Hardly a day goes by with out my getting an electronic mail from somebody in search of a option to do good with expertise. From pc science college students fascinated with post-grad careers to seasoned coders with many years of expertise, there’s a military of hackers in search of a option to flip their experience into public items.
There is a identify for this motion: it is known as “Public Curiosity Know-how” and the individuals who work in it are known as “public curiosity technologists.” There’ve all the time been techies who understood the hyperlink between tech and public wellbeing and who dedicated themselves to working for the betterment of society, however their numbers swelled as Massive Tech corporations saturated their markets and switched from rising by making merchandise individuals like, to locking of their customers after which extracting extra worth from their technological prisoners:
https://pluralistic.web/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan
It was the period when (within the phrases of Fb’s Jeff Hammerbacher) “The most effective minds of my era are fascinated with how you can make individuals click on adverts”:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click on/
For organizations just like the Digital Frontier Basis, the rising cohort of hackers who needed to hack for good was nice information. Our workers technologist group swelled from a few overworked pc scientists serving to attorneys and activists with campaigns to a collection of more and more bold software program tasks, from Privateness Badger (a tracking-blocker that each net consumer wants):
https://privacybadger.org/
To Let’s Encrypt and Certbot, tasks that endlessly modified the web’s default state, in order that at the moment, almost all on-line communications are encrypted and proof against mass surveillance:
https://certbot.eff.org/
Different alternatives for public curiosity technologists proliferated. Bruce Schneier created the canonical useful resource web page for Public Curiosity Technologists, together with profession alternatives for would-be public curiosity technologists:
However the motherlode of public curiosity technologist alternatives wasn’t the nonprofit sector – it was the general public sector. It began with the UK’s Authorities Digital Service, a bunch of public-spirited hackers (a lot of them ex- of the BBC, the place they’d been tempest-tossed by infinite inside power-struggles over the function of the web in public service media) who retooled lots of the UK authorities’s most essential administrative front-ends. For a number of wonderful years, Britons delighted to the day by day marvel of getting their routine interactions with their authorities reworked from clunky, damaged web-pages to slick, fantastically thought via on-line processes that had all of the polish of Amazon or Google, however with none of the gamesmanship, manipulation or privateness invasions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service
Regardless of many makes an attempt at official sabotage by a string of more and more shambolic UK governments, the GDS nonetheless exists, and it nonetheless does wonderful work, despite the fact that it operates at the moment with a fraction of the official help that it loved at its inception. The final time I renewed my UK passport, I used to be gobsmacked by how straightforward and smart the method was. Native authorities have gotten in on the act, too: I renewed my absentee voting registration with Hackney Council final week and it was so simple as scanning a QR code, affirming my particulars, and clicking “submit.”
World wide, a era of public sector technologists duplicated and improved on the UK GDS’s work. In Taiwan, a rogue public curiosity hacker named Audrey Tang led a bunch of digital guerrillas in creating shadow variations of each Taiwanese authorities web site that scraped and remade all the digital presence of the Taiwanese state to make public info and companies accessible, legible and helpful to its individuals. After the following election, Tang was named Taiwan’s first ever Minister of Digital Affairs (at the moment, she is a Taiwanese “Ambassador-At-Giant”):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Tang
Within the USA, Jen Pahlka went from operating a ragtag “civic hacking” org known as Code For America to serving to to discovered the USA Digital Service beneath Obama, bringing a few of that UK GDS spirit to America’s dreadful on-line presence, which had been largely constructed and maintained by beltway bandits who’d billed handsomely and delivered a few of the web’s biggest crimes in opposition to usability:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Digital_Service
However the USDS’s legacy is bitter. In 2025, USDS was successfully dismantled and changed with DOGE, Elon Musk’s handpicked group of tech-bro cultists who got down to dismantle as a lot of the US authorities as attainable, intentionally sabotaging the usability of America’s governmental programs to make it more durable for the general public to entry the companies they’re entitled to and pay for with their taxes.
