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[...] part of technology design is precisely the art of making clear to the user what they can and cannot do with it. Technology design always involves both a closing off of the technology's innards into a "black box" and the projection of messages on its outer surface that will guide the user into…

[...] Technology and power are implicated in one another historically and in contemporary social arrangements. There is no experience of technology that is not at the same time an experience of a kind of social power, but it does not always involve domination. [...]

[...] The biggest tech companies are, among other things, the most powerful gatekeepers the world has ever known. Google helps us sort the Internet by providing a sense of hierarchy to information; Facebook uses its algorithms and its intricate understanding of our social circles to sort the news w…

The fact that Internet surveillance isn't totalitarian, however, doesn't mean that it does us no harm. We're watched so that we can be manipulated. Some of this manipulation is welcome. We might revel in algorithmic recommendation of music, we're pleased to be shown an advertisement for sneakers, w…

[...] let's stop rationalizing the inane economics of magazines and newspapers. It's silly to assert that information wants to be free. That was a piece of nineties pablum that has survived far too long. Consumers have no inherent problem paying for words, so long as publishers place a price tag on…