Does cyberspace exist, and is it free? John Perry Barlow on reflects, 20 years later, on A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. The story of the ongoing fight between open-data philosophy and the federal government: Anna Wiener reviews The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet by Justin Peters. McKenzie Wark reviews Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free: Laws for the Internet Age by Cory Doctorow. Does Amazon’s data speak for itself? Paul Ford on how finding meaning in the retailer’s mountain of information isn’t easy. Jill Lepore reviews The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding Less in the Age of Big Data by Michael P. Lynch. Can computers be racist? Michael Brennan on big data, inequality, and discrimination. Jessica Lebe on how your data footprint is affecting your life in ways you can’t even imagine.
Exposed to a deluge of digital photos, we’re feeling the psychological effects of image overload. We are hopelessly hooked: Jacob Weisberg reviews Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age and Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle; Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web by Joseph M. Reagle; and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover.