My very own run-in with this was my try and get a certificates of citizenship for my daughter when she turned 18: all I may discover was a web-based type that began by requiring me to listing the dates and flight numbers for each journey I might taken to the USA from the time I used to be born to the day I grew to become a US citizen, a 50+ yr interval that began with a visit to go to my snowbird grandparents in Florida after I was six months outdated. All the help and recommendation service for the US Customs and Immigration Service has been changed with a DOGE chatbot that repeatedly emails and texts hyperlinks to the shape, it doesn’t matter what query you ask, and regardless of whether or not you name, electronic mail or use the web site’s chat interface:
https://pluralistic.web/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600
Lots of the DOGE youngsters had been monsters. Essentially the most chilling DOGE story I’ve heard was the nameless testimony of NIH officers who begged the DOGE youngsters who had been dismantling their work to spare some long-running most cancers analysis tasks whose nice promise could be vaporized in the event that they had been interrupted. The DOGE youngsters laughed at these entreaties, saying that after Musk had perfected “Basic AI” we would not want most cancers analysis, as a result of their tame AI god would remedy most cancers.
However not each DOGE operator was a digital arsonist. Take Dan Berulis, a DOGE staffer who got here out of the non-public sector and later turned whistleblower over the group’s actions, who now faces assassination makes an attempt:
https://www.wired.com/story/he-blew-the-whistle-on-doge-then-his-brakes-were-cut/
Berulis joined DOGE to enhance America’s digital infrastructure, to not dismantle it. When he talks about his motives, he seems like an early GDS pioneer, considered one of Audrey Tang’s direct-action authorities information scrapers, or one of many Code For America hackers who adopted Pahlka to USDS:
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security
DOGE was a disaster. It left America’s authorities digital presence in far worse form than it discovered it, and even the modest financial savings it claimed to have constituted of all this destruction grow to be lies:
https://www.yahoo.com/information/politics/articles/elon-musk-doge-made-big-110000036.html
However as Berulis demonstrates, there’s a bipartisan group of expert, moral technologists who’re determined to do significant public curiosity work. Their numbers swell daily, as Massive Tech continues to curdle – now not merely sclerotic and enshittifying monopolies, now lively individuals in Trump’s authoritarian dismantling of democracy itself:
https://pluralistic.web/2025/10/06/america-with-chinese-characteristics/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply
Tech bosses’ gleeful mass layoffs imply that tech employees can now not depend on good therapy and secure, high-earning careers; on the similar time, tech bosses’ betrayal of democracy makes the prospect of working for a tech firm much more ethically doubtful than mere ad-tech optimizations. The result’s a bumper crop of geeks in search of methods to do good with their lives and expertise – as all of the emails in my inbox asking for recommendation about this attests.
Enter NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has made “public excellence” the cornerstone of his politics, hiring essentially the most expert employees he can discover after which giving all of them the authority and assets they should repair 100,000 potholes, carry New York’s worst landlords to justice, and ship daily for all of the individuals of New York:
https://pluralistic.web/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority
Mamdani has simply unveiled his Public Curiosity Know-how (PIT) Crews: 5 “recreation altering” groups of public curiosity hackers who will remake NYC’s digital companies:
https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/information/2026/07/transcript–mayor-mamdani-launches–public-interest-technology–
Writing for Wired, Steven “Hackers” Levy paints a portrait of New York’s PIT Crews, describing them as “what DOGE ought to have been”:
https://www.wired.com/story/mamdani-assembles-his-nyc-tech-team/
I will go farther than that: the PIT Crews – and Mamdani’s mission as an entire – is delivering all the failed promise of DOGE. In contrast to Musk and Trump, Mamdani is definitely rooting out fraud and waste. The explanation Mamdani can do that – and the explanation billionaires cannot – is that the fraud and waste that undermines governments in any respect ranges come from the super-rich, with their tax-dodging, their no-bid contracts, their habit to public subsidies.
Musk owes his riches to federal bailouts and contracts: if he desires to “eradicate authorities fraud and waste” he ought to flip over his information to an IRS inspector (if he can discover a survivor of the DOGE bloodbath) and give up himself for a prolonged jail sentence. For Musk, “authorities fraud and waste” is a single mother on meals stamps who misses a field on a 600-page type as a result of she’s exhausted from working three jobs to make lease – not a no-bid contractor trousering billions in public funds for tasks that overcharge and underdeliver.
Mamdani’s PIT Crews are “small teams of engineers and designers will try to vary the hidebound and complicated nature of present metropolis companies by utilizing state-of-art expertise to quickly whip up specialised apps that resolve actual issues.” Mamdani says that they will “increase expectations on what authorities can ship, as a result of we actually can ship.”
