The Waving Cat

There Used To Be A Time (TM) where discussions on social media, especially on Twitter, were indicative of relevance — at least of relevance within certain communities: If things trended on Twitter, there was a plausible chance that the topic discussed had some salience in that very Twitter-specific mix of audiences comprised of media and tech and politics people. Today, that is very different. Looking at how algorithms have taken over content recommendation and distribution, and the rise of the…

In a connected world, digital sovereignty is a spectrum, not an end state. It can – and should – be a guiding principle rather than a checklist. At a very basic level, digital sovereignty means being able to decide about how your digital infrastructure and services are designed, implemented, used. It means having some level of control — enough so that no external entity can just flip the on/off switch or use your own infrastructure to spy on you or otherwise weaken you. How we can move towards…

I just wrapped up writing a longer-form publication, maybe best described as a collection of short essays: Reflections on Public Interest Technology from someone with a governance / policy / power dynamics perspective. You can read and/or download it here: The Little Book of Public Interest Technology. It’s a short distillation of my work around public interest technology: As vaguely defined this space might be, I think it’s more than worth engaging with technologies that serve first and…

Germany is debating a social media ban for young people. However, the debate is woefully under-informed. Recently, German chancellor Friedrich Merz proclaimed (translated): “If kids today at the…