Home
Home is so sad, it stays as it was left, a sad poet once wrote. But in the middle of a pandemic that has led many to turn their kitchens and couches into “home classrooms” and “offices,” and left many others unhoused, when online shopping is glutting global logistics and loved ones have been stranded for years across heavily surveilled borders, and as tech billionaire tourists blast into outer space, we know better. Home is as much a site of nostalgia as it is of constant change. As desperate parents ping Care.com with searches for domestic help, as Amazon intensifies its smart home spying equipment, as Zillow finds itself overleveraged trying to flip too many identical condos with cursive word signs that say things like RELAX, and as Evergrande threatens to blow up the global economy, this issue will explore how technologies make home, and vice versa.
Maslow’s 1BR
In the beginning, there was the nursery.
Democracy From the Bedroom
How the internet politicized our most intimate spaces.
Monitoring the Monitors
How care-work gig platforms cultivate a culture of surveillance.
Birthing Predictions of Premature Death
How family policing became data-driven.
Apartheid by Algorithm
A report on computer-assisted housing discrimination in South Africa.