Kickoff For May 17, 2021
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Monday Kickoff, a collection of what I’ve found interesting, informative, and insightful on the web over the last seven days.
Let’s get this Monday started with these links:
Crime
Enter the Dragnet, wherein Sarah Brayne looks at how law enforcement is hoovering up and using even non-criminal data and ponders the wider-ranging implications of that.
How German Librarians Finally Caught an Elusive Book Thief, wherein we learn about Norbert Schild, a cunning, enterprising, and meticulous thief who expertly cut maps from antique tomes (often under the noses of librarians), and how he was eventually caught.
Death of a (Really Good) Salesman, wherein we learn about the rise and fall of a one-time corporate superstar, his turn to robbery to hold things together, and of his tragic end.
Ideas
Really?, wherein David Voron ponders the idea that what we perceive as reality might not actually exist.
On Susan Stebbing and the role of public philosophy, wherein we learn how a book written in the late 1930s and its author offer lessons for us over 80 years later.
Apocalyptic Infrastructures, wherein Laleh Khalili argues that infrastructure must remain public so that we can all continue to benefit from it and to keep it intact.
The Dark Side of Technology
Future Shlock, wherein Jathan Sadowski explores the idea that the utopian vision that tech firms push only benefits them and is a vision that’s actually dystopian for the rest of us.
‘Spy pixels in emails have become endemic’, wherein we learn about those little images embedded in emails, what they’re used for, and why they’re dangerous.
Tracking dots article, wherein we learn about machine identification codes which offer a way to track people who made hard copies using a particular printer.
And that’s it for this Monday. Come back in seven days for another set of links to start off your week.