As Levy describes it, the large distinction between the Obama-era USDS and 2026’s PIT Crews is “a skeptical, nearly adversarial, stance towards Massive Tech.” NYC’s PIT Crews explicitly recruit top-tier hacker expertise who need to “make software program that does not serve advertisers, the navy, or the pocketbooks of centibillionaires.”
Their inaugural chief is Lisa Gelobter, a veteran of each tech companies and the USDS, who says that “With out expertise, coverage is simply phrases written on a chunk of paper.” The primary mission on her roster is implementing “Click on to Cancel,” a coverage inaugurated by Lina Khan, Biden’s FTC Chief – after which dismantled by Trump. Beneath Click on to Cancel, corporations are required to create one-click workflows to cancel subscriptions and memberships, ending the pernicious, extremely worthwhile follow of trapping individuals with impossible-to-halt recurring billings. In the present day, Khan is operating Mamdani’s Financial Growth Board, and her Click on to Cancel rule is again – for New Yorkers, at the very least:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/22/lina-khan-nyc-economic-development-board
NYC PIT Crew’s new Click on to Cancel website might be stay when the coverage takes impact on Oct 1. It is a whistleblower website that may make it straightforward to report retailers who make it laborious to get shut of their on-line Roach Motels (customers test in, however they do not take a look at). It is estimated the Click on to Cancel rule will save New Yorkers $160m within the first yr alone – however provided that Mamdani can implement it, which is why this web site is so vital.
This give attention to meat-and-potatoes service supply was as soon as dismissed as “sewer socialism,” an unserious type of progressive politics with an undue give attention to bettering individuals’s day by day lives on the expense of high-flying political change. In the present day, Mamdani is on the vanguard of a military of proud sewer socialists, who say that after you ship for individuals of their day-to-day existence, they may belief you and again you if you combat for deep, structural adjustments (and the corollary: if you cannot ship for individuals of their day by day lives, why ought to they belief you if you declare that you will make all the things higher?):
https://prospect.org/2026/04/10/zohran-mamdani-getting-new-york-city-believe-in-government/
3,000 techies utilized for 35 jobs with NYC’s PIT Crews, and, as Levy writes, a lot of them are high-flying senior coders who’re prepared to take an enormous pay-cut and forfeit their inventory choices to do one thing that is each technically glorious and significant to their customers’ lives.
It is a clear message to different leaders, at each degree of presidency. Lots of the most expert, bold individuals in each subject need to make the world a greater place. Each metropolis, county and state may use a squadron of PIT Crews, and there is a military of coders who would give something for the prospect to offer all the things to make a greater world.
#25yrsago Moscow’s pirate music market https://net.archive.org/net/20010912203143/https://www.wired.com/information/tradition/0,1284,45908,00.html
#25yrsago Webcomics v trad comics https://net.archive.org/net/20010821073756/https://www.salon.com/tech/characteristic/2001/08/09/comics/index.html
#25yrsago Aussie teenagers are hooked on their telephones https://net.archive.org/net/20010818220523/http://information.ninemsn.com.au/nationwide/story_5807.asp
#20yrsago Canadian librarians decry “Captain Copyright” https://net.archive.org/net/20060813004140/https://cla.ca/Access_Copyright_CptCopy_let_Final_.pdf
#20yrsago TiVo/Macrovision screw up breaks units once more https://zatznotfunny.com/2006-08/tivo-macrovision-and-the-stealth-broadcast-flag/
#20yrsago Will the Supreme Court docket strike down the TSA’s secret legal guidelines? https://papersplease.org/gilmore/
#20yrsago Robotic storage loses software program license, strands parkers https://net.archive.org/net/20060809213517/https://www.wired.com/information/expertise/0,71554-0.html?tw=wn_index_1
#15yrsago Typewriter-part penguin https://net.archive.org/net/20111116020049/http://jemayer.tumblr.com/submit/8674700147
#15yrsago Selecting Android since you don’t belief Google https://www.theguardian.com/expertise/2011/aug/09/technology-failure-more-important-than-success
#15yrsago HOWTO sound Canadian https://net.archive.org/net/20110610104919/http://www.oed.com/public/canadianenglish
#15yrsago Lev Grossman’s The Magician King: fantasy sequel, the banality of magic and the magic of banality https://memex.craphound.com/2011/08/09/lev-grossmans-the-magician-king-fantasy-sequel-the-banality-of-magic-and-the-magic-of-banality/
#10yrsago Rosie the Riveter, Ghostbusters version https://www.deviantart.com/hugohugo/artwork/We-Can-Bust-It-621803816
#10yrsago Thai telcoms regulator desires vacationers to make use of location-tracking SIMs https://net.archive.org/net/20160812182254/https://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Thailand-mulls-location-tracking-tourist-SIM-cards-30292551.html
