Communications of the ACM
Refine your search:
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
Debating Privacy in a Networked World for the WSJ
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal posted excerpts from a debate between me, Stewart Baker, Jeff Jarvis, and Chris Soghoian on privacy. In preparation for...
From Apophenia
Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook
Announcing new journal article: “Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the ‘Children’s Online Privacy Protection...
From Apophenia
The Unintended Consequences of Cyberbullying Rhetoric
We all know that teen bullying – both online and offline – has devastating consequences. Jamey Rodemeyer’s suicide is a tragedy. He was tormented for being gay....
From Apophenia
Six Provocations for Big Data
The era of “Big Data” has begun. Computer scientists, physicists, economists, mathematicians, political scientists, bio-informaticists, sociologists, and many others...
From Apophenia
Guilt Through Algorithmic Association
You’re a 16-year-old Muslim kid in America. Say your name is Mohammad Abdullah. Your schoolmates are convinced that you’re a terrorist. They keep typing in Google...
From Apophenia
Exciting News: Me @ Microsoft Research + New York University
When I was finishing my PhD and starting to think about post-school plans, I made a list of my favorite university departments. At the top of the list was New York...
From Apophenia
I do not speak for my employer.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when people imply that when I make arguments, I’m speaking on behalf of Microsoft. Anyone who knows me knows that my opinions...
From Apophenia
Designing for Social Norms (or How Not to Create Angry Mobs)
In his seminal book “Code”, Larry Lessig argued that social systems are regulated by four forces: 1) the market; 2) the law; 3) social norms; and 4) architecture...
From Apophenia
The Unintended Consequences of Obsessing Over Consequences (or why to support youth risk-taking)
Developmental psychologists love to remind us that the frontal lobe isn’t fully developed until humans are in their mid-20s. The prefrontal cortex is responsible...
From Apophenia
How to Take an Email Sabbatical
It’s summer time and many folks are heading off to vacation and fretting about coming back to overloaded inboxes. Folks keep asking me about my email sabbaticals...
From Apophenia
Publicity and the Culture of Celebritization
In this month’s “Rolling Stone,” the magazine published an article called “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire”. The article tells the story of a 14-year...
From Apophenia
How Teens Understand Privacy
In the fall, Alice Marwick and I went into the field to understand teens’ privacy attitudes and practices. We’ve blogged some of our thinking since then but we’re...
From Apophenia
A Customer Service Nightmare: Resolving Trademark and Personal Reputation in a Limited Name Space
Yesterday, I threw a public hissy fit when I found out that Tumblr’s customer service had acted on a trademark request from a company called Zephoria who had written...
From Apophenia
Tumblr disappeared me
People wonder why I have control issues. I refuse to use third party email services because I’m terrified of being locked out of my account (as I was when Yahoo...
From Apophenia
How Can We Help Miguel?
[Written for DML Central. More comments there.] One of the hardest parts of doing fieldwork is hearing difficult, nuanced stories that break my heart. The more...
From Apophenia
The Politics of Queering Anything
Sitting at an academic conference years ago, I was struck by the marginalization of various voices under the guise of inclusion. There were queer panels and race...
From Apophenia