Read DING, a Magazine About the Future
Mozilla’s second edition of DING explores what computers, democracy, and human imagination might look like in the future.
When people think about technology and the future, it can very quickly become incredibly negative. Dystopian narratives warn us that „The machines are taking over“. “That privacy is dead”. “That we are not in control”.
We are in a golden age of pessimism. And we are tired of it.
In the second-ever edition of DING — Mozilla’s magazine about technology, society, and the future — we say goodbye to oppressive technology and economic disenfranchisement. Writers, technologists, and artists from all across the world help us explore the stories of a time that is yet to come. They investigate the future from many different angles and take a look at structures rather than technologies. DING uses fiction, journalism, and criticism to examine the direction in which our connected society is heading.
„The future is a big place. It can contain many many possibilities. It is a set of stories that we can write and imagine ourselves. We’re up for this and would love you to be too. There is no single future. There are many possible futures. They start here.“ (Julia Kloiber, Editor of the magazine)
DING features contributions from a cabinet minister in Taiwan; an open-government advocate in Canada; an artist in Berlin; an activist in Tel Aviv; a community technologist in the U.S.; and many others.
This year’s content includes:
“The Future of Democracy,” an interview with Taiwan Digital Minister Audrey Tang. Tang discusses how technological innovation and open practices, when harnessed right, can advance democracy. “It’s through open innovation that we can ensure public access to information and protect our fundamental freedoms — not just offline but also online and in mixed reality,” Tang says.
“The Blurring,” a science fiction short by open-government advocate Bianca Wylie. Wylie imagines a future where a poorly-planned smart city results in data breaches, excessive bureaucracy, and outsized corporate power. “Many traced [the crisis] back to the AI boom when the pressure went up to unlock the great vaults of data,” the story reads.
“Unpredictable Things,” an experiment by designer and researcher Iohanna Nicenboim. Nicenboim seeks methods for disguising everyday items so they cannot be identified by object recognition technology. “Unpredictable Things explores how to protect our privacy at home by thwarting computer vision through unpredictability and diversity,” she writes. “The project explores invisibility and creates awareness of the need for anonymity.”
“When the Path We Walked Blocks Our Way Forward,” an essay by activist and designer Mushon Zer-Aviv. Zer-Aviv wonders if the increasingly capable algorithms we rely on are dulling our imaginations — and, as a result, dulling our future. “[Algorithmic neural networks] eat data, find correlations, identify patterns and then spit knowledge,” he writes. “They allow us to outsource excess cognitive processes. As soon as they take over we can allow ourselves to forget how to do the job we just taught them.”
“What the Enlightenment Got Wrong about Computers” an essay by University of Glasgow researcher Andrew Prescott. Prescott makes the case for reimagining why we use computers in the first place. “We need to jettison the idea of the computer as a business machine and instead start to embrace more fully the idea of the computer as a dream engine and extension of our imagination,” he writes.
DING and Julia’s Fellowship are part of Mozilla’s effort to empower the technologists, artists, and activists on the front lines of the internet health movement. DING publishes at a time when other Mozilla initiatives — from our IoT Minimum Security Standards to our consumer advocacy work — strive to raise awareness about privacy, security, inclusion, and openness online.
You can read the full magazine here!
