technology

Hollywood Has Abandoned the Citizen-Inventor

After generations of populist inventors making the things they need, Hollywood has framed our relationship to invention as receiving the gifts bestowed on us by plutocrats. 

WGA Strike Latest Example of Cultural Workers Joining Together as Entertainment Technology Changes

by Vaughn Joy

The development of television and online content have historically forced multiple Hollywood unions to join forces to secure a share of the returns of new techology or risk being frozen out entirely. 

Hollywood Strikers Carry the Legacy of Ned Ludd

by Gavin Mueller

Our techo-utopian society holds the Luddites in low regard, but their actual history helps explain what's at stake in the screenwriters' strike and any labor conflict where new technology threatens workers' livelihoods. 

AI the Latest Instance of our Capacity for Innovation Outstripping our Capacity for Ethics

by Walter G. Moss

The words of General Omar Bradley are as prescient as ever: "Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

ChatGPT Wants to Join SEIU in Breakthrough for Organized Labor

by Jim Castagnera

Business owners looking to replace workers with automation beware; ChatGPT is a union bot. 

O'Mara: Politics and Commercial Pressure, not ChatGPT, are the Threats

Historian of technology and Silicon Valley Margaret O'Mara says that the peril of artificial intelligence chatbots and artificial intellience will lie in how it is marketed; the rush to be first to the market creates conditions for sloppy tech and abusive applications. 

Silicon Valley Was and Is The Child of the Military-Industrial Complex

by Jeannette Estruth

"The technology sector attributes its economic power to its own creativity and rogue innovation, but throughout its history it has been dependent on the federal budget."

Don't Like Where Society's Heading? Blame Palo Alto

by Scott W. Stern

Journalist Malcolm Harris attempts to excavate the history of how a worldview shaped by the tech industry—most notably its rampant individualism and subordination of the self to surveillance, metrics and monitoring—conquered the world, while also keeping the flames of unregulated capitalism and eugenics burning. 

11 Movies and Shows that Document the March of Technology

From the office-sized computer to the landline, plot points that hinge on obsolete technology are a fun way to track how technologies structure our lives and our anxieties. 

Why I'm Not Afraid of ChatGPT

by Christopher Grobe

The limits of AI writing technology present writing teachers the opportunity to show students how to demand more of their writing than the bots can possibly provide. 

As the Progressive Era Ideal of Regulation Vanishes, What Will Stop the March of AI?

by Walter G. Moss

If capital decides that artificial intelligence is sufficiently profitable to put in charge of driving our cars, writing our essays, or even teaching our history classes, what is left to stop it, even if the products are terrible or even dangerous? 

China's Rising Surveillance Capacity Ill Omen for Other Modern States, Too

by Kathleen Keller

The inherent desire of states to protect their power and interests means that the aggressive implementation of electronic surveillance measures in China is likely to be repeated, with dire consequences for social solidarity. 

Today's Tech Bro and the Victorian Genius Both Reflect a False Narrative of Progress

by Iwan Rhys Morus

The cults of "disruption" and genius obscure the fact that innovation is typically cooperative, and dependent on a society that sustains and implements new knowledge. 

50 Years Later, Remembering Pong's Success

Pong's develper and Atari cofounder Allan Alcorn: "I didn't think the company would last long because most startup companies didn't. And so I thought it would fail after a while, but it'd be a lot of fun."

An Experiment Teaching African American History in the Metaverse

Morehouse's Ovell Hamilton believes the technology of virtual reality has the potential to engage students with the sensation of inhabiting the past. 

Is the Feeling of Safety from Home Security Cameras Worth the Invasion of Privacy?

Historian Matt Guariglia of the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that the cozy relationship between tech companies and police departments threatens to make camera footage less private according to the wishes of law enforcement. 

Can Silicon Valley Be Redeemed? (Review Essay)

by Margaret O'Mara

Three books collectively demand a reckoning with Silicon Valley's immense social power; tech executives would do well to listen, says a technology historian. 

Pessimistic Economic Forecasts Ignore a History of Dynamism

by John Landry and Howard Wolk

Many economic histories portray the American prosperity of the century between the Civil War and the 1970s as the picking of low-hanging fruit. But the story of entrepreneurial innovation during that time is more complicated, and more relevant to the present, than we think. 

Considering the Automobile's Influence on Society—Before the Next Influence Takes Over?

by Bryan Appleyard

The story of the car—a story of genius and folly in equal measure—is the story of the making of the modern world. A new book weaves the threads of the automobile's influence through landscape, war and peace, mass production and individualism, and the environment. 

The Missouri Social Worker Who Founded the Global Internet Name Registry

by Ayden Férdeline

Marilyn Cade played a major role in establishing the global governance structure of the internet.