Snowden Updates

A Web Guerrilla Breaking News From the Jungle: Inside Glenn Greenwald’s Mountaintop Home Office by David Carr at the NYTimes “On approaching Glenn Greenwald’s home office high in the jungle-encrusted mountains above Rio de Janeiro, all is tranquil, bucolic even. A gurgling stream at the entrance frames the idyll. And then the dogs notice the incursion. […]

Loneliness vs. Electric Shock. Who wins?

Blaise Pascal famously wrote: “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” and now science shows us a deeper truth: that we would rather administer electric shocks to ourselves than sit quietly in a room alone. Read on below. The Latest Snowden Leak Is Devastating to NSA Defenders […]

Surveiller

Busy signals signals flicker under oath you throw blanket over both the truth and lies that you’ve huddled together in a mess of wires emitting sparks which scatter that across the world.   (Photo credit: takomabibelot)

Snowden: “I was trained as a spy”

  In case you missed the latest Snowden interview, here’s a short clip where Snowden explains that contrary to official government releases, he was not simply a “low-level systems analyst” but actually trained as a spy. You can see the whole interview with Brian Williams and read more at NBC News.

Perspectives on Privacy and Human Flourishing

I’ve not been able to track down the source, but somewhere Marshall McLuhan wrote, “Publication is a self-invasion of privacy. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.” The unfolding NSA scandal has brought privacy front and center. A great deal is being written right now about the ideal […]

Surveillance, Wearables, and Confirming Mediocrity

Yesterday morning, one of my favorite twitter acquaintances tweeted a quote from an article on the future of web publishing: “You are what you measure” — Will the sunset of the pageview change what we create for the web? http://t.co/esQyeHUDqb — Christopher Mims (@mims) March 23, 2014 “You are what you measure.” And while the […]

Reading List: Facebook’s Paper and Other Updates

If you missed it on your Facebook feed this past week, Facebook turned ten and released a new app, Paper. Unlike real paper you can’t write on it, burn it, or make compost with it, but there has been a lot of ink shed surrounding its release. The best piece I’ve read so far about […]

Born Again Ideology?

Arthur Kroker, of Ctheory.net, meditates on the connections between religious ideology in the 21st century, the surveillance-security state and the future of technology and religion. If not controversial, it’s at least interesting. What are your thoughts?

Reading List: NSA Reform, Activists, and Cars that Watch You

Happy Monday! Here’s a good mix of articles on everything from social media creditworthiness, cars that watch you, NSA reform, and an untold story of an FBI burglary. We also hope you enjoy Michael Toy’s take on Present Shock and Paul. If you want a brief overview of Rushkoff’s Present Shock, watch this. Trial of […]

Reading List: Snowden and Surveillance

For our reading list this week, we’ve got all the best Snowden, NSA and surveillance coverage we could find, starting with a video of the message he released on Christmas day. Enjoy!   Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower – NY Times A quick and dirty overview of the entire Snowden story to get you up to speed. […]

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