Josh O’Kane

Josh O'Kane has been a reporter with The Globe and Mail since 2011, and has covered the technology sector for much of the past five years. His coverage focuses on the relationships between tech companies and human beings, governments, economies, and each other. His latest book, Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy, investigates the failed effort by Google sister company Sidewalk Labs to build a future-focused neighbourhood in Toronto, the many institutions that company won over, and the consequences of Big Tech’s push into the physical world. It will be published in September 2022.

O’Kane won the 2019 Arthur F. Burns Award for transatlantic political and cultural reporting from Germany's Internationale Journalisten-Programme for his coverage of that country’s broad pushback against Big Tech. His reporting has also won numerous Best in Business Canada awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing. He has written widely on music, entrepreneurship, and Atlantic Canadian culture; his first book, Nowhere with You, examined all three subjects, and was a Canadian bestseller. O’Kane has extensively reported from Berlin, Halifax, Fredericton and Saint John, and is based in Toronto.