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Data & Society Databite #102: Everybody Runs

presented by Ingrid Burrington

I’ve been try­ing to get as many weird futures on the table as pos­si­ble because the truth is there are these sort of ubiq­ui­tous futures, right. Ideas about how the world should or will be that have become this sort of main­stream, dom­i­nat­ing ver­nac­u­lar that’s pri­mar­i­ly kind of about a very white Western mas­cu­line vision of the future, and it kind of col­o­nized the abil­i­ty to think about and imag­ine tech­nol­o­gy in the future.

The Conversation #52 — Walter Block

presented by Aengus Anderson, Micah Saul, Neil Prendergast, Walter Block

Benevolence isn’t inef­fi­cient and I’m a big fan of benev­o­lence. It’s just that it’s not enough. It’s okay for a group of twenty-five or fifty peo­ple where every­one knows every­one. But when you have 300 mil­lion in the US or 7 bil­lion in the world, if we were self-sufficient and we had to pro­duce every­thing for our­selves we’d all die, or 99% of us would die. So we have to coop­er­ate with each oth­er. But the only way to coop­er­ate with each oth­er in such large num­bers is through markets. 

Data & Society Databite #102: Inform/Transform: Translating Critical Tech Perspectives

presented by Zara Rahman

Over the past cou­ple of years, it feels like civ­il soci­ety has been almost over­whelmed with promis­es of how tech­nol­o­gy can sud­den­ly mag­i­cal­ly solve the prob­lems that we’re try­ing to address. Some com­ing from tech giants who say they’ve devel­oped some sem­blance of social con­science sud­den­ly. Some from star­tups who see a prob­lem and think that tech­nol­o­gy can help with­out think­ing about the sys­temic issues under­ly­ing it.

Data & Society Databite #102: The Entropy of a System

presented by Tega Brain

I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned with how to design from the dystopi­an posi­tion of the Anthropocene. How to make cre­ative work that is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly crit­i­cal and gen­er­a­tive. What does it mean to have aug­ment­ed the atmos­phere and the ocean’s capac­i­ty to absorb heat? And to be rapid­ly increas­ing the entropy of those systems? 

Where Are The Black Designers?

presented by Maurice Cherry

How many black design­ers do you know? If you find that there’s not many or you don’t know any at all, that’s actu­al­ly per­fect­ly okay. That’s fine. And part of the rea­son­ing I think behind this is that you know, we don’t real­ly know where they are. We don’t see them because they’re not reflect­ed in our design media.

Defying Faith

presented by Eric Salobir, Jonathan Zittrain, Maria Zuber

The chal­lenge for the Church and for the the­olo­gians was to say okay, per­haps that’s what is writ­ten. But for exam­ple if you con­sid­er that God has deliv­ered the Creation in sev­en days, know­ing that nowa­days Amazon can deliv­er every­thing on Earth overnight, it means that Jeff Bezos has defeat­ed God? Or does it mean some­thing dif­fer­ent? And I think it means prob­a­bly some­thing different.

Loving Out Loud in a Time of Hate Speech

presented by Jillian C York

Dangerous speech, as opposed hate speech, is defined basi­cal­ly as speech that seeks to incite vio­lence against peo­ple. And that’s the kind of speech that I’m real­ly con­cerned about right now. That’s what we’re see­ing on the rise in the United States, in Europe, and elsewhere.

Ex Oriente Make
The Future of Maker Culture is Made in China

presented by Silvia Lindtner

Making took rise at a moment when peo­ple began— Not just schol­ars but also media—pub­lic media and peo­ple work­ing in the tech industry—began cri­tiquing ear­li­er visions and ideas of the knowl­edge econ­o­my and say­ing the knowl­edge econ­o­my, or ideas like the cre­ative class as prop­a­gat­ed by Richard Florida, were sharply cri­tiqued because they did not deliv­er what they had orig­i­nal­ly promised.

The Conversation #51 — Phyllis Tickle

presented by Aengus Anderson, Micah Saul, Phyllis Tickle

Historians get real­ly ner­vous about pat­terns. That’s chang­ing a bit now. And the truth of it is there’s not much way to avoid the 500-year cycle. You almost have to work too hard to unsay it, it’s so obvi­ous­ly there in every way. And if you say every 500 years we go through one, then you imme­di­ate­ly say we’re in the 21st cen­tu­ry and baby are we going through one.

Define American

presented by Jose Antonio Vargas

The real­i­ty is we have been so busy call­ing peo­ple names, obsess­ing over bor­ders and walls, and spread­ing mis­in­for­ma­tion that we haven’t even asked hard ques­tions like why do peo­ple move? What does US for­eign pol­i­cy and US trade agree­ments have to do with migra­tion pat­terns? Remember when those chil­dren start­ed walk­ing from Central America to here, and CBS News and a lot of orga­ni­za­tions called them ​“ille­gal immi­grant” chil­dren instead of call­ing them the refugees that they are? What did we do to Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala so that their coun­tries got so vio­lent that they have to come here? Who start­ed the drug war? What did NAFTA do not only to the United States but to Mexicans, right?

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