter finds them crammed elbow-to-elbow, stitching tiny walruses for sale on Etsy.
Bloomberg Businessweek
10.
How I Got It Wrong
Nate Silver comes clean in a candid, step-by-excruciating-step account of why his election predictions were off by 31 percent because of the death of his prediction octopus, Paula.
Fivethirtyeight.com
HONORABLE MENTIONS
How Yahoo Won
Recode
Elon Musk’s Mars Diary
Singularity Blog
Top Tech Long Reads of 2017
Medium
