Category: Articles
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Antisemitism and the Unspeakable
Originally appeared at Flaming Hydra. On September 12, 2001, Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder (where I now teach) published an essay about the terrorist attack that had taken place in New York the day before. With the subtitle “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” Churchill compared the 9/11 catastrophe to…
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Democracy against Democracy
Originally appeared at Flaming Hydra. I am a professor who has spent the past decade arguing that there should be more democracy on the Internet. There is a certain convenience in this position. Democracy can sound either radical or respectable, depending on who’s listening. Who would disagree with democracy? But then, when I gave talks…
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The Marriage of Platforms and Politics Is Complete
On election night, the effective-accelerationist influencer @BasedBeffJezos posted a photo of Donald Trump along with Dana White and Elon Musk, captioned “CEO, CMO, CTO of the USA.” The country, the post implied, has become a tech company. The next day, Beff Jezos added, “America is back in the warm embrace of the techno-capital machine.” Once…
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The Age of Campaign Financialization is Here
What matters more, your vote or your bet on a prediction market? A campaign contribution or a stock purchase? It has long been common practice to worry about “campaign finance.” But even since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision further unleashed dark money, that kind of finance was relatively straightforward: contributions to support the…
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Clearing my desk: On using screens intentionally
What follows are some notes about how I use screens, which I am bothering to write because I increasingly notice how my habits diverge from those of people around me. I have not bothered to validate the effectiveness of these practices in any statistical or otherwise scientific way. But people do frequently ask about my…
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The only important cause of the Colorado fires is not a mystery
Imagine if a group of foreign conspirators, by piloting a humming drone armada, dropped incendiary bombs on an American neighborhood. Somewhere between 500 and 1000 homes were destroyed. The smoke plumed over a major city, and flames threatened to stir up the radioactive particles in the soil of a nearby retired nuclear facility. Thousands of…
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“We need to reinvent the co-op”
Originally published by Vanderbilt Divinity School’s Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice in a series on “Cooperatives and Religious Communities.” When I discovered that the hardware company my grandfather ran at the end of his career was a cooperative, my uncle sent me an email with a single image: the New York Times photo of…
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The “poor man’s prayer” of Alphonse Desjardins
A prayer for the work of the caisse populaire and other similar works: Sacred Heart of Jesus, I beg of You the special grace of Your divine light. If I am making a mistake, enlighten me, and inspire in my a strong aversion, a great dislike for the idea that I would pursue and which…
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Letter to the Boulder City Council on municipal broadband
In advance of the meeting tomorrow, I would like to write in support of moving forward on expanding our city-owned broadband resources. Several years of research on municipal and other community-based broadband solutions has made clear to me that communities need to take an active role in ensuring that their internet access is accessible, affordable,…