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AI-generated illustration of a blue neural network, surrounded by code and data graphics, against dark background.

How Machines Came to Speak (and How to Shut Them Up)

On the intertwined history of free speech law and media technology.
by Alex Sayf Cummings via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on September 24, 2023
An old journal with cursive writing on the pages

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.
by Sonja Drimmer via Public Books on August 9, 2023
The John Rankin House, an original stop on the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad Was the Ultimate Conspiracy to Southern Enslavers

And justified the most extreme responses.
by Colin Dickey via Atlas Obscura on July 11, 2023

Digital Queers: How Computers Transformed LGBTQ Life in the United States

Digital communications allowed transgender individuals and organizations the digital tools to organize and connect at a previously impossible scale and speed.
by Avery Dame-Griff via Process: A Blog for American History on June 29, 2023
Whistleblower Edward Snowden addresses an audience at a conference in Lisbon, Portugal, 2019.

Ten Years Ago, Edward Snowden Blew the Whistle on the US’s Most Secretive Spy Agency

The government responded with ruthless persecution — just one egregious example in the NSA’s long, sordid history of fiercely guarding its secrecy.
by Chip Gibbons via Jacobin on June 9, 2023
Image of a woman sitting in front of the computer

The Intimate and Interconnected History of the Internet

A new book offers a picture of an early Internet defined by community, experimentation, and lack of privacy. 
by Kevin Driscoll, Jacob Bruggeman via The Nation on October 14, 2022
Graphic showing black cursive handwriting on a red background, with a white question mark in the corner

Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive

How will they interpret the past?
by Drew Gilpin Faust via The Atlantic on September 16, 2022
Map of Phillips Radio by Walter Eckhard (1935).

The Spirit of Radio

Explore some new and old radio maps in our collection, and learn a bit about the history of radio communications.
by Rachel Sharer via Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center on September 2, 2022
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on stage giving a presentation below a screen showing pictures of people connected by the Facebook network.

How Capitalism—Not a Few Bad Actors—Destroyed the Internet

Twenty-five years of neoliberal political economy are to blame for today's regime of surveillance advertising, and only public policy can undo it.
by Matthew Crain via Boston Review on August 3, 2022
Servers at a Facebook data center

Build a Better Internet

An interview with Ben Tarnoff, the author of "Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future."
by Nick Serpe, Ben Tarnoff via Dissent on June 27, 2022
Colorful bar graph.

‘Wallets and Eyeballs’: How eBay Turned the Internet Into a Marketplace

The story of the modern web is often told through the stories of Google, Facebook, Amazon. But eBay was the first conqueror.
by Ben Tarnoff via The Guardian on June 16, 2022

Could Internet Culture Be Different?

Kevin Driscoll’s study of early Internet communities contains a vision for a less hostile and homogenous future of social networking.
by Ethan Zuckerman via New York Review of Books on May 19, 2022
Drawing of aerial view of vast room of cubicles.

The 20-Year Boondoggle

The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to rally nearly two dozen agencies together in a streamlined approach to protecting the country. So what the hell happened?
by Amanda Chicago Lewis via The Verge on April 21, 2022
Ray Walston, Eileen Brennan and Paul Newman in the 1973 movie ‘The Sting,’ in which con artists use wiretapping to gamble on a horse race.

The Wiretappers Who Invented a High-Tech Crime

Before Americans worried about government or corporate surveillance, 19th-century criminals took advantage of a new technology to steal valuable information.
by Brian Hochman via The Wall Street Journal on March 31, 2022
A still from the 1955 film 'Wiretapper.' The still depicts a man wearing headphones and touching a wire.

When New York City was a Wiretapper’s Dream

Eavesdropping flourished after WWII, aided by legal loopholes, clever hacks, and “private ears”.
by Brian Hochman via IEEE Spectrum on March 25, 2022
Poster for "Dr. Strangelove"

Hotline Suspense

The entire plot of Stanley Kubrick's Cold War satire turns around getting people on the phone.
by Devin Short via Contingent on March 19, 2022
A bronze statue of Civil War soldiers on horseback, in front of the U.S. Capitol building.

