Scott Rosenberg

AI brings us a new kind of bug

Generative AI is raising the curtain on a new era of software breakdowns rooted in the same creative capabilities that make it powerful. Every novel tec

Newsrooms try AI to check for bias and error

After months of experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) to make their work more efficient, some newsrooms are now dipping their toes in more treacherous waters: trying to harness AI to detect bias or inaccuracies in their work. Confidence in the news media is at 

Tech rolls out two revolutions at once

Silicon Valley is hatching new futures faster than the rest of the world can digest them. The artificial-intelligence wave, driven by the astonishing ne

The tech economy is not an island

Tech's downturn is shining a spotlight on the industry's vulnerability to fast-moving trends and conflicts beyond its own boundaries. This matters because Silicon Valley leaders and thinkers paint their companies and products as magical innovations that emerge from the inner logic of tech's disruptive dynamics. But the industry's cycles are usually driven by external forces. The financial tides explain the beating tech is now taking — much more so than the product cycles and platform shifts that occupy so much of the industry's attention.

Tech's competition game change

In most businesses, competition means several rivals are fighting to win a prize — typically, the customer's dollar. Most tech companies still view themselves as engaged in fierce competition. They're just going after a wider and more complex set of prizes.

Elon Musk paid $44 billion for a media property

Twitter's most precious asset isn't its technology, its business, its data, or its employees. What makes Twitter unique is the attention it has won from the media profession — and that is what Elon Musk bought for $44 billion. Journalists fell in love with Twitter because it's a fast, open medium for sharing news. Then their presence on the platform transformed what was once just a buzzy, ephemeral social network into a conduit for world leaders, public institutions and social debates.

Decentralization crusades are the internet's "Groundhog Day"

Every decade or two, a new wave of innovators tells us they've found the technological key to eliminating society's gatekeepers and empowering individuals — but every time the music stops, big companies remain in charge. These recurring waves of decentralizing energy have repeatedly failed to empower individuals and build small-is-beautiful paradises. But they've been highly effective at unseating incumbents in the industries they target for disruption.

The internet in the United States is splitting along party lines

New investments flooding partisan media platforms are starting to restructure the US internet business around the nation's

Tech's globalist dream is dying

The tech world order that came together in the '90s at the Cold War's end is falling apart as a new rift between Russia and the West opens and a great retrenchment begins. The breakup of the USSR in the early '90s opened an era in which internet use rapidly spread around the globe and US tech companies viewed the entire planet as both factory floor and market. Working from that assumption helped a handful of companies grow to previously inconceivable size, wealth and power.

How's Putin's truth lockdown challenges the promise of an open internet

The internet promised a world in which no government could fully hide the truth from its people. Russia's free-speech crackdown following its invasion of Ukraine is testing that premise as never before. How everyday Russians view the conflict is likely to determine their willingness to support Vladimir Putin and his war. Russia has succeeded in driving out or shutting down some of the most popular internet services while also squelching the remnants of Russia's own independent news operations.

Governments around the world are increasingly regulating tech companies

Governments are limiting or banning applications, content and connectivity itself — and Big Tech companies, rich and powerful as they are, can't or won't fight back. From the Arab Spring to the Black Lives Matter protests, the internet has helped organizers build popular movements and even, on occasion, overthrow governments.

Facebook's accountability bind

Facebook's leaders know they have to demonstrate accountability to the world, but they're determined to do so on their own terms and timetable. Since the 2018 Cambridge Analytica affair, the company has moved to provide more transparency and oversight, but its limited programs often leave journalists and scholars as the de facto whistleblowers for problems on its platform. In August 2021 Facebook shut down the accounts of New York University researchers whose tools for studying political advertising on the social network, the company said, violated its rules. Facebook has become a sort of g

The push for a "PBS of the internet"

A new policy paper from the German Marshall Fund p

Biden's win gives tech industry the chance for a Washington reset

Joe Biden's transformation into president-elect Saturday kicks off a new era for tech, giving an industry that's found itself increasingly at odds with government the chance for a reset. Biden's ascent could see the restoration of some tech-friendly Obama-era policies but is unlikely to end the bipartisan techlash that grew during Trump's term.

