Society | ForkLog

ForkLog 143 02.10.2025

Death to the Machine

Writer Paul Kingsnorth on how people are building a new Tower of Babel.

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ForkLog 144 23.09.2025

‘When someone dies, people become richer’

“Party of the Dead” deputy Maxim Evstropov on the economics of death and the possibilities of a Proof-of-Death algorithm.

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ForkLog 75 17.09.2025

Freedom and Unanimity

How a post-war cadre at the University of Virginia challenged faith in government efficacy.

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ForkLog 586 11.09.2025

BitChat kept communication flowing during protests in Indonesia and Nepal

On the growing real-world use of an anonymous messenger.

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ForkLog 167 21.08.2025

A wallet as a passport: new world or prison?

How a crypto wallet becomes an instrument of social control.

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ForkLog 63 12.08.2025

The science of manipulation

Classical economic theory assumes people act rationally and strive to maximise their gains. Yet a strand of scholarship disputes this, pointing out that people often act irrationally, swayed by emotions, biases and cognitive limits. In this ForkLog article, we examine how behavioural economics has changed the way we think about human action, why it became […]

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ForkLog 84 11.08.2025

Piercing the silence

Not only in Russia, but across the world, regulation of the open internet has tightened in recent years. The result is that the global web is starting to fray before our eyes. In this ForkLog report, together with Ilya Perevalov, a technical expert at “Роскомсвободы”, we examine the degree of isolation in the Runet and […]

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ForkLog 124 07.08.2025

Silicon Tanks: Ted Nelson’s Vision

Ted Nelson is a man who foresaw the future of the internet long before it came into being. He introduced the terms “hypertext” and “hypermedia,” which became the foundation of the World Wide Web. However, the internet we use today is but a pale and distorted shadow of the philosopher’s original vision. Nelson dreamed of […]

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ForkLog 44 06.08.2025

The chat sovereign

The very phrase “sovereign AI” evokes authoritarian regimes few would choose to inhabit. Yet “global artificial intelligence” conjures its own spectres: digital colonialism and other delights of a brave new world. Why, in AI development, both notions are largely meaningless and serve chiefly as tools of manipulation is the subject of this ForkLog essay by […]

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ForkLog 63 31.07.2025

Freedom, the mother of order

Twentieth-century economic thought was defined by competing visions of an ideal society, each school offering its own blueprint. If Chicago School faith in the market as a universal problem-solver became the emblem of neoliberalism, the Austrian School charted a different course — philosophical, with an emphasis on individual freedom. Rooted in the ideas of Carl […]

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ForkLog 41 28.07.2025

General Algorithm

Artificial intelligence has become an indispensable aide across fields that improve daily life—from automating web search to education and medicine. Yet, like any technology, it has another side. In recent months, engineers at leading corporations have resigned in protest at the use of their work in the MIC; musicians remove entire catalogues from streaming platforms […]

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ForkLog 83 23.07.2025

How markets became dogma—and then cracked

Economics has its tales of triumph and failure, but few schools of thought have left as deep a mark as Chicago. In the 20th century its ideas captured the minds of politicians, economists and entire nations. Yet critics, not only on the left but also among classical liberals, argue that the Chicago School monopolised economic […]

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