When Trump was elected, certain “radical” commentators tried to distinguish themselves from supposedly credulous academics and journalists by insisting, against all evidence, that he was in no way unusual, and far from a budding authoritarian. They soon fell silent, as the Trump administration indulged in an endless series of power grabs, both effective and futile. […]

Here is a recent NPR story about self-driving cars. Shankar Vedantam sums up the dilemma as follows: Adam Millard-Ball… modeled what’s going to happen when self-driving cars start showing up on the road…[A]t its core, driving is not just about the physics of moving objects and the law of who can do what on the […]

The most astute analysis of the fate of facts under Trump(ism) is offered by Masha Gessen. Simply put, his blatant lies and “alternative facts” are assertions of power over truth itself. This fits neatly into the broader GOP strategy of casting doubt on validity claims by associating them with the interests and motives of political […]

Wendy Brown explains that she regards neoliberalism as a governing rationality through which everything is “economized” and in a very specific way: human beings become market actors and nothing but, every field of activity is seen as a market, and every entity (whether public or private, whether person, business, or state) is governed as a firm. […]

It’s become common to complain that social media have created “bubbles” and aided political polarization. It has also become common to object that the Internet has fallen short of serving as a public sphere, largely because of the ways commercial interests have shaped it. In this context, various technologies—from apps and online petitions to organizational […]