COVID-19 tracking apps are here now and their impact on privacy and civil liberties is the focus of an emerging debate.
technology
A small reach for gender parity at tech conferences can produce big gains
I was part of the second class of undergraduate women at Williams College, which became co-educational in 1970 after nearly 200 years of being an all-male enclave – and for many of those years, all-white as well. I became accustomed to being one of the only women in a classroom. I didn’t have a single … Continue reading »
Lack of oversight puts Americans’ privacy at risk across entire tech, information industry
As fallout from the revelation of Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of Facebook user information continues, many are mistakenly calling this incident a breach. Facebook is right to claim this incident was no breach — this is Facebook’s platform working exactly as designed. I know, because I too created a survey app on Facebook for the express purpose of … Continue reading »
Coevolution of human and artificial intelligences
Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, in an open lesson to more than a million schoolchildren on Sept. 1, said that “Whoever becomes the leader in [artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.” Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, states that AI represents an existential threat to humanity and urges government regulation before it’s too late. Clearly, AI … Continue reading »
The false media focus on violence: If it bleeds it still leads
On Sunday, August 27, in downtown Berkeley, I witnessed thousands of protesters raising their voices against a planned white supremacist “Patriot Prayer” rally. In my decades as a documentary filmmaker of activism and now an academic studying movements and media, it was one of the most positive, diverse and unifying gatherings I ever experienced. While … Continue reading »
What environmentalists get wrong about e-waste in West Africa
Beginning in 2009, Ghana’s computer import industry went almost instantly from totally invisible, to worldwide infamy. The work of two photojournalists — Pieter Hugo and Kevin McElvaney — played a key role in this newfound visibility. Their imagery of e-waste and its young victims such as cable burners covered in dirt and soot in an area of Ghana’s capital … Continue reading »
Despite surprising Apple vulnerability, journalists should stick with iPhones
(The following post is reprinted from a post by Geoffrey King for a blog for the Committee to Protect Journalists, covered by Creative Commons.) A rare and serious vulnerability in Apple’s iOS operating system has been discovered by researchers at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which just published a report detailing its findings. It … Continue reading »
Periscope, Congress and the aliveness of video
A group of people sitting on the floor, many holding signs. One after another making speeches. People milling about. Some looking at their phones. On and off, chanting, call and response. But this time the men are in suits the women mostly in skirts and heels. (No doubt some wishing they had worn pants that … Continue reading »
Humanitarian innovation: Surprising news, cautionary tales, promising directions
For those fleeing active conflict zones, natural disasters, or the gradual devastation of climate change, a host of humanitarian relief agencies is standing by. A symposium of leaders from the United Nations, nonprofit organizations, academia, and industry gathered last month at CITRIS (Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society) and the Banatao … Continue reading »
Design Wars: The FBI, Apple and hundreds of millions of phones
(This post is coauthored by Nick Doty.) After forum-and fact-shopping and charting a course via the closed processes of district courts, the FBI has honed in on the case of the San Bernardino terrorist who killed 14 people, injured 22 and left an encrypted iPhone behind. The agency hopes the highly emotional and political nature … Continue reading »
Cell phone etiquette
People have been complaining about bad cell phone behavior for years. What are the 21st century’s Emily Post rules for cell phones and texting? (For the millennials: Emily Post was the great doyenne of etiquette and manners advice in the 20th century. Her descendants still produce advice books under her name. And there actually are new-era Emily … Continue reading »
No longer useless: Liberal arts education in a digital age
Last week, two on-line articles published on the same day, July 29th, in Forbes Magazine caught my attention. The first, entitled “America’s Top Colleges Ranking 2015,” by Forbes staff writer Caroline Howard, opened with the following: “The No. 1 FORBES Top College 2015 is Pomona College, followed by Williams College and Stanford University.”* The second Forbes article … Continue reading »
Privacy vs. privacy
It’s common to see privacy pitted against security in the form of the question: “How much privacy are we willing to give up for security?” Some call the security vs. privacy debate a false choice, and suggest the debate is actually liberty vs. security, or liberty vs. control, or privacy vs. cooperation. At UC Berkeley, … Continue reading »
How To Think Like an Entrepreneur: The Inventure Cycle
The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers. That’s all well and good if you already have an … Continue reading »
Old days, fast times
There’s a lot of discussion about speed these days – from the possible advantage of seconds that some users on the internet would get were broadband “net neutrality” to go away to the market-disrupting micro-mini-milli-second competition among “flash mob” stock traders to debates over the speed-up “bullet trains” might provide. It seems as if we … Continue reading »
Does technology really cut us off from other people?
Smarthphones and social media are changing our daily lives and our society. It’s now normal to see two people at a dinner table fiddling with their phones—and why not? They probably first met each other through their phones, on a dating site like OKCupid. But are digital devices and social media disconnecting us from the … Continue reading »
How to be Smarter than Your Investors — Continuous Customer Discovery
Teams that build continuous customer discovery into their DNA will become smarter than their investors, and build more successful companies. — Awhile back I blogged about Ashwin, one of my ex-students wanted to raise a seed round to build Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) with a Hyper-spectral camera and fly it over farm fields collecting hyper-spectral images. These images, when … Continue reading »
Where to find love on Facebook
This piece was co-authored with Emiliana Simon-Thomas. What’s the most popular emotion in the world? Well, on Facebook at least, the answer is clear: It’s love. How do we know that? Because the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center worked with Facebook to develop a new set of animated emoticons to express a broad range … Continue reading »
Art and the machined world
Much of early 20th-century art in the West was commentary on the massive technological developments of the late 19th century. Where, 100 years later, is the comparable 21st-century artistic response to the technological developments of the late 20th century? American artists a few generations ago, especially painters and photographers, portrayed the massive structures, machined objects, … Continue reading »
For a winning health care system, lab advances must be translated into clinical solutions
Universal access to affordable, high-quality health care requires not only advances in science, technology, policy, and clinical services, but also more effective translation of technological innovations into the marketplace. To cross the gap from lab bench to patient bedside, innovators must deal with issues of product development, technology management, market positioning, cost/reimbursement, and regulation. Graduate … Continue reading »