(this is for digital design professionals):
Why I’m losing faith in UX

Why The Web Is Such A Mess

It was only a matter of time until Cory Doctorow joined this collection.

Cory Doctorow interview here.

Aral Balkan on Corona measures by Google and Apple

Seeing how companies like Facebook are driving the potential of information technology into the ground here are two three four some videos on the background of the industry.

Stage 1: Hope – the origins

link to Richard Barbrook: Californian Ideology 20.2 on vimeo

Further reading at The Jacobin.

Google’s true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance

Inside ‘Mondo 2000,’ the cyberpunk magazine that gave us a glimpse of the utopian future that never was

Stage 2: Change – turning south

link to Sleeping Through a Revolution – Jonathan Taplin on vimeo

link to How the Internet Became a Battlefield on Bitchute

‘One Has This Feeling of Having Contributed to Something That’s Gone Very Wrong’

An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

What Has Google Ever Done for Us?

This Is How We Radicalized The World

‘I Fundamentally Believe That My Time at Reddit Made the World a Worse Place’

‘Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe,’ by Roger McNamee

Google and YouTube executives ignored warnings on toxic video content, now we’re all paying the price

Why do people believe the Earth is flat?

Cryptodamages: Monetary value estimates of the air pollution and human health impacts of cryptocurrency mining

European Internet “Self-Governing” Body Ignores Own Report and Continues to Serve Criminals

The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong?

Revealed: Google made large contributions to climate change deniers

Sacha Baron Cohen’s scathing attack on Facebook

Culture Isn’t Free

Evil is Baked into Big Tech’s Business Plan. Now What?

Alienated, Alone And Angry: What the Digital Revolution Really Did To Us

Scraping the Web Is a Powerful Tool. Clearview AI Abused It

Wayback Machine Latest Victim of Big Tech Consolidation and Censorship

Facebook Is Patenting Technology to Spy on You Through Your Smartphone Camera and Microphone

How SEO Is Gentrifying the Internet

Techno-feudalism (link goes to Vimeo)

Stage 3: Action – or eternal tyranny

We need to rethink social media before it’s too late. We’ve accepted a Faustian bargain

link to Take Back Your Web – Tantek Çelik

The Revolt of the Public: Martin Gurri

Putting a price on our data won’t make the platforms stop abusing our privacy

The American Conservative and free speech without public spaces

At This Point We Have to ask Ourselves: is Google Opposed to Article 13 or the Nation State Itself? PT 2

How I fell out of love with the internet

Google reaped millions in tax breaks as it secretly expanded its real estate footprint across the U.S.

Let’s talk about ride-sharing.

After 6 Years in Exile, Edward Snowden Explains Himself

The Pentagon Wants More Control Over the News. What Could Go Wrong?

Bruce Schneier makes the case for “public interest technologists”

Evgeny Morozov: Competition and Cooperation in Digital Capitalism

Mensch sein in Zeiten digitaler Entmenschlichung

We’ve spent the decade letting our tech define us. It’s out of control

some thoughts on what to do about (tech) monopolies

Once developers are concerned: The cult of the free must die

Kommentar: Digitale Souveränität zum Schnäppchenpreis – von Europa und Mozilla

To Mend a Broken Internet, Create Online Parks

‘Do Not Track’ Is Back, and This Time It Might Work

Opinion | Facebook and the Surveillance Society: The Other Coup

The Case for Digital Public Infrastructure

A New Union of Musicians Is Taking on Spotify

Update:
What would the web look like without big tech companies?

And even furtherer reading and viewing:

He Who Must Not Be Mentioned! (Moment of Clarity)

And here is a guy doing a somewhat proper analysis, while pulling odd examples such as doctors in rural Africa (good luck finding one), while ignoring the harm YouTube did to recording musicians everywhere:
How “philanthropy” is a way for rich people to preserve the inequality that benefits them

Ethan Marcotte on the consequences of design on the web

The Epstein scandal at MIT shows the moral bankruptcy of techno-elites

And slightly related a new round of funding for future self made tech pioneers:
Trump signs ‘American AI Initiative’ executive order to prioritize federal funding for artificial intelligence research

Also the the web versus the climate:

and YouTube versus the artist:

Follow the Money: YouTube’s Failure to Pay Retroactively Gives “Conversion Rate” a Whole New Meaning

related: How We Analyzed Google’s Search Results

Young people and social media dependency:
Are the Kids Alright?

A game that plays people:
A Game Designer’s Analysis Of QAnon

Find more tech related talking points under the technology tag.

Takers. Of the free resources. Such as clean air. Takers of money, too. Same guys. Duh.

Source: Money to burn: As the wealthy get wealthier, carbon emissions grow in US states

California towns are winning David. v. Goliath battles with oil companies.

Source: Small California Towns Are Facing Off Against Oil Companies — And Winning | naked capitalism

link

Watch skateboard stunts on rooftops of New York

Source: Watch skateboard stunts on rooftops of New York / Boing Boing

Cutting Room: Cover Peripherals | The Surfers Journal

Ice age art in Indonesia reveals how spiritual life transformed en route to Australia | Science | The Guardian

In President Trump’s America, Quentin Tarantino might not have been.

Source: What Does the NEA Fund? – 7 Famous Movies Funded by the NEA

Will Amazon Destroy More US Jobs Than China? | naked capitalism

link

Now we’ll know what the government thought about climate change when it still believed in it.

Source: You Can Now Access The EPA Website As It Existed Before Trump | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah will protect some of America’s most striking landscape—and its earliest history.

Source: This Ancient Place Just Secured Membership in America’s Culture Club | NRDC

Berlin discusses possible reparation payments over massacre of tens of thousands of people in early years of 20th century

Source: Germany moves to atone for forgotten genocide in Namibia | World news | The Guardian

The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s.

Source: Research Center

Earth-force meets money-force at Standing Rock. I’m so relieved I’m here. It scares me to think that I might have missed this.We get up at dawn. Four hundred people walk slowly in a light snow to the river by the camp. A teacher is talking. His headdress is a crisscrossing of long, narrow feathers. He is of the Havasupai, the people who live by the blue-green waterfalls at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He calls out across the river. “Water is life! Take me! My heart beats with you!”

Source: Standing Rock: A Moment of Clarity for Progressive Activists

According to a study from Plymouth University, plastic pollution affects at least 700 marine species, while some estimates suggest that at least 100 million marine mammals are killed each year from plastic pollution. Here are some of the marine species most deeply impacted by plastic pollution.

Source: These 5 Marine Animals Are Dying Because of Our Plastic Trash … Here’s How We Can Help

A steady increase in sea levels is pushing saltwater into U.S. wetlands, killing trees from Florida as far north as New Jersey. But with sea level projected to rise by as much as six feet this century, the destruction of coastal forests is expected to become a worsening problem worldwide.

Quelle: Ghost Forests: How Rising Seas Are Killing Southern Woodlands by Roger Real Drouin: Yale Environment 360

We’re inspired every time we have a great cocktail, and we definitely started to feel inspired when we visited Highland Park Bowl the other night and enjoyed a few of their cocktails. The dri…

Quelle: El Capitan Hook

They are thought to be solitary, but new research shows one shark species to be intensely social

Source: Sand tiger sharks: far friendlier than you think | Environment | The Guardian

Source: Mandala Oblongata | A Kaleidoscopic Adventure on the Loaded Boards Tan Tien

link

In this video Jonathan Taplin talks about the tech revolution, today’s big players connection to libertarianism and what it all means for us.

link to vimeo