Ethan Zuckerman

#ScholarSunday Thread 236 Published on August 3, 2025

August is here, and with it my 236th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share widely, & enjoy, all! 🗃️ +

americanstudier.substack.com/p/scholarsun...

#KeepGVStrong: Global Voices advocates for a connected world at a dark time - Ethan Zuckerman For twenty years, Global Voices has connected writers and translators around the world. That work is harder - and more important - that ever.

"It’s a dark & difficult time in the world right now. @globalvoices.org has long represented a vision of how the world could be different. We could listen carefully to one another, to understand our world from multiple points of view."

by @ethanz.bsky.social

ethanzuckerman.com/2025/07/30/k...

Recommend this podcast with @alondra.bsky.social and @ethanz.bsky.social. Read the remarks they discussed- "Three Fallacies: Alondra Nelson's Remarks at the Elysée Palace on the Occasion of the AI Action Summit"- here: www.techpolicy.press/three-fallac...

Thanks, honey. I really appreciate that.

I admire the hell out of @globalvoices.org -- always have. I made a small donation because that's what little I can do. I commend this org to all of y'all -- they do amazing work that's even more important now than it was 20 yrs ago. Give if you can.

Such a pleasure. Let’s do it again sometime.

What an pleasure to join @ethanz.bsky.social for what may be the final episode of the Reimagining the Internet podcast. Congrats and thank you for creating space for essential discussions about AI governance--including auditing, the role of expertise in democracy, and the "Three Fallacies" of AI.

#KeepGVStrong: Global Voices advocates for a connected world at a dark time - Ethan Zuckerman For twenty years, Global Voices has connected writers and translators around the world. That work is harder - and more important - that ever.

Important post from @ethanz.bsky.social about what we're trying to do at @globalvoices.org - and how you can help
ethanzuckerman.com/2025/07/30/k...

More on what GV means to me and how you could help us out: ethanzuckerman.com/2025/07/30/k...

with a small team of professional editors and coordinators. Due to cuts to international aid, we’re up against the wall financially – we need anyone who’s been helped by or inspired by Global Voices to lend a hand.

For two decades, Global Voices has done something uncommon and vitally important: it’s amplified voices of people from all around the world, making it possible to hear perspectives usually left out of the news. We’ve done this work for over twenty years, powered by volunteer writers and translators,

I'll have more to say about Reimagining, and what Mike and I hope to do next in podcasting. But this one is a must-hear - Alondra is one of the smartest, best informed and most hopeful people I know.

117. Alondra Nelson, Biden's Head of Science and Technology Policy, talks AI, Trump's research funding cuts, and how memes replaced Happy Days - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass A... Alondra Nelson is arguably the most important sociologist of science in America. She isn’t just a brilliant researcher of how race and racism has shaped public health in America, nor just a thoughtful...

This is probably the last episode of "Reimagining the Internet", the podcast Mike Sugarman and I have produced for the last five years. Talk about going out on a high note: I interview Alondra Nelson on AI, universities and the Trump administration:

publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/117-...

Ten THOUSAND (10,000!!!) meters of elevation! Support @natematias.bsky.social's incredible challenge with a donation to @globalvoices.org! The community, especially the Nepal team incl @sankuchy.bsky.social, are working on a playlist for him, which we will share so you can listen along!

Seeking Human Understanding Across a Fragmented Internet How can our world stay informed & connected when social media has become fragmented, locked in chatrooms, and controlled by billionaires?

How can our world stay informed & connected when social media is now fragmented, locked in chatrooms, & controlled by mercurial billionaires?

One answer is journalism, which is why I'm riding the equivalent of Mount Everest to fundraise for @globalvoices.org

natematias.medium.com/seeking-huma...

Office Hours Education Podcast · Hello, my name is Isaac Brickman, and welcome to Office Hours. Each week, I will talk to a professor about a topic that is relevant to you. Each professor will have a different per...

My colleague and co-author Isaac Brickman is launching a new podcast called Office Hours, in which he interviews professors about what it is we do. I'm his guest for his inaugural episode: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

Ah. It's very subtle. I got it once I clicked on the podcast icon. Okay, will amplify.

Ready to amplify when the episode goes live...

Hope recovery is going smoothly. A dear friend had surgery last year and I know recovery is a lot.

Yep. Nothing weird about that.

Donate · Global Voices Support freedom of expression for everyone, everywhere, by donating to Global Voices.

We're doing a fundraiser for Global Voices this summer, in part because it's gotten really hard to fund independent journalism like this. Please help us out if you can. globalvoices.org/donate/

Global Voices has a great story today on Turkey's partial block of Grok.ai. However you feel about Elon's Nazi-loving LLM, this is another example of Turkey blocking all sorts of online content it fears: globalvoices.org/2025/07/14/t...

An AI-enabled world isn’t inevitable How much change are we willing to accept in return for an AI future?

Suddenly, AI is everywhere. But what kind of hidden trade-offs are we making? And are they worth it?

Great piece by @ethanz.bsky.social on the impact of AI on energy consumption, water, the health of communities local to data centres, and much more.

An AI-enabled world isn’t inevitable How much change are we willing to accept in return for an AI future?

The AI debate is following a problematic pattern of technological inevitability. Because it is technically possible, we jump to the conclusion it is inevitable—and desirable, writes @ethanz.bsky.social.
www.prospectmagazine...

Thanks to @masslive.bsky.social for great coverage of our @icwsm.bsky.social'25 study of global news coverage 📰! We show that deaths and 💰GDP💰 of event country are the strongest predictors of global news coverage of disasters and terrorist attacks (w @brenocon.bsky.social, @ethanz.bsky.social)!

116. How should governments use technology? To build trust, says Eric Gordon - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst Eric Gordon has spent his career as an social scientists trying to understand how city governments can use technology to better engage their citizens. But he’s learned that technology doesn’t matter i...

was listening to @ethanz.bsky.social interview Eric Gordon publicinfrastructure.org/podcast/116-...

one topic was "institutional listening", ie how institutions interpret signals from the public and how hard it is

notable conceptual structure: a spectrum between "listening" and "surveillance"

Spending $200 billion on ICE is a terrible idea I've covered federal law enforcement for two decades. Here are the things that worry me most.

Increasing ICE without meaningfully increasing the number of immigration judges implies that America's immigration system is giving up on due process: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

An AI-enabled world isn’t inevitable How much change are we willing to accept in return for an AI future?

This month's column in Prospect: What costs are we willing to pay - environmentally, socially, economically - for an AI future, even a really good one? 

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno...

This is the same Grok that was "manipulated" into praising Hitler last week.

What could possibly go wrong when integrating this AI into our national security?

An AI-enabled world isn’t inevitable How much change are we willing to accept in return for an AI future?

What's an AI future worth? In other words, if you believe there's a world where AI takes over lots of human drudgery, what are the economic, climactic and social prices we might be willing to pay? That's my question in this month's Prospect column: www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/techno...