Dans son livre, Sunstein explique que le Sludge donne aux gens le sentiment qu’ils ne comptent pas, que leur vie ne compte pas. Pour la sociologue Pamela Herd et le politologue Donald Moynihan, coauteurs de Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means (Russel Sage Foundation, 2019), le fardeau administratif comme la paperasserie complexe, les procédures confuses entravent activement l’accès aux services gouvernementaux. Plutôt que de simples inefficacités, affirment les auteurs, nombre de ces obstacles sont des outils politiques délibérés qui découragent la participation à des programmes comme Medicaid, empêchent les gens de voter et limitent l’accès à l’aide sociale. Et bien sûr, cette désorganisation volontaire touche de manière disproportionnée les gens les plus marginalisés.

Depuis deux ans, leur vie professionnelle a été bouleversée par la vague de l’IA générative. Récit du combat donquichottesque des traducteurs qui refusent de voir leurs métiers se paupériser, et qui dénoncent la réalité de l’impact de l’IA sur leur secteur, et plus largement sur la langue, la pensée, la culture et la société.

“Trump 2.0.” This coinage is often used to distinguish the current Trump administration from the first. The phrase is telling: it underscores that we’re in a new era and that behind the scenes, the people and forces driving this iteration of the Trump administration are different from those that came before. The second Trump administration is being driven to a greater degree by tech billionaires and their interests: self-dealing on public contracts; privatizing public services; expanding corporate power while crushing human rights; promoting crypto; removing guardrails against fraud, waste, and abuse; and pursuing personal vendettas.

The cadre of people driving today’s agenda is leveraging a set of interlocking ideologies related to technology to rhetorically justify and propel these changes. In this series, “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis,” we asked expert contributors to name and dispel the myths and ideologies that animate their actions. A number of ideological projects prepared the ground for today’s assault on American institutions; we will focus on those that run through data, AI, and the tech sector.

[...]

The ideological agenda behind the headlines positions technology and its architects as power brokers in an increasingly illiberal environment. Their changes are bolstered by the narrative that AI is a force that will inevitably reshape society. To make informed choices about how to respond to this aggressive reshaping of the US government, we must examine these animating ideas. We approached authors for this series who have deep knowledge about the unusual views of reactionaries in the tech industry: whether it be fantasies of libertarian paradises built on defunct sea-based oil rigs, the vision of company towns in Texas and eventually Mars, enthusiasm for debunked 19th Century ideas about race science and eugenics, or the goal of replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency, these more esoteric backstories can be disorienting to non-specialists. But, seemingly overnight, understanding the ties that bind these projects together—however strange they may seem—has become essential information for all of us to understand and grapple with.

Tech CEOs, futurists, and venture capitalists describe artificial general intelligence (AGI) as if it were an inevitable and ultimate goal for technology development. In reality, the term is a vague signifier for a technology that will somehow lead to endless abundance for humankind — and conveniently also a means to avoid accountability as tech moguls make off with billions in capital investment and, more alarmingly, public spending.

[...]

The second issue is closely related to the first: claims of “AGI” are a cover for abandoning the current social contract. Instead of focusing on the here and now, many people who focus on AGI think we ought to abandon all other scientific and socially beneficial pursuits and focus entirely on issues related to developing (and protecting against) AGI.

I do not believe that tech culture today has any patience for lightness. Instead, it rewards baroque complexity. Engineers perform feats of convolution. Designers argue for maximal configurability. Founders pride themselves on having their own stack for everything. Lightness = for normies.

[...]

It’s not that these tools are bad. Many are quite good. Obsidian is beautiful. But the way they are used - to signal intellectual rigor, to differentiate oneself from the casuals, to construct a lifestyle rather than solve a problem - shows off a moral hierarchy in which difficulty equates to virtue.

Writing is thinking. It’s a writer’s cliché, but a good one. When you first conceive a lecture, dissertation chapter, a book, even an article for Active History, everything seems so straightforward. “This one will be a cinch,” you think. “Two days, tops.” Once you actually sit down to write, that boundless optimism meets an unceremonious death. Writing is hard. It’s painful. To write is to submit yourself to seasons of self-doubt. The ideas seemed so natural and free-flowing in your head. Now you get to the page. And what comes out is jilted, ham-fisted, and awkward. You are again and again confronted with nagging questions. What am I even trying to say? Who even cares? Why even bother?

Given the nature of this experience, it is not surprising that people would jump at the opportunity to skip the pain and get right to the end. Or at least to an end. Because any writer can tell you that the end is determined by the path taken to get there. Rare is the piece that gets written exactly how it was outlined. Why? Because writing is thinking.

This is America, June 2025. Trump's back, and he's moving fast. Marines - actual Marines - carrying out immigration raids in an American city. It's unprecedented, it's shocking, but here's the thing: it's tragically predictable

This isn't just Trump being Trump. This is the inevitable result of decades of corporate power combining with an authoritarian president. It's been a journey, and we need to understand how we got here.

Il ne s’agit pas ici d’innovation, mais d’une offre publique d’achat hostile sur la monnaie. En l’absence de toute réglementation sérieuse, les stablecoins ne sont ni stables ni une réelle alternative au dollar. Ils ne sont que le cheval de Troie d’une privatisation de l’argent.

Google back then prided itself on broadcasting its Best Place To Work award, won year after year after year. Younger people will have trouble picturing this, but Google used to nurture an image of being the “good one” among megacorps; they championed open standards (except when they didn’t), supported open source projects (until they backstabbed them), and used language that corporate wasn’t supposed to use, like “don’t be evil” (until they, infamously and in a true dark comedy move, retracted that motto). The work environment was all colourful, nerdy cool, not a single necktie in sight—this was seen as brave and refreshing rather than cringe and tired, you see. And they made a big deal out of something called “20% time”: Every engineer was promised 1/5 of their work time for themselves, to do anything they want. (Google owners will still own whatever you create during your 20% time, natürlich). Famously, Gmail came out of someone exploring their interests during 20% time.

I don’t think much of anything else came out of it, though.