Crypto-coin and the Remaking of Social Relations: Cryptocurrencies are often described as the new wild west of finance and speculative investments. Jan Haaken talks with Emaline Friedman about recent developments in the crypto world and how non-profit organizations are making use of some of the same digital technologies in developing alternative social media (ASMs). Jan and Emaline take up the claims of some developers of ASMs that these programs represent a kind of prefigurative politics. Friedman is a critical psychologist and social theorist and author of Internet Addiction: A Critical Psychology of Users. She also works on peer-to-peer technologies, aiming to bring cooperativism and ethical data use into the digital world.
Broken Earth: Frann Michel recommends the award-winning speculative fiction series The Broken Earth by N. K. Jemisin, an epic fantasy of resisting oppression and reclaiming the magic of the natural world.
Woman, Life, Liberty: Johanna Brenner speaks with Catherine Sameh about the current uprising in Iran following the death of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa (also known by her Kurdish name, Jina) Amini, at the hands of the morality police. Catherine Sameh is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at University of California Irvine who studies social movements in the Middle East and Muslim world.
- KBOO