articles

2024

  • Ultra Hardcore, a review of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, The New York Review of Books, January 18, 2024.
  • 2023

  • How Everything Became Data, a review of How Data Happened by Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones, The Nation, October 16, 2023.
  • Better, Faster, Stronger, a review of Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris, The New York Review of Books, September 21, 2023.
  • Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI, The Guardian, July 25, 2023.
  • The technologies of all dead generations, a talk at Penn's Annenberg School, April 7, 2023.
  • The Engineer's Predicament, The Drift, February 22, 2023.
  • 2022

  • In the Hothouse, The New York Review of Books, November 11, 2022.
  • ‘Wallets and eyeballs’: how eBay turned the internet into a marketplace, The Guardian, June 16, 2022.
  • The Internet is Broken. How Do We Fix It?, The New York Times, May 27, 2022.
  • 2021

  • Tech Workers at Every Level Can Organize to Build Power, Jacobin, February 6, 2021.
  • Silicon Valley Workers Have Had Enough, The New York Times, January 26, 2021.
  • The Making of the Tech Worker Movement: A 2021 Update, an exchange with Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya, Collective Action in Tech, January 7, 2021.
  • 2020

  • Covid-19 and the Cloud, Progressive International Blueprint, May 21, 2020.
  • The Making of the Tech Worker Movement, Logic pamphlet, May 4, 2020.
  • These Are Conditions In Which Revolution Becomes Thinkable, Commune, April 7, 2020.
  • 2017

  • The new cold war: how our focus on Russia obscures social media's real threat, The Guardian, December 14, 2017.
  • Time to release the internet from the free market – and make it a basic right, The Guardian, November 29, 2017.
  • Empathy – the latest gadget Silicon Valley wants to sell you, The Guardian, October 25, 2017.
  • World Without Mind by Franklin Foer review – the turn against Big Tech, The Guardian, October 25, 2017.
  • Tech's push to teach coding isn't about kids' success – it's about cutting wages, The Guardian, September 21, 2017.
  • Silicon Valley siphons our data like oil. But the deepest drilling has just begun, The Guardian, August 23, 2017.
  • Bill Gates Won’t Save Us, Jacobin, August 15, 2017.
  • Home Invasion, Logic, Summer 2017.
  • How social media saved socialism, The Guardian, July 21, 2017.
  • How privatization could spell the end of democracy, The Guardian, June 21, 2017.
  • The Dark Web's Dark Prince, a review of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton, The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2017.
  • America has become so anti-innovation – it's economic suicide, The Guardian, May 11, 2017.
  • Trump's Tech Opposition, with Matt Schaefer and Kristen Sheets, Jacobin, May 2, 2017.
  • The new status symbol: it’s not what you spend – it’s how hard you work, The Guardian, April 24, 2017.
  • The Role of the Working Class, a response to Wolfgang Streeck, Inference, April 7, 2017.
  • Socialize the Internet, Jacobin, April 4, 2017.
  • Robots won't just take our jobs – they'll make the rich even richer, The Guardian, March 2, 2017.
  • Trump needs tech to achieve his vision. But Silicon Valley isn't having it, The Guardian, January 24, 2017.
  • 2011-2014

  • Mark Twain, Writing Coach and Role Model, The Daily Beast, April 19, 2014.
  • #CancelColbert, Meet "The Heathen Chinee", Politico, April 8, 2014.
  • How Mark Twain Became Mark Twain, Salon, March 22, 2014.
  • "As for Me, I Sell Abuse", Lapham's Quarterly, Feb. 15, 2014.
  • Once Upon a Time in the West, Lapham's Quarterly, Jan. 1, 2014.
  • Mark Twain's Eternal Chatter, The New Yorker, Nov. 13, 2013.
  • A Counterfeiting Conspiracy?, The New York Times, March 27, 2012.
  • The Worst Business in the World, Lapham's Quarterly, Oct. 20, 2011.
  • Magical Thinking, Lapham's Quarterly, Oct. 1, 2011.
  • The Man Who Financed the Civil War, The New York Times, July 16, 2011.
  • Money for Nothing, The New York Times, March 14, 2011.