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China’s new frontiers in dystopian tech

China’s new frontiers in dystopian tech

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Rene Chun writes: Dystopia starts with 23.6 inches of toilet paper. That’s how much the dispensers at the entrance of the public restrooms at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven dole out in a program involving facial-recognition scanners—part of the president’s “Toilet Revolution,” which seeks to modernize public toilets. Want more? Forget it. If you go back to the scanner before nine minutes are up, it will recognize you and issue this terse refusal: “Please try again later.” China is rife with…

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Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens

Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its citizens

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Wired reports: On June 14, 2014, the State Council of China published an ominous-sounding document called “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System”. In the way of Chinese policy documents, it was a lengthy and rather dry affair, but it contained a radical idea. What if there was a national trust score that rated the kind of citizen you were? Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored and evaluated: what you buy…

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Women in Iran are pulling off their headscarves — and hoping for a ‘turning point’

Women in Iran are pulling off their headscarves — and hoping for a ‘turning point’

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The Washington Post reports: Iranian women have been raising a new challenge to their Islamic government, breaking one of its most fundamental rules by pulling off their headscarves in some of the busiest public squares and brandishing them in protest. While these guerrilla protesters number only in the dozens, Iran’s government has taken notice of their audacity. On Thursday, planned demonstrations to coincide with International Women’s Day were preempted by a heavy police presence on the streets of the capital,…

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Welcome to the age of climate migration

Welcome to the age of climate migration

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Jeff Goodell writes: In 2017, a string of climate disasters – six big hurricanes in the Atlantic, wildfires in the West, horrific mudslides, high-temperature records breaking all over the country – caused $306 billion in damage, killing more than 300 people. After Hurricane Maria, 300,000 Puerto Ricans fled to Florida, and disaster experts estimate that climate and weather events displaced more than 1 million Americans from their homes last year. These statistics don’t begin to capture the emotional and financial…

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Across human history, there’s little evidence large-scale social organization necessitates enduring inequality

Across human history, there’s little evidence large-scale social organization necessitates enduring inequality

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David Graeber and David Wengrow write: Stonehenge, it turns out, was only the latest in a very long sequence of ritual structures, erected in timber as well as stone, as people converged on the plain from remote corners of the British Isles, at significant times of year. Careful excavation has shown that many of these structures – now plausibly interpreted as monuments to the progenitors of powerful Neolithic dynasties – were dismantled just a few generations after their construction. Still…

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How populist uprisings could bring down liberal democracy

How populist uprisings could bring down liberal democracy

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Yascha Mounk writes: There are long decades in which history seems to slow to a crawl. Elections are won and lost, laws adopted and repealed, new stars born and legends carried to their graves. But for all the ordinary business of time passing, the lodestars of culture, society and politics remain the same. Then there are those short years in which everything changes all at once. Political newcomers storm the stage. Voters clamour for policies that were unthinkable until yesterday….

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From Afrin to Ghouta

From Afrin to Ghouta

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G. M. Tamás writes: Yes, of course, we are all indignant and horrified and incredulous and ashamed: the death and decomposition of the international state system causes mayhem and suffering that defies reason and imagination. Everybody has seen the wordless statement of UNICEF: they could not find words to express what they have seen and what they have felt. Various ethnic and political groups in Syria are killing each other and they are also killed by the states of Turkey,…

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Are the most successful people mostly just the luckiest people in our society?

Are the most successful people mostly just the luckiest people in our society?

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Scott Barry Kaufman writes: What does it take to succeed? What are the secrets of the most successful people? Judging by the popularity of magazines such as Success, Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur, there is no shortage of interest in these questions. There is a deep underlying assumption, however, that we can learn from them because it’s their personal characteristics–such as talent, skill, mental toughness, hard work, tenacity, optimism, growth mindset, and emotional intelligence– that got them where they are today….

