🤝 The Trust issue is out now!
A new issue of New_ Public Magazine is hot off the digital presses
The theme of our newest issue is “trust”: the elusive variable that lies within some of the most pressing questions about tech’s role in our lives. Read on for articles about whether blockchain is really “trustless,” how cutting-edge cybersecurity standards can leave out marginalized internet users, what builders of digital platforms can learn from historic queer spaces, and much more.
The first section looks at the relationship between trust and code.
Blockchain experts Primavera de Filippi, Morshed Mannan, and Wessel Reijers argue that blockchain is not a “trustless” technology, but a “confidence machine”—and demonstrate how confusion between the two has had dramatic consequences.
Cybersecurity expert Maggie Engler takes us into the lives of low-income adult students in a tech skills class in Texas, and shows how their lives have been made challenging by the “zero trust” paradigm of digital authentication.
Writer Joanna Scutts shares a personal story of using a baby tracking app as a new parent during the loneliest moments of the coronavirus lockdown—and the unexpected lessons that followed.
Machine learning researcher and New_ Public Contributing Editor Caroline Sinders critiques the lack of transparency offered by Google’s Perspective API, a tool used to reduce “toxicity” in online comments sections but can produce strange, even offensive results.
The second section examines the ways that communities have navigated the question of trust in digital spaces.
Journalist Annie Howard examines how trust was navigated within historic queer spaces, from New York City’s porn theaters to lesbian history archives, and uncovers lessons for building safe and liberating digital spaces today.
Zimbabwean journalist Nyasha Bhobo writes about how the West’s mistrust of African digital systems has affected everything from Omicron policies to NFT sales, and why that needs to change.
Writer Laura Yan reflects on the fallout after a member of a dog training Facebook group started a conversation about race—and members’ painstaking efforts to rebuild a more understanding community in its wake.
The third section considers the role of trust in digital public infrastructure.
Researchers Kelly Pendergrast and Anna Pendergrast interpret the results of a New Zealand government-sponsored study they helped produce, revealing the mistrust many New Zealanders feel toward automated decision making.
Political scientist José Marichal theorizes about how algorithmic culture diminishes social trust in American politics, and offers an argument for collective action to restore a sense of civic identity.
New_ Public Co-director Eli Pariser interviews Silicon Valley’s Congressman Ro Khanna about what it means that Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter, and why our democracy badly needs digital public spaces.
Siegel Foundation Executive Director Katy Knight offers concluding thoughts on the importance of public trust in digital infrastructure, and a call to action.
We hope you’ll discover insights within these stories that can accompany you as you imagine, build, and inhabit the digital spaces of the future. We are grateful for your attention.
Wilfred Chan
Editor, New_ Public Magazine
June 2022
Read the new issue here
Illustration by Sam Sharpe
New_ Public is a partnership between the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas, Austin, and the National Conference on Citizenship, and was incubated by New America.