I am currently a PhD student at The University of Toronto, Department of Political Science. I research on the co-evolution of authority and technology, with a particular interest in the effects of brokerage in identification and payment networks in Kenya and Ethiopia. My extended bio can be found here
Email: jambo [@] moseskaranja [.] com
I am Karanja on the Fediverse.
You can also find me on Twitter
January 9, 2021 • 2 min read
Mark Erlich traces the history of misclassification in the construction sector in the United States, and how this erodes union density in the secto...
January 8, 2021 • 4 min read
Several United States companies have suspended the sitting President of the United States, Donald Trump, from their digital platforms. Twitter, his...
January 7, 2021 • 1 min read
University College London apologises for its role in promoting eugenics. This shows how changes in ideas may change the authoritative place of sci...
January 6, 2021 • 2 min read
The Saudi Arabia gazette is reporting the launch of an electronic version of the national identity card of Saudi citizens.
January 5, 2021 • 1 min read
In Distributional Effects of Payment Card Pricing and Merchant Cost Pass-through in the United States and Canada, Felt, Hayashi, Stavins, and Welte...
January 4, 2021 • 2 min read
6 years ago, when WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, its CEO, Jan Koum, committed to never introduce ads on the platform, with a rare sense of conv...
January 3, 2021 • 30 sec read
These shows reimagine form and time, effectively opening up new ideas of dance.
January 2, 2021 • 1 min read
The Nigerian federal government has approved the development and release of a new National Identity Number (NIN) slip and mobile app to verify and ...
January 1, 2021 • 1 min read
A brief insight into the architects who designed Chicago skyscrappers after the devastating 1871 fire. By looking up, unlike the traditional horizo...
December 4, 2018 • 7 min read
Contrary to theoretical promises of the Internet as a technology to diversity information sources, the lived experience of the majority of the popu...
June 4, 2018 • 3 min read
In trying to explain differentiated responses to a mandatory national identification scheme in Britain that would rely on biometric technology, Mar...
April 13, 2018 • 2 min read
The events of the last few weeks, most recently the US Senate hearing on Facebook and data protection (and lack of it), and of the next few weeks, ...
April 2, 2018 • 6 min read
Dr. Abiy Ahmed Ali was sworn-in as the next Prime Minister of Ethiopia on 2 April 2018. He will succeed Hailemariam Desalegn who resigned in the mi...
March 13, 2018 • 2 min read
A new report by The Citizen Lab uncovers the apparent use of middleboxes (Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) devices) for malicious ends, likely by natio...
July 18, 2017 • 1 min read
17 July 2017: South Sudan National Communication Authority, the official communication sector regulator in the Eastern Africa country, blocked seve...
June 29, 2017 • 3 min read
The Kenyan Elections Management Body, IEBC, hired KPMG to audit the voter register for the upcoming 8 August National elections. Based on the audit...
May 31, 2017 • 2 min read
Ethiopian Internet users woke up to no connectivity, thanks in part to the grade 10 national examinations.
March 4, 2017 • 9 min read
Casablanca Airspace, Morocco
January 1, 2017 • 1 min read
In an interview with Der Spiegel, Germany’s Parliamentary Chief of the Social Democratic Party, Thomas Oppermann, has hinted at a proposed legislat...
December 7, 2016 • 1 min read
Summary
December 1, 2016 • 2 min read
Internet traffic monitors noticed a sharp drop in Gambian connectivity around 20:00 UTC (8PM local time). Akamai’s State of the Internet, a report...
October 6, 2016 • 1 min read
The BBC published a very interesting study in 2014 comparing an underground fungal mesh network with the Internet. Calling it the “Wood Wide Web”, ...
September 25, 2016 • 1 min read
In summary, between Jan 1 and September 25, we have documented 13 shutdown instances in 11 countries. Most of the shutdowns are national in nature ...
September 18, 2016 • 4 min read
Gabon, a Central African country of roughly 1.8 million people, has evidently resorted to an Internet curfew as a form of information control follo...
August 11, 2016 • 1 min read
Nearly 100 deaths and thousands of arrests have been reported in Ethiopia over the last days, as part of protests against the marginalization and p...
September 25, 2012 • 1 min read
Keep your classics close, your Dickens closer.
September 6, 2012 • 1 min read
This article asks whether bailing out big banks without punishing their sins is a wise way of managing a crisis as big as the 2008 crunch.
August 26, 2012 • 1 min read
Aunty Entity: This is no enemy. It’s almost family.
May 1, 2012 • 1 min read
The scene is Athens, 400 BC. A bunch of local brainiacs have gotten together, wine is being passed and ideas are flowing fast and furiously. The de...
August 31, 2011 • 30 sec read
Prof. Mahmoud Mamdani: The nexus of internal revolt and external force as the building blocks of a successful revolution. Read more about this rela...
July 26, 2011 • 3 min read
This excerpt from Penguin Island fits right into State, War, and social contract theory. Certainly Hobbesian :)
April 26, 2011 • 1 min read
The intellectual father of the democratic revolution on what he learned from Gandhi.