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Peer-to-Peer Pressure
March 20, 2015
There’s a telling scene near the end of The Social Network. Punching air as they watch the company pass the millionth user threshold on a large overhead screen, the young Facebook founders suddenly resemble the victors of another kind of bubble economy—NYSE brokers watching ...

Predictive Policing and Automated Peace
October 27, 2014
If you’re a teenager in Los Angeles planning a party and looking forward to a night of drink, debauchery and chemical highs, you’d better keep quiet about it. The twenty-four-seven “eComm Unit,” a police division established in 2012 as a kind of online patrol squadron, ...

An Army of Eyeballs: The Rise of the Advertisee
September 12, 2014
During a blackout at the 2013 Super Bowl, a bright spark on Oreo’s marketing team had a brainstorm. With one tweet, the snappy insta-slogan “You can still dunk in the dark” inspired a tidal wave of shares amidst the snacking. It was the free publicity coup every brand ...

The Specter of Snapchat
September 04, 2014
There is a peaceful mutiny swelling in the world of images today, roiling on smartphones, in the pockets of passersby. For now, it travels inconspicuously under the sign of a faceless ghost—that logo for the international communications phenomenon called Snapchat. A leader in ...