#10yrsago Mysterious medical analysis consortium: we must always personal volunteers’ medical trial information for five years https://www.techdirt.com/2016/08/08/medical-researchers-want-up-to-five-years-exclusivity-clinical-trial-data-derived-volunteers/
#10yrsago Unlawful “Guarantee Void If Eliminated” nonetheless ubiquitous: they’re on the Xbox One S https://net.archive.org/net/20160809092923/https://motherboard.vice.com/learn/the-xbox-one-s-still-uses-microsofts-illegal-warranty-void-if-removed-sticker
#10yrsago Your medical information: misappropriated by health-tech corporations, off-limits to you https://net.archive.org/net/20180806230935/https://www.wired.com/2016/02/our-medical-data-must-become-free/
#10yrsago Return of Dieselgate: 3 extra hidden packages present in VW Audi/Porsche firmware https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-audi-idUSKCN10I0PB/
#10yrsago Timelapse of capsules dissolving: “decaying clowns” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rY3X4xafs0
#10yrsago Proof-of-concept ransomware for sensible thermostats demoed at Defcon https://net.archive.org/net/20161020083358/https://www.pentestpartners.com/weblog/thermostat-ransomware-a-lesson-in-iot-security/
#10yrsago Compounds in human exhalations throughout films range in response to suspense and comedy https://www.nature.com/articles/srep25464
#10yrsago How racist site visitors stops criminalize black individuals, and what to do about it https://www.vox.com/2016/8/5/12364580/police-overcriminalization-net-widening
#10yrsago Chicago cops switched off bodycams and high-fived after taking pictures unarmed black teen https://net.archive.org/net/20160807194244/http://www.theroot.com/articles/information/2016/08/chicago-pd-paul-oneal-video/
#10yrsago DoJ to judges: use Tor to guard your web connection https://net.archive.org/net/20160807025945/http://motherboard.vice.com/learn/department-of-justice-official-tells-hundred-federal-judges-to-use-tor
#5yrsago Expectations administration pluralistic.web/2021/08/08/expectations-management-part-v/
#5yrsago When your boss desires an AI digicam in your bed room https://pluralistic.web/2021/08/09/computer-says-no/#disciplinary-tech
#5yrsago The 22 Murders of Madison Might https://pluralistic.web/2021/08/09/computer-says-no/#existential-crisis
#1yrago Millionaire on billionaire violence https://pluralistic.web/2025/08/09/elite-disunity/#awoken-giants
“The Reverse-Centaur’s Information to AI,” a brief guide about being a greater AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/
“Canny Valley”: A restricted version assortment of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.web/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
“Enshittification: Why Every thing Abruptly Bought Worse and What to Do About It,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
“Picks and Shovels”: a sequel to “Pink Staff Blues,” in regards to the heroic period of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
“The Bezzle”: a sequel to “Pink Staff Blues,” about prison-tech and different grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
“The Misplaced Trigger:” a solarpunk novel of hope within the local weather emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
“The Web Con”: A nonfiction guide about interoperability and Massive Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at E book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/guide/9781804291245).
“Pink Staff Blues”: “A grabby, compulsive thriller that may go away you realizing extra about how the world works than you probably did earlier than.” Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
“Chokepoint Capitalism: How one can Beat Massive Tech, Tame Massive Content material, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin”, on how you can unrig the markets for inventive labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
“The Publish-American Web,” a geopolitical sequel of types to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
“Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel tailored from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
“Enshittification, Why Every thing Abruptly Bought Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
“The Memex Technique,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
In the present day’s prime sources:
At present writing:
“As soon as Is Enemy Motion,” a science fiction novel in regards to the origins of recent technofascism. Friday’s phrases: 564 (2916 complete).
“The Publish-American Web,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” in regards to the higher world the remainder of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft accomplished. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother quick story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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