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November-December 2017

Inside Canada’s first coding truck, bringing digital literacy to communities across Ontario

Ladies Learning Code's Melissa Sariffodeen is pioneering the Code Mobile

Allyson Aritcheta

In her bright turquoise van adorned with purple lightning bolts, Melissa Sariffodeen resembles a digital era Ms. Frizzle—travelling the country, expanding the minds of bright-eyed students in new and exciting ways. This is the Code Mobile, Canada’s first coding truck led by Sariffodeen, the CEO of Ladies Learning Code. Sariffodeen was inspired to start the […] More »
November-December 2017

Social media is keeping us stuck in the moment

Social media is designed to keep us trapped in the present and devoid of history. Clive Thompson on why internet moguls want us to keep scrolling

Clive Thompson@pomeranian99

The next time you look at social media, I want you pay attention to a subtle detail on each post: the timestamp. If you’re on Twitter, for example, when was each post published? When I was writing this paragraph, I glanced down at my Twitter feed, and here’s what I saw: A tweet about a Chinese […] More »

Who tells the inside jokes of the internet?

A deep dive into the world of internet memes and their makers

Julianna Garofalo@juliannagaro

In the seconds after Melania Trump handed Michelle Obama a Tiffany box at the 2017 presidential inauguration, Jason Wong—from breakfast at a Vietnamese restaurant in downtown Los Angeles—raced to rewind the livestream he’d been watching on the Twitter app. “My brain clicked,” recalls the 20-year-old. “I wanted to post about it before anybody else did.” […] More »
September-October 2017

Google is finally adding thousands of Indigenous territories to its maps with the help of community members

The project will literally put Canada's Indigenous communities on the map

Amy van den Berg

Until now, most Indigneous territories in Canada have been omitted from Google Maps, but a new initiative from the company has begun to change that. More than 3,000 Indigenous lands and territories have been added to Google Maps and Earth. Over the past seven years Google Earth Outreach has partnered with Indigenous communities, government-sourced data repositories, […] More »
May-June 2017

Meet the woman combatting sexism in Canada’s STEM fields

Eden Hennessey’s #DistractinglyHonest exhibit explores the realities for women in STEM fields

Sohini Bhattacharya

When Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt said, at a science conference in 2015, that the trouble with women in labs is they cry and fall in love, the scientific community reacted with a barrage of vituperations from both sides. For doctoral candidate Eden Hennessey, one hashtag became a call to action. Under the banner #DistractinglySexy, female scientists […] More »
May-June 2017

The terrible, awful, no-good internet

The web was supposed to improve our lives. The best of it has yet to come

Tyler Hellard@poploser

Two years ago, some friends and I started our own private chat room on a service called Slack to talk about baseball. We did it because our non-baseball-loving friends on Twitter were tired of us yammering about bat flips and Moneyball and Troy Tulowitzki. I can’t overstate how well used this chat room is. We are […] More »
September-October 2016

It’s time to take the internet back

Women everywhere: rejoice

Hana Shafi@HanaShafi

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

The world needs a new internet

On the power of peer-to-peer services

Clive Thompson@pomeranian99

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

Warriors, put down your keyboards

Our constitutional right is to be tried in a court of law, not by social media

Raziel Reid@razielreid

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
September-October 2016

Canadians should embrace a post-human future

Imagine a world in which people do not define themselves by their various clusters of traits

Mark Kingwell@markkingwell

For our special 50th anniversary issue, Canada’s brightest, boldest, and most rebellious thinkers, doers, and creators share their best big ideas. Through ideas macro and micro, radical and everyday, we present 50 essays, think pieces, and calls to action. Picture: plans for sustainable food systems, radical legislation, revolutionary health care, a greener planet, Indigenous self-government, […] More »
May-June 2015

Project Diversity

RM VaughanWebsite

Straight, white men still dominate the technology industry. RM Vaughan introduces us to LGBTQ activists around the world who are fighting for change STUART CAMERON REMEMBERS the first time Unicorns in Tech set up a booth at a major tech/IT conference. “People would stop and see ‘Unicorns’ and think, ‘Oh that looks like fun,’ and […] More »