Originally Posted on Substack In the terrific comedy TV series, Silicon Valley (2014-2019), there’s a classic scene for privacy law nerds. The show depicts the world of Silicon Valley and the culture of the tech industry. The show illustrates the frenetic pace of building a tech startup, the frequent pivots and existential moments, the constant […]
Originally Posted on Substack With its central theme of appropriating identity, Philip Roth’s novel Operation Shylock: A Confession (1993) involves a fictional account of himself meeting a man impersonating him. Roth decides to impersonate his impersonator. In one passage in the book, Roth provides a mini law lesson on the Warren and Brandeis privacy torts […]
Originally posted on Substack In 1924, Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote a dystopian novel called We, which influenced countless dystopian authors, especially George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Zamyatin (1884-1937), a Russian author, was a popular figure in Russian society until the Soviet Revolution. He was increasingly pushed out of the literary scene before writing We.
Originally posted on Substack Isaac Asimov’s satirical short story “Franchise” is highly relevant for today. The story was published in 1955 in the magazine If: World of Science Fiction. The story depicts the absurdity of algorithmic predictions. A machine decides elections based on one voter to predict the results of the entire election.
Originally posted on Substack Published posthumously, Italo Calvino’s Numbers in the Dark (2002) is a provocative collection of stories written between 1943 and 1984 that explores the effects of digital technologies and data.
Originally posted on Substack I recently finished watching the first season of a terrific new TV series, The Audacity (2026). The show chronicles Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen), an out-of-control tech billionaire who has a company called Hypergnosis. The show was created by Jonathan Glatzer, who was a writer and producer for several TV series including Succession, Better Call Saul, and Bloodline.
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Originally posted on Substack The TV series Andor (2022-2025) is one of the very best depictions of the dimensions of an authoritarian regime and those who resist it. The series is one of my all-time favorites—it is phenomenal in everything, from writing to acting to cinematography. Andor chronicles the beginnings of the rebellion against the Empire prior to the […]
Originally Posted On Substack It’s a perennial debate: Who was more prophetic, George Orwell or Aldous Huxley? I find discussions about this debate to be quite interesting. Read on to find out different perspectives on the issue, including comments by Orwell and Huxley on each others’ works, and my own take. Orwell and Huxley wrote […]
Originally Posted on Substack “We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.” These lines are from E.M. Forster’s prescient story, “The Machine Stops” from 1909. Dystopian fiction has long warned us about the future, and we’re witnessing dire warnings from last century come true today. Forster’s […]