Professional Affiliation

Independent Journalist

Expert Bio

John McQuaid is a journalist and author, most recently of the book "Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat," which explores the biology and history of flavor from the origin of life to the modern food system. While working for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he was lead reporter on a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper series about market-driven fisheries collapses around the world, co-writer of a series that anticipated the city’s near-demise by Hurricane Katrina, and covered the levee failures that led to the flood. He also written about city-destroying super-termites, mountaintop removal coal mining, the global flower business, and Trump administration science policies for publications including Smithsonian magazine, The Washington Post, and Scientific American. He is the co-author of "Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms." He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Expertise

• Disaster Management
• Science and Technology
• Facial recognition, Emotion Recognition, Hurricane Katrina

Wilson Center Project

The Rise of Face Technology

Project Summary

Facial recognition technology – and increasingly, algorithms that purport to read emotions in faces – are now a routine tool for law enforcement and corporations, a trend that is accelerating with no real oversight or accountability. This represents a fundamental social shift in which biometric information (after all, that’s what an image of your face really is) is no longer assumed to be private. Science tells us the face is central to the sense of self, a road map of the human psyche, and the primary social medium we use to present ourselves to the world. Yet face technology is often deeply flawed, rife with gender, racial, and ethnic biases – raising the specter of a 21st century phrenology, with questionable science embedded in technology and the institutions using it. This project aims to explore the social, legal, and political dimensions of face tech at this crucial moment.

Major Publications

• Tasty: The Art and Science of What We Eat
• Path of Destruction: The Devastation of New Orleans and the Coming Age of Superstorms