Creative Machines

Space isn’t the final frontier. It’s the latest focus for big capital, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX leading the way. Other companies are literally piggybacking the opportunity to use space for all kinds of things, from surveillance to microlab experiments. SpaceX also collaborated with NASA for a historic mission to send US astronauts back into space, mere days after the murder of George Floyd in the midst of the lockdowns. This has drawn parallels with the moon landing, which took place in an America reeling from Martin Luther King jr’s assasination. We discuss how innovation should always be talked about in the context of the society in which it was made.

Do we even choose to go online anymore, or is that just our status as beings? Will the internet become the ‘ether’ philosophers used to muse about, an imperceptible force that guides our lives? Our hosts discuss in a classic Creative Machines speculation session. discussing how the internet has become even more essential in the lockdowns and how our relationship with it is changing.

Creative Machines is recorded and produced by David Angell at his studio, Giant Sound Toronto.

Follow SpaceX to learn how to do space travel but make it fashion. We also mention Black Sky and Planet Labs in this episode. Have a look and see how you feel about satellite monitoring.

Follow us on twitter and instagram. We’re @machinespodcast, and machinespodcast.com

If you want to be on the show, know someone who should, or just want to get in touch, email us: [email protected]

We’ve always tried to take a positive look at technology on this show, but sometimes that’s just not possible. The last few weeks, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the protests that erupted around the world, has shone a light on some of the tech world’s murkier aspects.

It turns out facial recognition technologies were flawed from the start, filled with biases because of where the original data came from: white men. Thanks to coders such as Joy Buolamwini and Deborah Raji, those biases are finally being acknowledged by the tech world, with some leading companies suggesting they might drop their research for good.

But is it too late? US police forces have been dabbling with facial recognition for years already, filling up their databases with literal fiction. The Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology released a review of police facial recognition practices and what they found is not only ridiculous but reinforces the police targeting of People of Colour.

Trump has turned on his favoured mouthpiece, Twitter, after they flagged up a tweet that incited violence during Black Lives Matter protests, but can he actually do anything about it? Probably not… Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want to moderate Trump’s Facebook content. Facebook employees, however, feel differently. Speaking of moderating, how much thought do we give the human moderators that shield us all from some truly horrific content? Facebook recently acknowledged that these employees (contracted to Facebook via private companies) have suffered PTSD as a result of their work.

Check out the Algorithmic Justice League, founded by Buolamwini - a comprehensive resource for fighting technologically-embedded biases.

Read more about Facebook moderators in this harrowing article from The Verge, and read the moderators’ anonymous statement in full.

Read more reports from the Georgetown Law Centre on Privacy and Technology on the widespread use of facial recognition technologies in the US.

Creative Machines is recorded and produced by David Angell at his studio, Giant Sound Toronto.

Follow us on twitter and instagram. We’re @machinespodcast, and machinespodcast.com

If you want to be on the show, know someone who should, or just want to get in touch, email us: [email protected]

Hello everyone. We’ve spent the past week in silence, listening to other voices and watching evidence. We want to state that we stand against anti-Black racism and that we support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

As three white men, we’ve been confronting the shortcomings of our actions and processes, and are taking steps to learn how to be better supporters of the Black community. We believe there are actionable steps that we and others in the tech industry can take to be more active participants against anti-Black racism. We believe the onus is on us to better educate ourselves. This begins with reading and sharing more resources created by Black authors, artists, technologists and founders, and giving space to Black voices. On the other hand, if we believe the actions of a tech company are negatively impacting the Black community, we will raise those concerns on our platform. We are committed to keep learning and listening. 

We see that this is a hard process that needs consistent effort, because the problems Black communities face won’t disappear easily. The following clip of Octavia Butler speaking really drove this point home for us. It’s during an interview from the year 2000. Butler was a Black, female science fiction author who we’ve mentioned before on this podcast. She wrote powerful works about broken societies in the near-future, where technology is being used to coerce and control the impoverished civilians who live in forgotten, walled-in towns, and of powerful Black female lead characters fighting against the situation and searching for a hopeful future. During the interview, Butler is asked about her experience on race panels, to which she responds:

“They’re just tiresome… you say the same stuff over and over… you get tired of doing anything you’ve been doing for 20 years”.

Those words were spoken 20 years ago. Let’s all make sure we’re actually listening and learning when we say we are, so those words don’t echo for another 20 years.

Thank you for listening, take care of each other.

We’re still social distancing, keeping an eye on how our relationship with technology is changing throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sidewalk Toronto is not going to happen. Is it because Covid-19? Kind of. It’s also a long story of innovative thinking meets city bureaucracy. But how will we solve all the problems cities face? Will it mean the privatization of public space? Is that a price worth paying?

No, Covid-19 (almost certainly) wasn’t made in a lab. We’d know if it was.

Using apps to make someone go to the store and bring groceries to you. Is it the right thing to do or grossly bourgeois? And can Amazon just be better to its employees?

And finally, Toronto saves us all from the selfie-stick hell by bringing Spring to us: live stream cherry blossoms could be the quiet time we all need.

We are grateful for all the frontline staff who never had the option of staying at home. Let’s repay their hard work by keeping to the rules as the lockdowns are lifted.

This episode is produced by David Angell at his studio, Giant Sound Toronto.

Want to be on the show or know someone who should? Get in touch at [email protected]

Or find us on Instagram and Twitter where we never post cherry blossom-related selfies. We’re @machinespodcast.

We’re back discussing tech in the time of the Covid-19 Pandemic: space-based internet from headline-shy Elon Musk; ex-football player uses AI to predict Covid-19 outbreaks (alright, ‘soccer player’); the Instagram founders are back tracking Covid-19 spread and making better statisticians of us all; Travis Scott played a show to 12 million people. In a video game?

