Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. Tech, community, video games, and whatever else is next.

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

November 5, 2018: Ava Kofman, from The Intercept, on LinkNYC kiosks

Listen to this show:  Pop-up player!

Thank you to everyone who helped WFMU make its October fundraising goal - Swag For Lifers (monthly donors) and everyone who chipped in just for the fundraiser.

You can still donate here to support Techtonic, if you missed it.

Salesforce Tower in San Francisco dressed up for Halloween. (source)

This week: Ava Kofman, journalist at The Intercept, on LinkNYC kiosks.

Links to Ava's work:

• Ava on Twitter: @eyywa

• Tumblr of Ava's writing

• Are New York's Free LinkNYC Internet Kiosks Tracking Your Movements? (The Intercept, Sep 8)

• Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science (NYT, Oct 25)

.....and btw, for a fun activity, check out Link.NYC and see if you can figure out who's behind the project. Maybe you'll find Intersection... but can you find a mention of Sidewalk Labs?

Recent News

• Ultradamno has had a death in the family but writes "if I don't make it live, due to circumstances, it's Votechtoners."

• PBS Frontline: The Facebook Dilemma. Here's the WSJ review, saying the documentary is "aggressive, indignant, illuminating... [showing] the blissfully amoral way a social-media site has morphed into a sociopolitical evil. But what viewers will also come away with is a sense of something else - something entirely relevant to the situation: That Mark Zuckerberg is the worst company spokesman in the history of corporate America. If he told you the sky was blue, you’d wonder what his agenda was."

After this story from last week........

• From Business Insider (Oct 26): "The New York Times has exposed a culture of sexual harassment at Google, in a report claiming that former executive Andy Rubin was paid $90 million in an exit package after a credible sexual misconduct accusation. Other male executives at Google had consensual and non-consensual workplace relationships, according to the report, and all were protected by the company... Google's chief executive, Sundar Pichai, has admitted the company has a harassment problem and told employees that the firm had fired 48 employees for sexual misconduct over the last two years. Thirteen of the 48 were senior managers or above, and were not given an exit package, he said."

.........Google employees walked out last Thursday, Nov 1, with this letter of demands. My response, posted here: The real walkout is when they say "I refuse to build a surveillance state" and quit their job at Google.

• From Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property? (New Yorker, October 22), quoting ex-Google engineer Anthony Levandowski:



• Tomorrow is election day in the US. Vote. Chris Hedges in Eugene, OR (Oct 3): "We cannot sever ourselves from the wisdom of the past. That's our patrimony, that's our heritage."

• NoMoreGoogle.com: Privacy-friendly alternatives to Google that don't track you


Spotted on one of Google's LinkNYC sidewalk-surveillance kiosks: unregistered software.

- - -

PODCAST: Subscribe to the Techtonic podcast