Digital technology

Thursday

Kevin Cohen

Trump’s impressive, unsettling digital fortress

From our US edition

Forget the towering slabs of steel and concrete sprawling across the southern border. Quietly, beneath the tangible symbols of Donald Trump’s immigration clampdown, another revolution has taken hold. A revolution of invisible digital watchtowers, wires and algorithms – that is as impressive as it is unsettling.The curtain shielding this vast expansion of America’s digital surveillance technology has, thanks to recent disclosures, been drawn back to reveal at its core a controversial and critically influential digital engine churning through data.Enter Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. DoGE has recently launched a master database targeting undocumented migrants, WIRED reports.

Immigration digital

Thursday

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

The digital habit

From our US edition

In an era that claims to value the authentic, the direct and the natural, the word "processed" has negative connotations, as in “processed” food. Nevertheless, it describes exactly how perhaps nine-tenths of the human race — including, I imagine, the lost Indian tribes of the Amazonian wilderness — experience reality these days, which is to say processed through electronic media, social media and the oxymoronic smartphone.

digital

Thursday

Melissa Kite

Why I’m going to start speaking in acronyms

‘I’ve got COPD,’ said a friend of mine, not elaborating at all as I stared at him waiting for him to explain what that stood for. I had to look it up later. His expression told me firmly that everyone was au fait with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. A few hours earlier, another friend had texted to say she would be late for t/c, which, upon my enquiring, turned out to mean that she would be late meeting me to have a cup of tea or coffee. She said she was busy at GC (which turned out to be Guildford College) and had been working late at the ITA (by which she meant Italian restaurant). Why do people talk in acronyms? Is it self-obsession that makes them think everyone instantly recognises the very specific shorthand terms that refer to their lives?