Pietro had no idea at first what he was seeing in the night sky recently. It was Starlink’s satellite train - the latest batch of what will be thousands of satellites, part of Elon Musk’s plan to ‘rebuild the internet in space’. While we know now more than ever why internet access has to be a human right, what will the sky look like when it’s full of satellites?

Footballers don’t usually found AI companies after retiring, but an ex-Real Madrid midfielder did. Now his company is pivoting to predict Covid-19 outbreaks in his native Spain. 

The Instagram founders are also tracking the spread of Covid-19 cases state-by-state in the U.S. And they’re doing a great job at something that’s pretty difficult: making data interesting to look at.

Travis Scott played a show to 12 million people. Well, it was a Travis Scott avatar. And it was in a video game. But still, in the wake of social distancing, is this an unexpected future for entertainment?

We’re grateful that we can carry on making podcasts during this pandemic. Creative Machines wishes to thank all the essential workers keeping society going. We hope you’re being taken care of and we appreciate you.

Creative Machines is produced by David Angell at Giant Sound Toronto.

We want guests! Email us at [email protected] if you want to be on or know someone who should.

Find us on Twitter and Instagram @machinespodcast.

Can we track Covid-19 community spread without giving up our privacy? Apple and google tell us we can - but they would, wouldn’t they? Aaron and Pietro discuss how the tech superpowers have teamed up to produce an app that promises anonymous contact tracing. And no, it doesn’t involve licking your phone.

Conspiracy theories are going mainstream while we all spend more time at home on the internet - like how 5G is the real reason behind the pandemic. It definitely isn’t. But is the next generation technology truly safe?

And finally, some tales of an old favourite topic on Creative Machines: open source. Sharing the specs of PPE face shield has enabled kids to dust off that 3D printer they used once and get making life-saving equipment.

Creative Machines is produced in Toronto by David Angell at his studio, Giant Sound Toronto.

If you’re in tech, get in touch and join our remote conversations. Email us [email protected].

Find us on instagram and Twitter. @machinespodcast

We’re back with Season 2 but not like we planned. Hosts Aaron Towlson and Pietro Gagliano have been recording remotely, following how the tech community is responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic. We discuss 3D printing, autonomous robots and speculate about how the future is being affected by Covid-19.

This pandemic has caused all of us to turn to technology more than ever before. Zoom parties. Hours of Frozen 2 on repeat. Trying to work from home without constantly scrolling through Instagram.. Life looks very different for many of us at the moment as we rightly focus on saving as many lives as possible.

Technology has been promising to change society for the better for a while now. Many companies are already stepping in to provide innovative solutions to this unprecedented problem. Looking ahead to the future, will this pandemic reshape our relationship with technology? What will society look like after the lockdowns are removed? Is it time for radical innovation as all our frailties are revealed to us as a society in the wake of this disease? Will the speed of innovation change? We’ll be keeping track of how the tech community is evolving throughout this crisis.

We feel very grateful that we’re able to record this podcast remotely. Thank you to all the essential workers who are having to leave their homes every day to keep society going.

Produced by David Angell at Giant Sound Toronto.

Email us at [email protected]

Or find us on twitter and instagram @machinespodcast

Matt Russo has managed to combine his two passions, astrophysics and music, into a career. A physics lecturer at the University of Toronto by trade, Matt has developed a system of turning planetary motions into music, System Sounds. We discuss Matt’s early struggle between the arty and scientist sides of his personality and how he combines them both in his teaching. We learn about the Trappist-1 system that changed Matt’s life: a series of seven Earth-like planets arranged in a system that seems so perfect it might just be an alien experiment (and they sound like a radiohead song in Matt’s system). Since we have an astrophysicist in, we also nerd out over one of the defining scientific moments of this decade: the first image of a black hole that was published earlier this year, and the stories behind that historic moment. Plus, we take another look at yet another wild idea Elon Musk is brewing: Starlink. And Pietro asks Matt other big questions. Like what his favourite planet is.

This episode was recorded and produced by David Angell at Giant Sound Toronto.

From Sidewalk Labs building the City of the Future to Microsoft valiantly Defending Democracy, big tech is doing its best to impact society for the better..? We hope.

Katie Davis is a web developer at Shopify, one of Canada’s startup-to-success stories. What’s it like working for a company that changed the web? Pretty great, it turns out.

Katie talks us through her experiences of coding, how she got it into, what she gets out of it, and how it’s really more a creative tool than Hollywood images of coders might suggest. It’s also a changing industry that’s becoming more diverse and accessible year on year, but still has some work to do.

Web development and programming are now considered highly employable skills, leading to good salaries and a flexible, well supported work life. However, these highly skilled jobs are developing tools that affect worklife for millions of people globally. Automation, the gig economy… How are other industries and, more importantly, people, being affected by an increasingly technological society?

Creative Machines is recorded and produced by David Angell at Giant Sound Toronto.

Follow us on twitter and instagram (@machinespodcast).

Do you want to be a guest or know someone who should be? Email us at [email protected]

Sometimes our guests talk about technology that’s so wild, we just have to take another off-topic look at it.

This time, we discuss Amazon's smart shelves, but also what happens when the law has access to smart image-capturing devices; we discuss Sophia the Robot and the time she went on a date with Will Smith; finally, we discuss Martine Rothblatt and her genuine attempts to overcome death by digitizing consciousness.

Creative Machines Tangents is recorded and produced by David Angell at Giant Sound Toronto.

Follow us on twitter and instagram (@machinespodcast)