James Farrell

James Farrell is the former editor-in-chief of Chiang Mai CityNews, where he wrote and managed daily news, features, op-eds and blogs on a diverse range of topics. Prior to this, in the same city of Northern Thailand where he lives, he was the longstanding deputy editor of the monthly magazine Citylife. He has written on culture, politics, travel, tech, business, human rights, for local, national, and international news services and magazines. He has a keen interest in the role technology is playing in the transformation of society, culture and politics, especially in developing nations. This is reflected in his not-so-successful first novel.

Latest from James Farrell

Updated: Trump administration mulled a nationalized 5G network, but FCC chair opposes it

Updated Monday: President Donald Trump’s national security team is mulling the creation of a high-speed 5G wireless network within the next three years in an effort to guard against China, according to a report in Axios on Sunday. Axios claimed it has seen documents that revealed security officials stating that the U.S. needs a centralized ...
SUNDANCE 2018

A Columbine massacre survivor uses virtual reality to create empathy for tragedy

Brooks Brown was a former friend of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two shooters responsible for the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Colorado. He survived only because Harris told him to leave before the shootings began. Now, Brown (pictured today) is using virtual reality to let people experience tragedy for themselves. The global director ...

Uber CEO says self-driving cars will be picking up passengers in 18 months

Speaking today at Uber Technologies Inc.’s #TheYearAhead event, Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi revealed that the company is confident that autonomous ride-hailing is coming sooner than you think. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait, Khosrowshahi admitted that true, reliable, autonomous vehicles for wide use certainly face a few more obstacles to overcome, but ...

Facebook opens up on whether social media is good or bad for democracy

After mounting pressure on Facebook Inc. regarding its role in the world, the company today attempted to address the issue of what impact it might have on democracy. In the latest of its periodic “Hard Questions” series, this one on social media and democracy, Facebook will invite its own staff and guest speakers to tackle ...

Facebook crowdsources ratings to decide which news is ‘trustworthy’

Facebook Inc. finally moved Friday to crack down on the dissemination of dubious news and clickbait by letting its users decide what news is trustworthy. “Starting next week, we will begin tests in the first area: to prioritize news from publications that the community rates as trustworthy,” Facebook wrote in a press release. The company ...

Spotify launches new multimedia format called Spotlight

Spotify Ltd. signaled on Thursday that it’s getting more serious about podcasting, unveiling a new visually enhanced format called Spotlight that will cover news, culture, politics, sports and entertainment. The world’s biggest paid music service is teaming up with the likes of Buzzfeed News, Refinery29, Cheddar, Crooked Media, Lenny Letter, Gimlet Media, Genius and The ...

Humans beat popular algorithm for spotting potential re-offenders

It turns out that a trusted crime-fighting algorithm used to predict if criminals will re-offend might not be any better at its job than a random untrained human. The technology has already been widely used in the U.S. by judges as a risk assessment tool when deciding on an offender’s sentence. Predictive technology used to stem ...

22 states sue to stop FCC from repealing net neutrality

Twenty-two state attorneys general Tuesday filed a lawsuit in an attempt to turn around the Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality repeal. The lawsuit is led by New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman. He was joined by state attorneys from California, Connecticut, Oregon, New Mexico and others that filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court ...

Responding to criticism, Facebook makes news feed changes to spur more interaction

Facebook Inc. wants us to have more “meaningful social interactions” on its platform, so it has begun a news feed shakeup designed to address the swaths of negative criticism it has faced lately. The company came under considerable scrutiny last year first for the distribution of fake news and propaganda and later after research and reports ...

YouTube decides to punish Logan Paul for his controversial suicide video

YouTube has decided that YouTube star Logan Paul should be punished for his bad taste video that showed a suicide victim in what is known as Japan’s “Suicide Forest.” The company today announced it has removed Paul’s channel from its premium advertising service Google Preferred and from a show that appeared on YouTube Red. The ...