How Twitter Explains the Civil War (and Vice Versa)

The proliferation of antebellum print is analogous to our own tectonic shifts in how people communicate and what they communicate about.
by Ariel Ron via The Strong Paw Of Reason on January 6, 2022
Print announcement for Florida CB personality "Bow Weevil," featuring a photo of a Black man's face on a drawing of a bowl weevil holding a microphone.

How Black CB Radio Users Created an Audible Community

CB radio was portrayed as a mostly white enthusiasm in its heyday, but Black CB users were active as early as 1959.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Art M. Blake, Tyler Watts, Jared Barton via JSTOR Daily on November 18, 2021
Model posing with the original Motorola cellphone

The First Cellphone: Discover Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X, a 2-Pound Brick Priced at $3,995

We get the culture our technology permits, and in the 21st century no technological development has changed culture like that of the smartphone.
by Colin Marshall via Open Culture on May 20, 2021
The cover of Black Software by Charlton D. McIlwain, depicting a raised fist against a green background.

Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories

What has been gained and lost from overlooking histories about the wild heterogeneity of networks that existed for well over a century?
by Lori Emerson via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 12, 2021

The Library of Possible Futures

Since the release of "Future Shock" 50 years ago, the allure of speculative nonfiction has remained the same: We all want to know what’s coming next.
by Samantha Culp via The Atlantic on February 1, 2021
An old concrete arrow for the airway

How the First Airmail Pilots Learned to Fly in the Dark

Almost a century ago, a network of signals guided airmail pilots across the country. A photographer documents the remnants of this transcontinental system.
by Chris Forsyth, Daegan Miller via Places Journal on February 1, 2021
Elegant Boardroom

The Limits of Telecommuting

Perhaps the lesson to take from this year of living online is not about making better technology. It’s about recognizing technology’s limits.
by Margaret O'Mara via Public Books on November 18, 2020
Jill Lepore and the cover of her Book "If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future"

“We Don’t Want the Program”: On How Tech Can’t Fix Democracy

“Start-ups: they need philosophers, political theorists, historians, poets. Critics.”
by Jill Lepore, Danah Boyd via Public Books on November 2, 2020
partner

The Racist Roots of the Dog Whistle

Here’s how we came to label the coded language.
by Adam R. Shapiro via Made By History on August 21, 2020

All the World’s a Page

Paper was never simply a writing surface, but a complicated substance that folded itself into the fabric of culture and consciousness.
by Gill Partington via Public Books on July 16, 2020

Jubilee Jim Fisk and the Great Civil War Score

In 1865, a failed stockbroker tries to pull off one of the boldest financial schemes in American history: the original big short.
by David K. Thomson via Boston Globe Magazine on April 22, 2020

The Intelligence Coup of the Century

For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries.
by Greg Miller via Washington Post on February 11, 2020
Drawing of a lightbulb illuminating an inventor's laboratory.

The Real Nature of Thomas Edison’s Genius

The inventor did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification.
by Casey N. Cep via The New Yorker on October 21, 2019

The Lines of Code That Changed Everything

Apollo 11, the JPEG, the first pop-up ad, and 33 other bits of software that have transformed our world.
by Thomas Haigh, Arthur Daemmrich, Mar Hicks, Charlton D. McIlwain, Chris Noessel, Molly Olmstead, Clive Thompson, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Elena Botella, Ellen Stofan, Jamie Zawinski, Jane C. Hu, Lav Varschney, April Glaser, Charles Duan, Aaron Mak, Amanda Levendowski, Ethan Zuckerman, Nikki Stevens, David S. Levine, P. W. Singer, Ari Ezra Waldman, Rusty D. Pickens via Slate on October 14, 2019
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