The WeChat ban vs. the First Amendment

The Trump Administration said it would challenge a federal court ruling Sept 20 that temporarily blocked its attempt to curb the use of Chinese messaging and e-commerce app WeChat in the US. WeChat's ban has had a lower profile than TikTok's, but the fate of the app, widely used by Chinese people around the world to stay in touch with family and friends, is at least as consequential. The ruling suggests that WeChat's fate in the US could be decided not only on grounds of national security and commercial regulations but also around freedom of speech principles.

Tech's reluctant road to taking on President Trump

The coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests and a looming election have brought long-simmering conflicts between tech platforms and President Donald Trump to a boil, as Facebook, Twitter and other services are starting to take presidential misinformation seriously. The new willingness to challenge the president is coming only as Trump's presidency is weakened by a deadly pandemic and an economic meltdown.

The US is now playing by China's internet rules

President Trump's crackdown on TikTok suggests that the US government is starting to see the internet more like China does — as a network that countries can and should control within their borders. Today's global internet has split into 

The tech world's post-virus agenda

The industry's pre-coronavirus agenda isn't vanishing — but its priorities have already been reshuffled. These agenda items have jumped to the top of the list: 1) Transforming healthcare, 2) Distance learning and the digital divide, 3) Network bandwidth and resilience, and 4) Misinformation and media polarization. 

Coronavirus scrambles tech's ecology

The coronavirus crisis has reset the tech industry's ecology with the speed and force of a meteor hitting a planet. Just as the industry's tools and services have shaped our experience of this disastrous moment, the pandemic has reshaped the industry itself in a matter of weeks. Big Tech's giant apex predators will strengthen their dominance while facing new threats. In the middle ranks of the industry, where freshly IPOed newcomers on the way up pass middle-aged firms on their way down, chaos and carnage loom. Tech's teeming underbrush of small startups wi

Big Tech moves into government vacuum on coronavirus

As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, tech companies are stepping into the void left by a reluctant or incapable federal government — enabling contact tracing, wrestling with testing, and ramping up the capacity of government operations like unemployment services. Public-private partnerships are common in times of crisis, and tech companies always love to show off their "how can we help?" reflexes when calamities arise. But the pandemic response is breaking from the normal pattern in which government calls for action, specifies needs, and sets standards and priorities while companies apply

Tech shapes a new stay-at-home economy

As the coronavirus crisis forces daily life across the US into a new homebound template, the tech industry is swooping in to reshape how we shop, eat and entertain ourselves. Trends toward e-commerce, delivery services and online entertainment have long been underway, but this moment is accelerating them — and pushing the companies and industries behind them into a new position of dominance. The longer our public health crisis lasts, the more deeply these changes will etch themselves into the economy. As one of its side effects, the coronavirus pandemic could seal the fate of the digital ec

Tech's biggest upcoming battles in 2020

The most consequential stories for tech in 2020 pit the industry's corporate colossi against the US government, foreign nations, and the human needs of their own customers. The big battles ahead include: Securing the 2020 U.S. election; Defining the limits of privacy; Coping with the antitrust onslaught; Defending a global industry in an age of "decoupling;" and Flipping tech from harm to "wellness."

How we got Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday — with a predicted $9 billion in US sales online — has become a self-sustaining phenomenon in the world of e-retail, with email blasts and ad blitzes pushing pre-holiday season discounts. This event did not emerge organically. It's a marketing construct built around a discredited prefix that was originally coined for an invented science. Back in 2005, data showed online sales spiking the Monday after Thanksgiving.

For tech, it's all hard problems now

The tech industry spent the last two decades connecting the world and getting computers into every home and hand — but that's turning out to have been the easy part. Now, every problem tech companies face is fiendishly hard. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple have entered a world where their product innovations and profit margins are beginning to matter less than their ability to navigate treacherous political, social, and ethical rapids. Policymakers and engineers are both accustomed to making and living with tradeoffs, but someone has to make a final call over where these choices land.