The political economy of technology
I sat across from Mark Mancall as a flock of SLE students, eager to pick the mind of their program’s founder, gathered for dinner. As the conversation drifted to technology, the man who urged us with...
View ArticleMedia is magic
On the day of the election, Donald Trump tweeted that Utah was reporting failed voting machines all over the country. It was meant to read the “county,” but that didn’t matter. The tweet was out there....
View ArticleEthical snake oil
Sometimes, I feel guilty for being at Stanford. Sometimes, everything here seems a little too perfect. The grass is too green; the shrubs are too coifed. The libraries have too many books, and there...
View ArticleAutomation
Finally, Michigan can sleep easy. The factories are coming back. Ford’s CEO, Mark Fields, has cancelled a $1.6 billion investment in Mexico and is, instead, injecting $700 million into existing...
View ArticleDisrupting municipal government
Jonathan Reichental travels the world to talk about Open Data, podcast and attend tech conferences. His Instagram is smattered with shots of Italian facades, Viennese palaces and the Canadian rockies....
View ArticleThe promise of universal income
Two hours south of Toronto, my hometown, are cities that look nothing like the wealthy, coiffed streets of Ontario’s capital. Industrial areas like Hamilton, Oshawa and Windsor are painted with the...
View ArticleIdentity and the algorithm
He is erratic, prone to fits of rage. Sudden bouts of affection strike him forcefully and violently. He anticipates your every thought of him and acts to confound you. In “Notes from Underground,”...
View ArticleThe price of equality
The university is the great equalizer. More than any other institution, the university has the ability to take people in the lowest economic rungs of society and lift them up, providing social...
View ArticleNostos and nostalgia
At the turn of the 20th century, April was an exciting time for Paris. Between then and November of 1900, the city held the fifth Exposition Universelle, an international fair that was a celebration of...
View ArticleSilence
Friday night, just ahead of the presidential election in France, 9 GB of documents appeared on Pastebin, posted by a profile called EMLEAKS. It contained leaked files from Emmanuel Macron’s election...
View ArticleThe future of history
In the ’30s, Palo Alto caused quite a stir. This quiet and conservative university town that only voted for its first Democratic president in 1960 – when it chose John F. Kennedy – became, overnight,...
View ArticleGoogle’s city
After blocking the construction of the Lower Manhattan Expressway – which would have uprooted neighborhood blocks and erased Washington Square Park from the map – Jane Jacobs packed her New York...
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The relatable brilliance of ‘My Brilliant Friend’
Emily Wachter, Niamh Cusack and Toby Wharton in a stage adaptation of ‘My Brilliant Friend.’ (MARC BRENNER/Rose Theatre Kingston) When Lena imagines herself in her mind, her actual appearance is not...
View ArticleStanford’s rebels
Editor’s note: This column references a 1972 New York Times article, “In the Matter of H. Bruce Franklin,” which was not linked or attributed in the text below. It also erroneously dates H. Bruce’s...
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Failures in Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘Eileen’
Author Ottessa Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival. (Courtesy of Larry D. Moore) Ottessa Moshfegh is the queen of short stories. She is the goddess of the weird, the disgusting and the deformed....
View ArticleKids these days
In the late ’60s, Joan Didion ventured to San Francisco in search of “social hemorrhaging.” She had an apocalyptic tone and an eye for disaster. She came to the city that was a mecca for kids that...
View ArticleCS + Ethics
Early this year, research fellow Hilary Cohen and professors Jeremy Weinstein, Mehran Sahami and Rob Reich were pictured in a copy of The New York Times. They stood together in the atrium of the Gates...
View ArticleComplacent Valley
This is not what a Stanford education is supposed to look like, I remember thinking. It was only my third week at the university when my entire freshman dorm had marched off to the annual Fall Career...
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