With the rise of humanism and modern critical scholarly practices in subsequent centuries, texts began to be treated as material objects to be fixed and plumbed for meaning.
Taking a hard look at the smart city requires that we ask not only where it might fail to live up to the promises of its boosters, but also where it is successful and how it might nonetheless still fail us as citizens and as human beings.
Great as they are, the challenges of the digital age are not only profoundly intellectual and conceptual.
At the beginning of the digital revolution, there existed a speculative energy that we could use now. It was put at the service not of innovation or disruption but of maintenance and politics, of establishing categories to put our digital world on a better course.
Our political moment demands to see who we are—a beautiful and terrifying ordeal.
The highly abstract and immaterial phantom economy is inextricable from the “real economy.”
Social and cultural change, from the rise of the “information economy” to changes in family life to the technological mediation of our relationships, is happening all around us.
Work is not just an economic matter. Beyond survival, a range of other human values and ideals are at stake.
Demands on our attention come from the informational environments and shared physical spaces we inhabit. At issue are ethical questions about the conduct of civic life.
What's the real-world significance of arguing in a New York Times op-ed that life doesn't exist? More than we might initially think.
Numbers and big data may be able to show us how to do things better, but they cannot show us how to do things.
What does dominion “over every living thing that moves on the earth” mean? Brute sovereignty and ruthless exploitation? Or thoughtful stewardship and responsible cultivation?