• The art of threading; a conversation with Wrath of Gnon. “Mankind has simply lost the ability to build a decent plaza.”
• How to do nothing. “In a public space, ideally, you are a citizen with agency; in a faux public space, you are either a consumer or a threat to the design of the place.”
• Talkin’ ’bout my (5th) Generation. “The imperative to ensure everyone has the right to communicate and access information, which is laudable, is being supplanted by this new drive to connect the already connected even further through a whole host of new and upgraded technologies.”
• It’s not enough to break up Big Tech. We need to imagine a better alternative“. 99% of technological disruption is there to merely ensure that nothing of substance gets disrupted at all.”

Links via Ran Pieur, Aaron Vansintjan, Roel Roscam Abbing, and Hackernews.

• • How the news took over reality. [The Guardian]
  • How Big Tech Threatens Economic Liberty. [The American Conservative]
  • Apple Cracks Down on Apps That Fight iPhone Addiction. [The New York Times]
  • Technology may be making us unhealthy and miserable – governments must act now. [The Conversation]
  • The Ruin of the Digital Town Square. [The New Atlantis]
  • Smart cities aim to make urban life more efficient – but for citizens’ sake they need to slow down. [The Conversation]
  • City OF Things or City FOR People? [REAL CORP 2019]
  • Drones to deliver incessant buzzing noise, and packages. [The Conversation]
  • Is 5G worth the risks? [Open Futures]
  • Online abuse: teenagers might not report it because they often don’t see it as a problem. [The Conversation]
  • Technology cuts children off from adults, warns expert. [The Guardian]
  • What Will You Say to Your Grandchildren? [Patterns of Meaning]
  • Degrowth vs. the Green New Deal. [briarpatch magazine]
  • Degrowth is utopian, and that’s a good thing. [Uneven Earth]
  • Protect our right to light. [nature] Via Wrath of Gnon.
  • The urban farming ‘revolution’ has a fatal flaw. [Quartz] Via Cynthia Hathaway.

• Venezuela blackout devastates country’s second city as world focuses on Caracas
• As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling
• Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions
• Escaping the Iron Cage of Consumerism [via Aaron Vansintjan]
• How Tech Utopia Fostered Tyranny
• If Stalin Had a Smartphone
• Alone together: how mobile devices have changed family time
• The Urban Home as Fortress [Via Wrath of Gnon]
• Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain
• The racism of technology – and why driverless cars could be the most dangerous example yet

• Why exercise alone won’t save us. “As long as physical activity is divorced from the real work of our lives, we will find reasons for not doing it.”
• The future’s so bright, I gotta wear blinders. “By perpetually refreshing the illusion that progress is just getting under way, gadget worshippers are able to wave away the problems that progress is causing.”
• Machine Politics: The rise of the internet and a new age of authoritarianism.”One of the deepest ironies of our current situation is that the modes of communication that enable today’s authoritarians were first dreamed up to defeat them.”

• The Problem with Reinforced Concrete. Putting steel inside concrete ruins its potentially great durability.
• The Quieter Life. Adopting traditional values, attitudes and practices in an increasingly nihilistic world.
• Cool People’s Movements. Let’s not confuse ‘the right to be cool’ with the right to a consumer good.
• Life in the Spanish City that Banned Cars. In Pontevedra, the usual soundtrack of a Spanish city has been replaced by the tweeting of birds and the chatter of humans.
• Solar Panels Replaced Tarmac on a Motorway. Here are the Results. Several factors work against this oddly popular idea.
• Opec Predicts Massive Rise in Oil Production over Next Five Years. Increasing demand from airlines will more than offset reductions from electric cars.
• Everything You’ve Been Told about Plastic is Wrong. Recycling is the grown-up version of squeezing our eyes shut, sticking our fingers in our ears and shouting “lalalalalala!”.
• Why Growth Can’t Be Green. New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment—but it’s hard to do both.
• I’ve Seen the Future of Consumer AI, and it Doesn’t Have One. If ever there was a solution looking for a problem, it’s ramming AI into gadgets to show off a company’s machine learning prowess.
• Leave no Dark Corner. China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens.

First two links via Wrath of Gnon. Last link via John Butler. Penultimate link via Slashdot.

• Taking back the wheel. In the future heralded by Silicon Valley, cars will fly and labor will be disposable. But none of this is inevitable. It’s a political choice—that we can still reject.
• Engineering the climate could cost us the Earth. A political technology, geoengineering belongs to the institutional apparatus that is preventing effective climate action and reducing the urgency for structural change.
• Scientists assessed the options for growing nuclear power. They are grim. For better or worse, renewable energy is the name of the game for the next few decades.
• Artificial Saviors. An increasingly powerful and influential social group is hard-coding its biases into the software running our societies.
• Pulling the magical lever. Techno-utopian visions can’t be used as inspiration for the creation of anything but an upper-class gated community sucking out resources and labour from peripheries and keeping the unfortunate poor out.
• What Happened in the Dark: Puerto Rico’s Year of Fighting for Power. “Could @elonmusk go in and rebuild Puerto Rico’s electricity system with independent solar & battery systems?”

All links via Uneven Earth’s August 2018 newsletter.