advertisement advertisement advertisement Can’t they please just let us have this one thing? advertisement advertisement This was the thought that came to mind last week, when Twitter announced its acquisition of the newsletter platform Revue, and when three sources told The New York Times that Facebook is planning its own newsletter tools for journalists and writers. For Twitter and Facebook, getting into the newsletter business makes sense. Alongside Google, their platforms have come to dominate the distribution of journalism and online discourse in general, using their news feeds and search results to monetize a never-ending flow of content. With newsletters, a growing number of writers are trying to get off that treadmill and establish a more direct relationship with readers. Some prominent journalists have even quit their staff jobs to make newsletters full-time, and some budding newsrooms now publish primarily to readers’ inboxes. By … [Read more...] about Twitter and Facebook are going to ruin newsletters, aren’t they?
Industry targets
President Biden, appoint a fashion czar!
advertisement advertisement advertisement President Biden, while your administration is hard at work tackling emissions from the automobile and energy industries, there seem to be no plans to regulate fashion, which produces 10% of global carbon emissions. American fashion companies are also responsible for a panoply of human rights violations, from COVID-19 outbreaks in factories to relying on slave labor. You have an opportunity to take on this deeply problematic sector by creating a new White House position: It’s time to appoint a Fashion Czar. advertisement advertisement The fashion industry is a $2.5 trillion beast with tentacles in every corner of the world, and yet it operates with little oversight or regulation. It employs more than 75 million people, the majority of whom are poorly paid women, who are vulnerable to abuse. This vast global supply chain means that no single country has been forced to take ownership of the terrible damage it … [Read more...] about President Biden, appoint a fashion czar!
Five paradigm shifts government must embrace to modernize public services
advertisement advertisement advertisement In the past few years, rapid innovation has normalized technologies that would have astonished even Isaac Asimov. Machine learning, autonomous drones, gene splicing, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence went from imagination to commercially viable as soon as the infrastructure and hardware were ready. advertisement If technology has transformed the limitations of what is physically possible, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed how we imagine it. The economy has made an evolutionary shift. The economic system is repurposing itself to become more cloud-based, delivery operated, and decentralized. The changes economic soothsayers predicted for the not-so-distant future have rushed, messily and painfully, into the immediate present. Governments have access to the same technology. They have the same imperative to evolve so they can successfully deliver on their mission in a changing world. This is about more … [Read more...] about Five paradigm shifts government must embrace to modernize public services
From the game room to the classroom—and the boardroom
advertisement advertisement advertisement When MSI recently unveiled several new lines of general-purpose laptops, it turned more than a few industry-savvy heads. This was MSI, widely acknowledged as making some of the world’s best gaming computers, the kind of finely tuned, high-performance machines that often require liquid cooling to tame the high temperatures generated by a boxful of blazing-fast chips being pushed to their limit—and whose notoriously spec-obsessed users argue about millisecond-response times. So why is MSI making computers targeting…students and office workers? advertisement According to Clifford Chun, MSI’s product management director for system products in North America, it’s due to a wealth of research data, along with the inexorable march of time. “We’re constantly studying our customer base, asking questions to better understand what’s going on,” he explains. “As our users got older, their computer habits … [Read more...] about From the game room to the classroom—and the boardroom
How public-interest technologists can build government that works for everyone
advertisement advertisement advertisement When COVID-19 struck and businesses began laying off employees, unemployment systems buckled. Why? State unemployment systems were using programming language from the Eisenhower era. By the end of 2020, despite the federal government distributing 14 million vaccine doses to states, only 4 million had been administered. Again, why? Without a modern hub to manage national distribution, institutions scrambled to deliver vaccines, leading to mismanagement, waste, and an avoidable loss of life. advertisement advertisement These long-standing shortcomings, punctuated by the pandemic, reemphasize how important technology is for governments to fulfill their responsibilities. The Biden administration has an opportunity to build a 21st-century government, one that delivers the power of technology to benefit society at the speed of need, while offsetting the harms normally associated with Big Tech. … [Read more...] about How public-interest technologists can build government that works for everyone