Something extraordinary has happened in a corner of north-east Syria. It is a little-known story that defies the usual narratives about Syria or Assad, civil war or ISIS. It is nothing less than a pol

Am Tag der Arbeit 2018 sind viele besorgt. Die Digitalisierung macht etwas mit der Arbeit, das bestreitet fast niemand. Trotzdem scheint der Effekt in Deutschland noch überschaubar. Dort, wo die Arbei

Jeff Rosenthal is standing near the top of his snow-covered mountain wearing a fluffy jacket, fingerless gloves and ripped jeans. “It’s surreal, man!” he says, shivering as he surveys the landscape of

Fox Searchlight Pictures Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin) in Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. In 2001, Sarah Silverman told a joke on Late Night With Conan O'Brien that incurred the wrath of Asian American a

What gets written on the Internet about the design of apps, web sites, icons, identity systems and digital experiences of all kinds is almost always written by people who are professional designers fi

Jacob Silverman , March 29, 2018 The Civil-izing Process Some of the web’s brightest lights have signed on with a blockchain publisher, but can anyone explain what it is? The Baffler Word Factory W o

The day before Valentine’s Day, social media created a bizarro-world version of me. I have seen strange ideas about me online before, but this doppelgänger was so far from resembling me that I told fr

A Primer to Strategy in Layman’s Terms “Strategy” — one of those words folks like to throw around to sound important. “We need a strategy…” or “what’s the strategy?” an executive may say. Everyone in

Published inShopify UX · 13 min read· Oct 24, 2017 -- I like to start most things by saying I have no idea what I’m doing, but John asked me for some quick tips about remote leadership and I accidenta

You may have heard that the best way to deal with the “information overload” is to switch off your devices. To take a break from the Internet. Go for a run. Roll out the Yoga mat. Read a book. Talk to

To this day, machine-generated text annoys me profoundly. Computer poetry creates a vortex deep inside. Every time I read a computer-generated text, I feel like part of my life has been sucked out of

Using 10 pixel Verdana made sense in a time when screens were 640 pixels wide. Today it is a mistake. There are some great arguments for small font sizes. Here are the top three: With smaller type siz

Much of the current hysteria about the technology industry is due to its highly ambiguous relationship with its users. Driven by the logics of both compassion and indifference, this relationship has a

RANGOON, Burma — For Buddhists in Burma, even a quick scroll through Facebook's news feed provides fuel for hatred and nationalistic fervor. An endless stream of provocative photos and cartoons claim

It’s 12:21 pm on a Tuesday, and the new coat from Outlier is going live. For the obsessed fans of this technically minded menswear house, Tuesday drops are always a big deal. This one is bigger than m

After my ComplexCon essay, I got it all. I was applauded and approached with business ventures. Others took offense and said I sounded “whiny.” Reminds me of a couple years ago – I wrote an essay for

Hater gab es schon immer. Heute sind sie vernetzt und schwer bewaffnet. Ihre Geschütze: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. Seit 18 Monaten werden meine Familie und ich im Netz von rechtsextremen Gruppierunge

Volunteers and community workers may soon be able to obtain discounts at local retailers and even reductions in their council tax, thanks to technology that puts a value on socially-useful tasks. The

Renovating Mies 13 min read· Dec 22, 2017 -- It’s said that there are two kinds of architects: those who will only live in vernacular homes and those who would only live in a home of their own design.

Written for the inaugural NGV Triennal publication Published inBut what was the question? · 20 min read· Dec 23, 2017 -- Ewan McEoin kindly asked me to contribute a piece to the publication accompanyi

The digital turn of contemporary capitalism, with its promise of instantaneous, constant communication, has done little to rid us of alienation. Our interlocutors are many, our entertainment is infini

J ustin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook . But even that wasn’

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I hear it all the time, from coffee shops and co-working spaces to the office hallways of the world’s largest companies. The excitement, anxiety, even mythology of startup brand and business model “di

Let’s dispense with this fiction that Mark Zuckerberg isn’t running for some kind office. He’s running for office. There is, of course, his well-publicized, impeccably documented, and sumptuously phot

Billboard announced Wednesday that it would change the all-mighty Hot 200. Starting in December, the chart that has told the nation which albums are most popular for more than a half century will fina

MODERN artificial intelligence is much feted. But its talents boil down to a superhuman ability to spot patterns in large volumes of data. Facebook has used this ability to produce maps of poor region

Britain’s 2012 was a horrible year, and more than that, it was a stupid year. London and Europe's tallest building, The Shard, is stupid. The Great British Bake-Off was stupid. The shutting down of de

O ne day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatte

Digital Society Blog Making sense of our connected world All Everyday life Innovation & Work Artificial Intelligence Policy & Law Knowledge 24 August 2017 The Platform Metaphor, Revisited The most suc

“Bueller? Bueller?” If you’ve seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, that one line probably conjures up memories of Oh yeah, chicka chicka, Ferraris, playing hooky, and dating in high school — all of which fe

My conversation with Mathias Bahnmueller started as pretty much all my phone interviews do. “Can you hear me?” he asked, and I replied affirmatively. Then I asked him the same question. His answer was

Our new issue, on AI, is out now. Subscribe to our print edition today. The Essential Guide to Jacobin Editors The Verdict on Henry Kissinger René Rojas Bhaskar Sunkara Jonah Walters Cori Bush: Why I’

Jeremy Rifkin’s Zero Marginal Cost Society is a book that’s come up a few times in discussions here, and while I may have mentioned that I have multiple problems with it — its transparent assembly by

If there is one style of corporate branding that defines the 2010s, it is this: sans-serif lettering, neatly presented in black, white, and ultra-flat colors. Cobalt, for example. Its goal is noise re

Taking advantage of the cheap and plentiful hydroelectric power that an army of computers require, bitcoin mining is spreading in remote parts of China’s Sichuan province. In dark and isolated warehou