[ad_1] The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the Westby Payal Arora Even as cities across the US grapple with the spectre of omnipresent, automated government surveillance, and the existential threat to civil liberties that the technology holds, a number of nations around the globe have adopted these tools to monitor the lowest, and coincidentally […]
Category: hittingthebooks
Gravity’s mystery may prove our multiverse exists
[ad_1] The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feetby Richard Panek Even today, right now, in the year 2019, humanity still doesn’t know what gravity is. Sure, we know what it does and how it influences everything from the characteristics of other fundamental forces to the movements of every bit of matter in […]
An army of temps put a man on the moon
[ad_1] Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclassby Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri Our celebrated “titans of technology” — the Zuckerbergs, Dorseys, Pages and Brins — achieved their lofty positions with the help of countless contract workers. The internet wouldn’t, simply couldn’t, function as it does today without […]
Autonomous cars will do more than drive you around
[ad_1] Robot, Take the Wheel: The Road to Autonomous Cars and the Lost Art of Drivingby Jason Torchinsky Our self-driving future is coming, whether we’re ready for it or not. With everybody from Apple to Uber scrambling to earn a piece of the self-driving pie, it’s only a matter of time before our roads and […]
Ever wonder how audio sampling works?
[ad_1] The Discrete Charm of the Machine: Why the World Became Digitalby Ken Steiglitz We’re living the audiophile dream! Our phones can hold a year’s worth of music and stream more songs than anyone could listen to in a lifetime. But none of that would be possible without the efforts of one Harry Nyquist, an […]
When better living through technology isn’t enough
[ad_1] Hacking Life: Systematized Living and Its Discontentsby Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. Modern tech culture has long been enamored with the mythos of the lone genius achieving superhuman status (a la The Matrix). Whether it’s Jack Dorsey’s self flagellating dietary restrictions, Peter Thiel’s obsession with “young blood” transfusions, or Tim Ferris’ outright maniacal 4-hour self […]
Hitting the Books: Brotopia
[ad_1] Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valleyby Emily Chang “Boys will be boys” doesn’t cut it anymore. For anybody who isn’t a cis-het white guy, the internet can be a xenophobic hellscape filled with racist trolls, misogynists, creeps and *shudder* tech bros. Women and PoC are being put through a societal meat […]