Sexual harassment, corporate-espionage charges, taking advantage of drivers: The company that practically courts bad PR has an even greater, more existential dilemma.
In early March, Travis Kalanick, the 40-year-old CEO of Uber, was riding in an SUV to Palo Alto for the company’s Technology Day, thinking about how to help Uber survive one of the worst periods a corporation had ever experienced. In January, some 500,000 users had joined a campaign to #DeleteUber from their phones, in response to the company’s perceived lack of support for protests at JFK against the Trump administration’s immigration ban (Kalanick had recently joined Trump’s economic council), which seemed to underscore the long-standing view that Uber didn’t care much for its drivers. The deletions were still coming three weeks later when Susan Fowler, a female engineer who’d left the company, accused it of rampant sexism and sexual harassment. Then, over the next two weeks, Google sued Uber, alleging it had stolen the company’s self-driving-car technology; a video surfaced of Kalanick getting into a profane argument with a driver; and the New York Times revealed that Uber had moved into cities where it was not allowed to operate with the help of a tool called Greyball. (The program showed government officials a fake version of Uber’s app with “ghost cars” so its drivers couldn’t be apprehended.)
Esta historia es de la edición May 29-June 11, 2017 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición May 29-June 11, 2017 de New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.
