You’re Being Watched. Yes, You. And You. And Us Too.

“After a decade, the country is left with a legacy of secret and unilateral executive-branch actions, a surveillance infrastructure whose scope and inner workings remain secret with little oversight, a compliant judiciary system that obsequiously bows to claims of secrecy by the executive branch, and a populace that has no idea how its government uses its power or who is watching out for abuses.”

Big Databases, Happy Biographers: Technology Changes Discovery

“For generations, biographers have used the same methods to conduct research: they waded through the paper trail left by their subject, piecing together a life from epistolary fragments. Based on what they found, they might troll through newspapers from specific dates in the hope of finding coverage of their subject. There were no new-fangled technologies that promised to transform their research, no way of harnessing machines to reveal new layers of historical truth. That’s all starting to change.”

How The National Theatre Keeps Producing Hits

The key is “an extraordinary safety net provided by the British government: an annual subsidy that today provides 28 percent of the National’s income: £19.6 million.” NT director Nicholas Hytner says that support is crucial “because we knew we could create work that we believed in without worrying 24 hours a day about ticket sales like so many American theaters have to.”