Why Can’t We End Spam? Ask An Economist.
Law enforcement recently took out a bot network capable of sending 1.5 billion spam emails a day. So what are the economic incentives—and costs—of spam?
Did the Internet Kill the TV Cliffhanger?
The internet may have changed the concept of the television cliffhanger, but is it possible that knowing the ending of something increases our enjoyment?
Who Can You Trust Online?
Who can you trust online? It’s a question that comes up constantly in our digital lives, and it’s also a subject of great fascination to internet scholars.
Meet Alan Emtage, the Black Technologist Who Invented ARCHIE, the First Internet Search Engine
Internet search has had a profound impact on our own internal makeup—on how we learn, and how we think.
What’s So Bad About Instant Gratification?
The internet is making us impatient. But is that actually such a bad thing? Our tech columnist takes a look.
How Trump’s Twitter Presidency Hijacked Hopes For E-Democracy
The first live-tweeting presidency resembles the broadcast-era version of democracy more than the kind of democracy the internet was supposed to enable.
How the Internet Makes Women’s Work Visible
When I left my fancy corporate job so that I’d have the flexibility to support my autistic son, I was afraid I’d disappear.
Freeing Your New Year’s Resolutions from “False Hope Syndrome”
We have migrated the New Year’s resolution onto the Internet, without stopping to ask how the digital context changes its power or impact.
Full Disclosure: Why We Say Too Much When We Write Online
The internet is an emotional vampire. Scroll through your latest social network updates—or the headlines on Medium and ...
To Fix Fake News, Look To Yellow Journalism
Fake news has plenty of precedents in the history of mass media, and particularly, in the history of American journalism.