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Landmark study finds more poverty and segregation in America now than 50 years ago

Landmark study finds more poverty and segregation in America now than 50 years ago

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Jason Daley writes: Half a century ago, a special commission assembled by President Lyndon Johnson was tasked to better understand the causes of racial unrest in the nation. The result was the landmark 176-page report, “The America of Racism.” Better known as the “Kerner Report,” the massive undertaking—done by National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, headed by Otto Kerner, then-governor of Illinois—examined cultural and institutional racism in the United States, from segregated schools and neighborhoods to housing discrimination, cycles of…

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The Supreme Court case that could give tech giants more power

The Supreme Court case that could give tech giants more power

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Lina M. Khan writes: Big tech platforms — Amazon, Facebook, Google — control a large and growing share of our commerce and communications, and the scope and degree of their dominance poses real hazards. A bipartisan consensus has formed around this idea. Senator Elizabeth Warren has charged tech giants with using their heft to “snuff out competition,” and even Senator Ted Cruz — usually a foe of government regulation — recently warned of their “unprecedented” size and power. While the…

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Predictive policing system made by Palantir has been secretly tested in New Orleans

Predictive policing system made by Palantir has been secretly tested in New Orleans

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Ali Winston reports: In May and June 2013, when New Orleans’ murder rate was the sixth-highest in the United States, the Orleans Parish district attorney handed down two landmark racketeering indictments against dozens of men accused of membership in two violent Central City drug trafficking gangs, 3NG and the 110ers. Members of both gangs stood accused of committing 25 murders as well as several attempted killings and armed robberies. Subsequent investigations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,…

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China deploys big data analysis to enable ‘predictive policing’

China deploys big data analysis to enable ‘predictive policing’

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Human Rights Watch reports: Chinese authorities are building and deploying a predictive policing program based on big data analysis in Xinjiang, Human Rights Watch said today. The program aggregates data about people – often without their knowledge – and flags those it deems potentially threatening to officials. According to interviewees, some of those targeted are detained and sent to extralegal “political education centers” where they are held indefinitely without charge or trial, and can be subject to abuse. “For the…

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It’s time for young Americans to assert their power at the ballot box

It’s time for young Americans to assert their power at the ballot box

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David Leonhardt writes: Voter turnout is the biggest opportunity — and biggest challenge — for the new progressive movement. The problem is easy enough to describe: Progressives don’t vote as often as conservatives do. Americans under age 30, for example, lean notably left. They are socially liberal, worried about climate change and in favor of higher taxes on the rich. But most of them don’t vote, especially outside of presidential elections. In the 2014 midterms — when Republicans took control…

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Algorithms of oppression

Algorithms of oppression

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MIT Technology Review reports: The internet might seem like a level playing field, but it isn’t. Safiya Umoja Noble came face to face with that fact one day when she used Google’s search engine to look for subjects her nieces might find interesting. She entered the term “black girls” and came back with pages dominated by pornography. Noble was horrified but not surprised. The UCLA communications professor has been arguing for years that the values of the web reflect its…

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Warren Buffett loves Apple because of consumer addiction to the iPhone

Warren Buffett loves Apple because of consumer addiction to the iPhone

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Quartz reports: Warren Buffett told CNBC that Berkshire Hathaway has purchased more shares of Apple than any other stock over the past year. It reflects the famed investor’s belief in Apple’s value as a consumer brand, not unlike Coca-Cola, Berkshire’s fourth-largest US stock holding. (Apple is now the second largest.) Buffett’s take on Apple is striking because it’s seemingly not rooted directly in a view of Apple’s technology, manufacturing, or design prowess. The Berkshire CEO didn’t mention the iPhone X’s…

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Blockchain could reshape our world — and the far right is one step ahead

Blockchain could reshape our world — and the far right is one step ahead

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Josh Hall writes: Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain reads the title of a 2017 book. From currency speculation through to verifying the provenance of food, blockchain technology is eking out space in a vast range of fields. For most people, blockchain technologies are inseparable from bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that has been particularly visible in the news recently thanks to its hyper-volatility. Crypto-entrepreneurs have made and lost millions, and many people have parlayed their trading into a full-time job. But…

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