Open Transcripts

Media, Technology & Culture 1.1: Messages about the Medium

presented by Joshua Braun

We’re going to talk at length about new media. And in our first few installments we’re going to begin by thinking for a bit about what makes a medium new.

Hearsay Culture #252 — Prof. Ben Peters on the History of the Failed Soviet Internet

presented by Benjamin Peters, David S Levine

The Soviet experience suggests something really important for us today, which is that networks are entirely compatible with surveillance. And many of our favorite things to talk about, then, peer-to-peer production, or end-to-end intelligence, kind of missed the point that I think is now obvious. That whether you’re the NSA or Google or whoever else…you’re a general secretariat, seeking to privatize our power, and you are surveilling us, because you have a network in place.

Institutions in the Age of Algorithms, and Why We Still Need Them

presented by Lee Bryant

If you look at human history all the way through, we organize ourselves in different ways. Tribes, religions, guilds, states, more recently companies and networks. And what these institutions do is they sort of codify values and beliefs, and they they transport them across the generations. So we see this phenomenon that when you codify values in institutions, you give those values longevity.

The Conversation #37 — David Keith

presented by Aengus Anderson, David Keith, Micah Saul

There are biologists who’ve spent their careers working on some species of beetle in the tropical rainforest, and they just love the rainforest in their bones And they feel that when they go testify in Congress to some committee, that they can’t just say, “I love it in my bones and you guys will love it too, if you share it with me.” They have to say, “Oh, we’ve done all this math and computed that there’s an ecosystem service here.” And I think that that has really impoverished our debate about environmental issues.

What’s Cooking Designing?

presented by Paola Antonelli

I’m here today to talk to you about food and design. About what’s cooking in design, and what’s designing in food. But most of all I’m here to recommend to you never to let designers decide what you will eat.

Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin

presented by Vinay Gupta

I think the obvious thing to do with one computer per planet is fix climate change before it destroys agriculture and leaves billions of people to starve. That seems like a fairly reasonable kind of an objective. You know, there are all kinds of little optimizations you could do with these things, but fundamentally the big unsolved challenges that humanity faces are climate change and resource scarcity.

Chido Govera at MAD SYD / Tomorrow’s Meal

presented by Chido Govera

What comes to mind at the thought of tomorrow’s meal is that tomorrow’s meal has to be a key that unlocks the potential of everybody. Young children who are going without food in Africa. Young women who are suffering in different ways because of lack of food, because of lack of opportunity. Tomorrow’s meal has to be that key that unlocks that. Tomorrow’s meal has to be a driver of socioeconomic development. Tomorrow’s meal has to be a peacemaker that unifies us all.

The Next Social Contract Opening Keynote: Senator Elizabeth Warren

presented by Elizabeth Warren

Just as this country did a hundred years ago, it’s time to rethink the basic bargain between workers and companies. As greater wealth is generated by new technology, how can we ensure that the workers who support the economy can actually share in the wealth?

Improving the Next #EdTechContract Through Open Educational Resources

presented by David Wiley

When you think about the Internet is, the Internet is really a giant sharing machine. It’s a machine for making copies, for making derivative works, for making remixes and making mashups. For distributing those around the world instantaneously. And so there’s a very profound tension between what copyright enables legally, and what the Internet enables technically.

Equitable Internet Access Must Be Part of the Next #EdTechContract

presented by Vikki Katz

The people who experience broader and more pervasive forms of social inequality related to housing, education, language proficiency, occupational opportunity and so forth, are also the ones who are most likely to be under-connected to the Internet.