Podcast #35: Ainissa Ramirez

Science evangelist Ainissa Ramirez takes a look at how major technologies have shaped human culture—both intentionally and not.

By Betsy Brunner | June 4, 2020 | Culture, Ethics, Health, Knowledge, Media, Podcasts, Society, Transportation, Well-Being | Attention, Bias, Binary Thinking, Circadian Rhythms, Communications, Community, Consumerism, Control, Coronavirus, Critical Thinking, Diversity, Education, Electric Light, Emotional Reactivity, Empathy, Engineers, History, Imagination, Invention, Inventors, Language, Literature, Memory, Motivation, Non-Verbal Communication, Nuance, Photography, Polarization, Politics, Reading, Science, Self-Empowerment, Self-Identity, Social Media, Speed, STEM, storytelling, Telegraph, Texting, The Alchemy of Us, Trains, Twitter, Unintended Consequences

Read more  

The Transformative Power of Print

College students given an assignment of reading a print book learn about their own habits and the power of concentration.

By Michael Bugeja | July 17, 2019 | Cognition, Education | Accomplishment, Addiction, Attention, College, Comprehension, Concentration, Disruption, Distraction, Focus, Intentionality, Internet, Learning, Reading, Relaxation, Retention, Silence, Smartphones, Tangibility, Texting, Twitter

Read more  

Podcast #24: Michael Zimmerman Gets Philosophical on Tech

In a wide-ranging conversation, philosopher Michael Zimmerman contextualizes our technological journey within the history of Western thought.

By Mo Lotman | January 9, 2019 | Artificial Intelligence, Culture, Employment, Environment, Ethics, Knowledge, Philosophy, Podcasts, Religion, Society | Acts of Enclosure, Addiction, Agriculture, Ancient World, Anger, Aristotle, Arnold Toynbee, Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Authenticity, Axial Age, Behavior, Bible, Bolsheviks, Boundaries, Buddhism, Capitlism, Carolyn Merchant, Christianity, Civilization, Control, Craving, Creativity, CRISPR, David Loy, Death, Decadence, Deep Ecology, Delusion, Desire, Distraction, Earth, Ease, Embodiment, Engineering, Environment, Eternity, Exploitation, Exponential Growth, Facebook, Fake News, Fate, Finitude, Fire, Francis Bacon, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gnosticism, Golden Rule, Google, Greed, Hatred, Hegel, Heiddeger, Hubris, Human Nature, Humanness, Immaturity, Immortality, Industrial Revolution, Infantilization, Isaiah, Islam, Jaron Lanier, Karl Jaspers, Karl Marx, Knowledge, Lab-Grown Meat, Life, Loss, Martin Rees, Marxism, Master-Slave Dialectic, Meaning, Meat-Eating, Mediation, Medieval World, Metallurgy, Mind, Mining, Modernity, Money Economy, Morality, Mortality, Native Americans, Nature, Nazis, News, Nihilism, Obesity, Pain, Pascal, Peter Thiel, Philosophy, Plato, Playing God, Power, Production, Progress, Propoganda, Protestant Reformation, Ray Kurzweil, Reincarnation, relationships, Religion, René Descartes, Resentment, Resources, Respect, Sailing, Security, Self-Mastery, Silicon Valley, Smartphones, Socialism, Soviets, Spirituality, Splintering, Steve Jobs, Suffering, The Overman, The Singularity, Trade, Traditional Societies, Transhumanism, Twitter, Utopia, Wealth, Wildfires, Will to Power, Wisdom, Wonder

Read more  

He Started #DeleteFacebook… Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago, three artists created a controversial site to make a statement about Facebook’s practices. The company sued and accused them of scraping data. Oh, the irony.

By Art Keller | April 11, 2018 | Culture, Ethics, Law, Media, Privacy | Advertising, Apps, Art, Bits of Freedom, Cambridge Analytica, Chris Wylie, Congress, Danja Vasiliev, Dark Patterns, Data Scraping, Data-Mining, Deleting Accounts, Developers, Digital Art, Edward Snowden, EFF, Facebook, Fraud, Gordan Savicic, Manipulation, Mark Zuckerberg, Moddr, Privacy, Privacy Zuckering, Social Commentary, Social Media, Tobias Leingruber, Twitter, Walter Langelaar, Web Suicide Machine

Read more  

Is Democracy Threatened by Chatbots?

Chatbots are becoming more sophisticated both in their ability to process language and gauge emotion. As social media increasingly influences our news and beliefs, this could be a big problem.

