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.
I created this cartoon because I often hear older people scoff at how younger people don’t care about privacy because they’re exposing so much of their lives. But I find these sentiments to be chutzpah because young people are exposing their lives due to the way technology is nudging, pushing, cajoling, manipulating, coercing, and outright forcing them to do so. Older generations have built the world the younger ones are growing up in, and so they are responsible for the lack of privacy younger generations are experiencing.
When they decry how younger generations are surrendering their privacy, older generations are just blaming the victims. Younger people aren’t willingly giving up their privacy—they’re living in a world where having privacy is increasingly difficult and often impossible.
More than a decade ago, I wrote a post about young people’s views about privacy. I think it still holds up today, and I’m posting it below with just a few minor tweaks.
There is recent talk about taxing AI, which is probably a non-starter with policymakers adverse to doing anything to stand in the way of tech companies. But the tax idea isn’t totally crazy because AI these days is, for all practical purposes, a major tax on society.
Although AI has many beneficial uses, it remains unclear whether AI would be viable in the market if it weren’t artificially propped up by constant cash infusions by big gambler investors and by evading costs by sloughing them off on everyone else.
Unlike other technologies such as search, AI is tremendously expensive. There are many uses of AI that might not be sustainable in the market without venture capitalists pumping in massive investments. AI companies are shoving their AI in our faces at every turn, throwing it up against the wall in a frantic effort and hope that something sticks.
There certainly will be uses of AI that will provide more benefit than cost, but it’s hard to figure that out when there’s so much distortion of the market. Normally, the market would work as a mechanism of survival of the fittest, weeding out business models that don’t really work. But AI is growing today not because it is fit for survival; it’s being propped up.
AI imposes tremendous costs which operate as a tax on society. These are costs that AI companies are externalizing on all of us. Examples include:
I’ve curated a list of recent works on privacy, AI, and tech that will be worth your time checking out. Authors included:
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.
Yesterday, I edited Chatrie v. United States (2026) for my casebook, INFORMATION PRIVACY LAW, which Paul Schwartz and I are in the process of updating right now. The U.S. Supreme Court held that there is a reasonable expectation of privacy in geolocation data obtained via a geofencing warrant (which compels a company to turn over data about cell phones located in a particular area). This means that the Fourth Amendment applies, which is the first step for Fourth Amendment protection.
Chatrie was decided this week, so the ink is still wet, but here are some early thoughts on the case, plus my edited version. The opinion with concurrences and dissents clocks in at more than 70 pages, but I cut it down to the essentials. First, my thoughts, then the edited case.
Here’s a new cartoon about the AI hype these days. It seems that everything involving data or an algorithm is being rebranded as AI.
A while ago, I wrote about how AI is, in fact, a rebrand—one I analogized to the way fish were rebranded.
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.
I created this cartoon about the profound ugliness of the AI race. Tech leaders are rushing to create AI and are unleashing it upon the world far too quickly with far too few guardrails and far too little responsibility.
I previously posted my collection of privacy magazine covers. Here’s my collection of magazine covers involving AI, the internet, and related digital technologies.
I collected more than 80 magazine covers from the 1950s to the present. I’m excited to share my collection with you. If you have any covers I’ve missed, please share them with me.
I’ll begin with a quick look, then I’ll include larger images later.
Also scroll down to the very end to see my favorite covers, including my top 3 and see if you agree with me.
