Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From Apophenia
Am I a Blogger?
On July 25th, I was asked to address thousands of women (and some men) at the 10th annual Blogher conference. I was asked to reflect on what it meant to be a blogger...
From Apophenia
What is Privacy?
Earlier this week, Anil Dash wrote a smart piece unpacking the concept of “public.” He opens with some provocative questions about how we imagine the public, highlighting...
From Apophenia
What Is an Honorable Response to Israel/Gaza?
In 1968, Walter Cronkite did the unthinkable. After visiting Vietnam to assess the state of the war in light of the Tet Offensive, he produced documentary coverage...
From Apophenia
Why Jane Doe doesn’t get to be a sex trafficking victim
In detailing the story of “Jane Doe,” a 16-year-old transgender youth stuck in an adult prison in Connecticut for over six weeks without even being charged, Shane...
From Apophenia
Goodbye Avis, Hello Uber
Only two hours before the nightmare that would unfold, I was sitting with friends sharing my loyalties to travel programs. I had lost status on nearly everything...
From Apophenia
The Cost of Contemporary Policing: A Review of Alice Goffman’s ‘On the Run’
Growing up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in the 80s and 90s, I had a pretty strong sense of fear and hatred for cops. I got to witness corruption and intimidation...
From Apophenia
What does the Facebook experiment teach us?
I’m intrigued by the reaction that has unfolded around the Facebook “emotion contagion” study. (If you aren’t familiar with this, read this primer.) As others have...
From Apophenia
‘Selling Out’ Is Meaningless: Teens live in the commercial world we created
In the recent Frontline documentary “Generation Like,” Doug Rushkoff lamented that today’s youth don’t even know what the term “sell-out” means. While this surprised...
From Apophenia
San Francisco’s (In)Visible Class War
In 2003, I was living in San Francisco and working at a startup when I overheard a colleague of mine — a self-identified libertarian — spout off about “the homeless...
From Apophenia
Will my grandchildren learn to drive? I expect not
I rarely drive these days, and when I do, it’s bloody terrifying. Even though I grew up driving and drove every day for fifteen years, my lack of practice is palpable...
From Apophenia
Matt Wolf’s “Teenage”
Close your eyes and imagine what it was like to be a teenager in the 1920s. Perhaps you are out late dancing swing to jazz or dressed up as a flapper. Most likely...
From Apophenia
What if the sexual predator image you have in your mind is wrong?
(I wrote the following piece for Psychology Today under the title “Sexual Predators: The Imagined and the Real.”) If you’re a parent, you’ve probably seen the creepy...
From Apophenia
New White House Report on Big Data
I’m delighted to see that the White House has just released its report on “big data” — “Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values” along with an amazing...
From Apophenia
Rule #1: Do no harm.
Rule #2: Fear-mongering causes harm. I believe in the enterprise of journalism, even when it lets me down in practice. The fourth estate is critically important...
From Apophenia
Rekindling my blogging practice: Why I’m part of “The Message” on Medium
When I started blogging in 1997, it was a social practice. It was something that my friend Andrew and I started doing connected to an independent study that we...
From Apophenia
Whether it’s bikes or bytes, teens are teens
(This piece was written for the LA Times, where it was published as an op-ed on April 11, 2014.) If you’re like most middle-class parents, you’ve probably gotten...
From Apophenia
Is the Oculus Rift sexist? (plus response to criticism)
Last week, I wrote a provocative opinion piece for Quartz called “Is the Oculus Rift sexist?” I’m reposting it on my blog for posterity, but also because I want...
From Apophenia
Parentology: The first parenting book I actually liked
As a researcher and parent, I quickly learned that I have no patience for parenting books. When I got pregnant, I started trying to read parenting books and I threw...
From Apophenia
Why Snapchat is Valuable: It’s All About Attention
Most people who encounter a link to this post will never read beyond this paragraph. Heck, most people who encountered a link to this post didn’t click on the link...
From Apophenia