By Emily Ludolf | January 31, 2018 | Artificial Intelligence, Government, Journalism, Knowledge, Politics, Psychology, Security, Society | AI, Bias, Chatbots, Customer Service, Cyberbullying, Democracy, Elections, Fake News, Filter Bubble, Influence, Machine Learning, Microsoft, Natural Language Processing, News, NLP, Opinion, Oxford, Profiling, Propaganda, Psychiatry, Psychology, Russia, Social Media, Targeting, Tay, Therapy, Trolling, Twitter

Read more  

Literary Twitter: Marketing, Shaming, & Censorship in the World of Publishing

Twitter has become deeply integrated into the literary world, creating a vastly different dynamic between authors and readers.

By Lucy Uprichard | December 6, 2017 | Community, Culture, Media, Publishing | Agents, Amazon, Bestseller Lists, Bestsellers, Celeste Ng, Censorship, Criticism, Cyberbullying, Donna Grant, Engagement, Fiction, Followers, Goodreads, Handbook for Mortals, Harlequin Teen, Jonathan Franzen, Lani Sarem, Laurie Forest, Literary Agents, Literary Criticism, Literary Twitter, Literature, Marketing, Pressure, Publishers, Publishing, Rebekah Fitzsimmons, relationships, Sarah Schulman, Self-Promotion, Shaming, Social Media, The Black Witch, The New York Times, Twitter, Valerie Peterson, Virginia DeBerry, Young Adult, Zadie Smith

Read more  

New Digital Fakery May Make Truth Even More Elusive

Software now in development makes it easy to fabricate audio and video of real people, literally putting words in their mouths.

By Samantha Maxwell | November 1, 2017 | Ethics, Journalism, Media, Politics | Adobe, Comet Ping Pong, Donald Trump, Face2Face, Facebook, Fake News, Fakery, Filter Bubble, Forgery, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Lyrebird, Media, Mimicry, Misinformation, Opinion, PhotoShop, Pizzagate, Politicians, Social Media, The Emily Project, Truth, Twitter, VoCo

Read more  

Podcast #12: Bill Powers on Tech Boundaries and Social Media

Journalist and media critic Bill Powers wrote a bestselling book about stepping away from tech; now he’s on the inside trying to make tech better.

By Mo Lotman | June 14, 2017 | Cognition, Health, Journalism, Media, Philosophy, Podcasts, Psychology, Society, Well-Being | Attention, Boundaries, Busyness, Connectedness, Digital Maximalism, Elections, Hamlet's Blackberry, Internet Sabbath, iPhone, Lab for Social Machines, Media Lab, MIT, Newspapers, Policy, Screen Sabbath, smart phones, Tech Sabbath, The Electome, The Internet, The Washington Post, Tim Berners-Lee, Twitter

Read more  

Now Following You on Twitter: The Police

Social media monitoring tools let local law enforcement scoop up and sift through everyone’s posts, regardless of suspicion.

By Warren Christopher Freiberg | March 29, 2017 | Law, Media, Policing, Privacy, Security | ACLU, Alex Marthews, Babel Street, Baltimore, Boston, Brennan Center for Justice, California, CIA, Civil Rights, Dataminr, Department of Homeland Security, Facebook, FBI, First Amendment, Florida, Fourth Amendment, Freddie Gray, Geofeedia, Instagram, Law Enforcement, Media Sonar, Michigan, Monitoring, Police, Protests, Restore the Fourth, Snaptrends, Social Media, Social Media Monitoring, surveillance, Texas, Tracking, Twitter

Read more  

2016, The Year in Review

A look back at the biggest technology-related stories of 2016.

By Mo Lotman | January 4, 2017 | Advertising, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Cognition, Culture, Economics, Environment, Ethics, Health, Human Rights, Journalism, Media, Policing, Politics, Privacy, Society, Transportation | AI, Amazon, Analog, Antibacterial Soap, Apple, Augmented Reality, Autonomous Vehicles, Black Lives Matter, Brain Training, Cancer, Comet Ping Pong, Cryogenics, Data Breach, DDOS, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, DNC, Drone Delivery, Drones, Dyn, Encryption, Facebook Live, Fake News, FBI, FDA, Gawker, Genetic Engineering, Go, Google, Hacking, Hillary Clinton, Hulk Hogan, Internet of Things, iPhone, Lee Sedol, Live-Streaming, Lumosity, Mitocondrial Donation, music, Orwell, Peter Thiel, Philando Castile, Pokemon Go, Police Shootings, Politics, Records, Robots, Russia, San Bernardino, self-driving cars, Sex Tape, Spotify, surveillance, Terrorism, Tesla, Triclosan, Twitter, vinyl, Yahoo

Read more