The Silicon Valley canon and malformed publics: Podcast with Max Read and John Ganz

Bringing this all together, the technologies through which we see the public shape how we understand it, making it more likely that we end up in the one situation rather than the other. As you have surely guessed by now, I believe Twitter/X, Facebook, and other social media services are just such technologies for shaping publics. Many of the problems that we are going to face over the next many years will stem from publics that have been deranged and distorted by social media in ways that lower the odds that democracy will be a problem solving system, and increase the likelihood that it will be a problem creating one.

Listen at Read Max.

Other Writing:

Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Great Britain: Falling Through the Holes in the Network Concept,” in Local Production Systems in Europe: Rise or Demise? – with Colin Crouch – ed. Colin Crouch et al.

British economic development has long exhibited strong regional patterns and contrasts. The UK shares with France a characteristic not possessed by Germany or Italy: the contemporary weakness of its major regional centres, so that the capital cities (London and Paris) and the regions surrounding them (the so-called Home Counties in south-east England and the Ile ...
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Essay

Hypocrisy Hype (debate) with Michael Cohen and Martha Finnemore

In their essay “The End of Hypocrisy” (November/December 2013), Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore argue that the biggest threat from leakers of classified information such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden is that “they undermine Washington’s ability to act hypocritically and get away with it.” According to Farrell and Finnemore, the more than 750,000 diplomatic ...
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