Digital Culture
Digital Culture was segment on Digital Village on 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles that covered the collective practices, behaviors, and social norms that emerged from how people interact, communicate, and create meaning through digital technologies and online platforms.
Below is a list of some of my favorite episodes.
The Fight for Net Neutrality
Air Date: November 28, 2017
Right now the FCC is considering a proposal to roll back the net neutrality protections in the Open Internet Order, thereby allowing ISPs, the gatekeepers of the internet, to effectively control what you have access to and how quickly.
The FCC, led by chairman Ajit Pai, released the final draft of their plan named "Restoring Internet Freedom," which would reverse a 2015 ruling that classifies ISPs as if they were telecommunication services and instead have them be classified as information services.
The FCC is forbidden from imposing neutrality obligations on information services and this proposal gives significant authority back to the Federal Trade Commission and many fear that the FTC does not have the bandwidth to properly regulate.
This change could allow ISPs to experiment with so-called "fast lanes" for internet traffic, where some apps and services are prioritized over others.
My guest this week is Peter Eckersley, the Chief Computer Scientist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is an international non-profit digital rights group that has fought for rights online for over 25 years.
Bots, Bots, Bots
What is a chatbot? Well, it’s a service… it’s usually powered by rules, and sometimes there’s some weak AI involved (but that is likely to ramp up especially as natural language understanding improves). It could be any number of things, but usually you’re “chatting” with it. Whether it be through a chat product like Slack or Facebook Messenger or on a website.
Chatbots can serve any number of purposes. Like you describing the ideal shoe you are looking for, and the bot making suggestions… or ordering a Lyft for you… or update you on the news you care about, or even becoming your ideal best friend like the bot Replika.
I spoke with Phil Libin, Partner at General Catalyst and Bot extraordinaire about Why Bots and Why now… Lauren Kunze, CEO of PandoraBots on the past, present, and future of chatbots, and finally Max Hawkins and Will Doenlen about the CEO bot that they built that planned their trip to Japan.
Burn After Listening: Experimenting with Art & Science on the Playa
Burning man is a festival in the desert where nearly 70,000 people congregate for a week - and for that week, it’s Nevada’s third largest city, known as Black Rock City, commonly called the Playa. There’s a street grid, city planning, emergency services, a radio station, mail, a DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles), you can even be christened with your own “Playa Name,” I’m Sloe Ninja. For the residents of Black Rock City, it’s about radical self-reliance, you need to bring all you need to survive for a week, you must keep track of the trash you generate - and take it back to the default world with you, lastly you cannot buy anything there other than ice and a few select non-alcoholic beverages. It’s a gifting economy. Camps bring gifts… from coconut water, to scotch (yes, please!), to bacon, to science lectures.
When I arrived I realized Burning Man was a choose your own adventure type of place. Just like anywhere, you're in control of the path you take. Ya there’s hippies and it’s hot, sure there are plenty of naked people (and some may not be what you want to see naked), and at night - it’s spectacular, an acid lovers mecca, - there’s nothing in the world quite like this place. The adventure I chose was to find the science on the Playa and to explore the relationship between art and science. From science talks about the brain or how we can use healthy bacteria to fight infections, to musical tesla coils, to art cars shaped like a giant brain, to a full fledged observatory, Burning Man is chock full of not just art, but science as well. The real beauty of this place is seeing science and art working together to create something magnificent.
The amount of time and effort put in by the community at large is astonishing. People put in hundreds of hours on projects that they display for a week out of the year. It’s the the people like this that come to Burning Man to experiment with their ideas, like a musical tesla coil, or a brain jungle gym art car, or an observatory - they are what makes this place so unique and special - and really a testbed for the creation of amazing art and science - and a place where you can clearly see the connection between the two.
No city is perfect, and black rock city is no exception, but just like anywhere else, you're in control of your journey there, and I wouldn't change a thing.
Special thanks to Coup de Foudre, Dr. BrainLove, and the Black Rock Observatory.
Whole Earth Discipline with Stewart Brand
We spoke with the well-known environmentalist and author Stewart Brand about the future of our planet and the role of technology in it. We start with his Hero's Journey and his role in "The Mother of All Demos", and then move to smarter cities, and end on some controversy with GMOs and geo-engineering.
The Technological Singularity with Vernor Vinge
We spoke with mathematician and Hugo Award winning science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. We talk about the five scenarios for the technological singularity, future space inhabitation, and what happens if the singularity doesn't happen.
“It’s like chimpanzees trying to imagine an opera.”