Future Tense

Future Tense Newsletter: What Can We Trust on the Internet?

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Greetings, Future Tensers,

Look at your browser’s address bar—do you see a little green lock? If it’s there, that’s a good thing. The symbol, along with the “s” in “https” address, is a widely accepted indication that you have a secure, encrypted connection—one that’s safe to use to make purchases or send private messages. But now, big players like Google are calling into question the system behind those locks. Joshua Oliver explains how the internet giant plans to respond with changes that “will almost certainly make website encryption more reliable.” The move will also “show just how much power Google has to redesign the internet’s critical infrastructure on its own.”

Also on the topic of digital trustworthiness, Casey Fiesler wrote about how the uproar over the web service Unroll.me selling user data to Uber shows that companies don’t really want you to pay attention to their terms of service.

Elsewhere in Future Tense, we’re winding down our Futurography series on synthetic biology. Catch up on the latest by reading about how the emerging field may produce a cure for diabetes, how DARPA’s getting in on the synthbio game, and how new creations are shaking up the biological tree of life. Still hungry? We’ve also got a piece about a CRISPR-edited mushroom that shows that U.S. biotech regulations are woefully out of date, and one about a genetically engineered salmon that shows the difficulty of engaging the public in discussions about synthetic biology products.

Future Tense also hosted an event in Washington, on April 27 about America’s longest war—the one declared against cancer. If you missed it, you can read Emily Fritcke’s recap of the conversation or watch the full event here. You can also read Athena Aktipis’ piece on how cancer became a hallmark of multicellular life—and what that means for the 30 trillion highly cooperative cells that make up our bodies. Kathryn Bowers also wrote for us about how a dog’s brilliant sense of smell might help us sniff out the disease.

Other things we read between compiling our complete collection of Elon Musk’s fairy tales:

  • WikiChina: Ian Prasad Philbrick writes about the Chinese government’s move to create a digital encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia—and why countries like China and Turkey have a penchant for blocking the user-driven information hub.
  • In Denial: Slate’s Susan Matthews argues that Bret Stephens’ debut New York Times column treads into textbook climate denialism.
  • GitHub for Science: Marcus Banks writes about the culture shift academia needs to move from summarizing their results in static scholarly journals to sharing full records of their experiments for the sake of better science.

Not clicking on Google Docs invitations,
Kirsten Berg
for Future Tense

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.