In this episode Barry and Mike discuss “If Anyone Builds it, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All” by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares. They discuss the main arguments about the inevitability of our demise at the hands of superhuman intelligence and present a few alternatives to this doomsday scenario.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Rachel Bitecofer’s substack article, “The Whole World is Getting Dumber (And the Smartphone Did It.)” We question whether her solution of banning smart phones from the classroom will make much of a difference or if we just have to go “scorched earth” on technology to regain our attention and focus.

In this episode we discuss Alberto Romero’s Substack article on AI video.  While Romero argues that perhaps we should seek legal remedies to the problems of deepfake video, Barry and Mike consider an alternative.  They discuss the issues that deepfake video brings to the fore and wonder whether the problems caused by deepfake technologies can be resolved by law or if these technologies should be engaged pharmacologically.

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss “The Most Important Skill in the 21st Century,” Alberto Romero’s polemical defense of boredom in the media entertainment age. They discuss whether it’s possible to be bored today in the way that Romero seems to require.

This is part two of our discussion of Bernard Steigler's "Elements of Pharmacology". This time, Barry and Michael focus on Stiegler's discussion of the unique challenges posed by new digital 'pharmaka.' 

This week on Critical Media Studies, Barry and Michael discuss Bernard Stiegler's "Elements of Pharmacology," a transcription of an interview with the French philosopher from June 2020, just two months prior to Stiegler's passing.  This episode focuses on Stiegler's exposition of his key term "the pharmakon" and the defining role it plays in his media theory.  

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss “The Eye of God”, chapter 2 of Juan Fontcuberta’s book, Pandora’s Camera. They reflect upon the impacts that the shift from analogue to digital photography and consider whether the digital image “kills us just as much as it gives us life

In this episode Barry and Mike discuss Juan Fontcuberta’s “Pandora’s Camera” (2014).  They discuss his take on Barthes and Kracauer’s theories about the relations between photography, philosophy, modernity, and existence.

In the “Ontology of the Photographic Image,” Andre Bazin makes the provocative claim that the invention of photography is "clearly the most important event in the history of the plastic arts." At the same time, Bazin questions our naïve faith that the photographic image is just as real as the object that it depicts. He goes on to provide an alternative history of painting and photography, highlighting the ways we value mechanical agency over human creativity. In this episode, Barry and Mike discuss Bazin's essay and also consider how the digitization of images has further altered "the history of the plastic arts." We hope you enjoy it!

This is the second of two discussions of Martin Heideger’s essay “The Thing.”  Please see episode #100 for the first installment, which set the table (jug joke) for this discussion.  In this episode Barry and Mike focus on Heidegger’s notion of “nearness” and the “thingliness” of the jug/thing.