Tech Surge: Silicon Valley Mobilizing
Silicon Valley underwent a political awakening in 2017. Catherine Bracy and Derecka Mehrens are harnessing the political moment to engage tech workers and service workers in the fight for a more equal Bay Area.
-
-
Time for Transparent Algorithms in Civic Technologies
Facebook strengthens our filter bubbles. So does Twitter. So does cable news. This has serious civic consequences. All three of these organizations are civic technologies regardless of whether they put profit or public interest first. The algorithms and business priorities of private institutions have shaped our civic reality and will...
-
Defined by the Filter Bubble
Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and other social media giants will be remembered, not by their business successes, but by how well they tackle the problem of the filter bubble.
-
Who Killed the Hyperlink?
There is a story in the Quran about a group of Christians who escaped persecution by taking refuge in a cave. There they fell into a very long sleep which they thought only lasted a day or two. But it actually had lasted for centuries. When they woke they were...
-
The Rise of the Internet ‘Mitigators’
After all, who would march under the banner ‘On the one hand, X, on the other hand, maybe not X’?
-
Why We Need to Take Back the Internet from the Centralizers
In a world where digital technology reigns supreme, freedom of speech should not depend on the whims of a few powerful corporations and government rules. Increasingly, it does. A delegation of right-wing activists will travel this week to Silicon Valley. They will be supplicants at the throne of Facebook, a...
-
Why We Needed CUNY Tech Meetup
Dawn Barber—co-founder of NY Tech Meetup, the largest Meetup group in the world, angel investor in early-stage startups like PhilanTech, and Civic Hall member—has a new side project: CUNY Tech Meetup. CUNY, or the City University of New York, is the third-largest university system in the country, after the New...
-
Language Biases in Tech: A Full Stack Problem
Take a minute to imagine you’re a newcomer to the internet. First of all, you are not alone. The web has been around for decades, yes, but on the scale of the world’s population, regular connectivity is still technically a minority experience. With an estimated 3.3 billion internet users out...
-
Failures of Our Global Imagination
The problem with first world problems, and why we need to shift the way we talk about global tech
-
How Black Girls Code Is Getting to One Million
At Black Girls Code events, girls can connect with other girls and not "feel like a weirdo" for wanting to code.