BlogFlock
Civil war is coming to Britain, at least according to the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk. But in a new interview with The Economist, he declared there’s good news for the struggling nation: it will take 20 years for it to descend into civil war, but the AI and…
I'm a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others - Which? Maybe I'll say them. – Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life
To translate a work of literature is to select its absences.…
Elon Musk is not the richest man in the world merely because he’s good at selling cars or rockets at a profitable margin. That might have sufficed for richest men in the world of decades past. But Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, however briefly, for a lot of reasons,…
“Tout le monde déteste l’IA.” That phrase, printed in plain black and white, was one of the first things that caught my eye in the neighborhood in Paris where we’re staying this summer. It’s an advertisement for the cover story in the July issue of Le Monde Diplomatique, posted…
Welcome to the Convivial Society, a newsletter about technology, culture, and the moral life. I’ve thought from time to time about occasionally re-posting an essay from the archive, or even from the old blog with material going back 15 years. (Some of these pieces were read by dozens of…
On July 6th, Microsoft announced that it was laying off 4,800 workers, largely from its Xbox gaming division. This comes almost exactly one year after the tech giant announced it was terminating 9,100 employees. It’s now a disconcertingly routine occurrence in the tech industry: thousands of jobs gone…
It’s rare that I talk about my day job in this newsletter, but in my capacity as Director of Product at The Marshall Project—the nonprofit newsroom focused on criminal justice—I recently had the honor of designing a project called Redemption Songs. Each week, reporter Maurice Chammah tells a…
For the past year and a half, the world has been forced to wake up to the great drawbacks that have come from dependence on the platforms, services, and infrastructures provided by US tech companies. What was once framed as a driver of economic growth and dynamism now gives an…
I’ve been watching far too much World Cup this summer. It’s great. I’m in Paris, where it’s playing everywhere; in bars, brasseries, on people’s phones on the metro. At night, you can hear cheers erupting from blocks away no matter where you are, for France whenever they’re playing, sure, but…
Thinking about technology, society, and the good life.
A newsletter about AI, Silicon Valley, labor and power.
Tech critic Paris Marx provides the critical take on Silicon Valley you’ve been missing
A newsletter about taking control of our attention and finding a more human side of the internet. Featured in Wired and Rolling Stone.