Has the Internet become better at mediating change? It’s a good question, and the exploration of the topic by Jane Hu for The New Yorker is even better. This should be on one of your must-reads for the weekend. (In relation to this piece, I would recommend this report from Brookings. More than half of Americans are millennials and younger, and that impacts everything, including activism.)
“This is the Internet We Were Promised” is a good read about how being online can bring support and joy. The internet is proving its true value in this pandemic. Just imagine if we were left to mainstream media and its coverage of the pandemic and politicians? It is often easy to overlook that aspect in this age, when everything seems to be about outrage and troll-like behavior.
“There’s No Such Thing as Family Secrets in the Age of 23andMe.” This is a great piece about something that has quietly upended many lives, both in a good and a bad way. It is a perfect illustration of the unintended consequences of technology, which I often bring up in my writing.
As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea of remote work and distributed teams have gone from being quixotic to the mainstream. Here’s the big question Will remote work kill the idea of a city? If the steady trickle of tech-workers abandoning San Francisco Bay Area is any indication, then cities as we know them might be going through a mutation.
“How Saudi Arabia monitors and intimidates its critics abroad.” A close look.
These recommendations are part of my weekend newsletter.