Once the coronavirus hit, registered nurse Shannon Garcia suddenly needed to work from home, like thousands of others in the U.S. Not only would her isolation make space in a crowded hospital, she’d keep herself safe. Having cardiac arrhythmia and lung damage, she’s more vulnerable to the global virus taking a toll on her health. But she faced a serious problem: a lack of internet access. […]
Internet
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How Artists Are Exploring Radical Economies By Robert Kauffman, Resilience.org. March 26, 2020 How Artists Are Exploring Radical Economies2020-03-262020-03-26https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/03/reunion.width-800-e1585273400133.jpg200px200px Above photo: Still from ReUnion film | Image courtesy of ReUnion There are many proposals for radical economies from progressive economists, activists and think tanks. Artists are increasingly joining these debates with speculative proposals and unconventional methodologies. I will explore three art projects here that approach the economies of caring […]
William Gibson writes visionary stories — in his early work, he imagined an information superhighway long before the Web existed. But in a dozen novels over the last 35 years, Gibson has stalked closer and closer to the present. His latest, Agency, has a complicated plot that jumps between the far future and the immediate present; Gibson says his favorite type of science fiction requires time […]
Movie and TV streaming service Netflix says it will cut its bit rates across Europe by a quarter to ease the internet burden as coronavirus quarantines have forced millions of people to stay home all day. Many more people than usual are now working from home, thanks to virus-limiting restrictions and lockdowns, while the mass closure of schools and colleges also means more pressure on internet […]
Corona Virus And The Digital Divide March 15, 2020 Corona Virus And The Digital Divide2020-03-152020-03-15https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/03/free-press-cell-phone.jpeg200px200px Above photo: From Free Press. Farhad Manjoo (New York Times, 3/11/20): “The true embarrassment is that it took a pandemic for leaders to realize that the health of the American work force is important to the strength of the nation.” It is not lost on some that, all of a sudden, […]
Valerian Bennett is Managing Director of the Pop Network Foundation, which is dedicated to helping creators and communities find their freedom by decentralizing the streaming economy. He is a graduate of the BoostVC accelerator (Tribe 8) and limited partner at Amentum Capital. On December 23, 2019 as many around the world were settling into the Christmas holiday, a crypto disaster struck. Google-owned YouTube, the largest streaming […]
Move over, Facebook and Twitter. Russian trolls are expanding their social media portfolio and going longform with a growing footprint on Medium. Over the past few years, Kremlin-linked disinformation campaigns have increasingly turned to the sleek, minimalist writing platform to host fake articles—stories that fed into Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine conspiracy theories and other favorite topics of Moscow. So how are trolls abusing the tech industry’s favorite […]
Gigi Sohn has spent the last 30 years as a public interest advocate. Her main focus, nowadays? Getting telecommunications giants to take on fiduciary duty. Now that the internet has become “the essential communications tool of the 21st century,” Sohn thinks that broadband connection is a right, not a privilege. This doesn’t mean that she’s on board with all technological advancements. Sohn, an ex senior staffer […]
There are two warring factions at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). One side represents the business class, or the dominant internet service providers (ISPs) that want less regulation, freer markets and the ability to determine how to run and where to build their networks. Its apotheosis is found in the current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai. The competing side, represented by Jessica Rosenworcel, one of the five […]
Ethereum developers are leveraging blockchain’s censorship-resistant nature to launch the next iteration of the internet, Web 3.0. Last weekend at ETHDenver – one of the conference circuit’s top gatherings of ethereum coders – decentralized internet alternatives were on display, including Ethereum Name Service (ENS), Unstoppable Domains and UniLogin. Launched in 2017 and 2018, respectively, ENS and Unstoppable Domains are confronting the hierarchical nature of the internet […]
This article will pull back the veil on one of the fastest-growing institutions in the US Security State’s information war. Some of the observatory’s central figures include Facebook’s security chief during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, leading academic champions of Western triumphalism and US policy advisers, and even a lead researcher from a cybersecurity group previously exposed as being itself a disinformation outfit. ‘Rebuilding the Arsenal of […]