Top 5 Articles: One Billion Americans
Also: Algorithmic Distancing
The top 5 articles for your week:
“The Rise of Digital Poorhouses” (Bloomberg)
Because “One of the things I most fear about these systems is they allow us the emotional distance that's necessary to make what are inhuman decisions. Like, I do not want to be the caseworker looking at the 58,000 people in Los Angeles and having just a handful of resources and deciding who gets them. That is an incredibly difficult decision to make. My fear is that sometimes these systems act as empathy overrides—that we are allowing these machines to make decisions that are too difficult for us to make as human beings. That's something that we really need to pay attention to because in the long run that means that we're giving up on the shared goal of caring for each other. I don't think that's who we are as a society.”
“Disdain for the Less Educated Is the Last Acceptable Prejudice” (NYT)
Because a college degree should not be a precondition for dignity, according to Harvard’s Michael Sandel.
“Generation Work-From-Home May Never Recover” (The Atlantic)
Because those who are not face-to-face at work might be forgotten when barriers to upward mobility are already high.
“On Witness and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic” (Vanity Fair)
Because Jesmyn Ward is one of the essential writers of our time, and we must not lose sight of personal tragedy in the midst of broader societal challenges and issues. And sometimes, often even, they merge and our private, personal tragedies are out there in the world, a concealed layer of the troubles and pain of society.
“The Case for Adding 672 Million More Americans” (NYMag)
Because in this preview of Matthew Yglesias’ new book, he gives us plenty to consider on practical and philosophical grounds in his proposal that we should drastically increase the population of the United States.
Image is of Luke Jerram’s 3-D installation at the Royal Naval College in London. Image credit: Kristy Wigglesworth/AP.