Scott Rosenberg

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.