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Device & Virtue
Device & Virtue episodes
- S7E1 - Hits & Flashbacks. Episode 50!CELEBRATING 50 EPISODES
50 technologies. 50 arguments. 50 episodes. After 6 seasons, we’re celebrating with clips from our greatest hits. Get ready for flashbacks.
We dug into the archives, and dusted off a handful of clips that have stuck with us, going all the way back to Season 1! We add some updated thinking and reflect on why these episodes were chart-toppers for us. Plus, sample some episodes that might be new to you.
As fast as tech changes, these episodes are still worth your ears. With insights that are still relevant today.
CLIPS FROM THIS EPISODELooking for an episodes we talked about? The details are here!
- S1E4 - Digital Romance: Getting Serious with Aziz Ansari
- S2E3 - Evangelism Chatbots
- S3E6 - Counting Down the New Year? That’s Techy.
- S3E7 - Tech-Savvy Family: Smart Screen Time and Parenting Digital Natives
- S4E8 - Force for Good?
- S5E6 - mRNA Vaccines: 2020’s Technology of the Year
TALK BACKFollow Device & Virtue on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
Support Device & Virtue. Learn how.
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57 min - Announcement! Season 7 Preview + Patreon Launch
New! We are launching www.patreon.com/deviceandvirtue and have a goal to have 50 listeners become brand-new members of our DV crew! We need you! (And join by May 2 for a special bonus!)
Special message from Adam + Chris:
"Hey there! We love our listeners! You're smart. You notice the tech around you. And you know that our mission has always been to "argue" about the wrongs and rights of technology and faith in everyday life. We’ve heard from so many of you who know that this conversation is incredibly essential for our culture. Especially now. And there aren't a lot of places doing it like this.
I'm sure you know it—but we work many hours each week for you and our listening community—trying to pull together a conversation on a current tech + culture topic that keeps you informed, thoughtful, and prayerful. We wish we could make this into our fulltime job, but it isn't! Mostly we use our nights and weekends to pull off these our podcast, and we hope you are loving it.
We’ve met Christian leaders, pastors, Christians in tech, and people of faith everywhere who have told us that our discussions have helped think better about how to live. Discernment is the key—and it can’t be done without effort. Or without you!
Your Patreon financial support for the Device & Virtue mission will be a huge encouragement! Yes, we're about to do our 50th episode—And so we're looking for 50 ground-floor members who will launch into episode 51 and well beyond!
BONUS: Join by May 2nd and get an exclusive bonus: Chris + Adam’s curated lists of best reads on the topic of tech + faith. We narrow down the many sources to the essential ones worth your time and our private notes on each title.
And Patreon supporters get other ongoing perks—check out www.patreon.com/deviceandvirtue to see all the options.
Also: stay tuned for our “50th Episode!” retrospective episode, coming soon.
TALK BACKFollow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
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7 min - S6E8 - Creating Alexa: Interview with Inventor Jeff Adams
Does he use Alexa in his own house? We've got a interview with the founder of Alexa, Jeff Adams.
MORE QUESTIONS INCLUDE- What’s the story of how Alexa came about?
- How does your faith affect your work in technology?
- What are the next big things coming with voice technology?
PLUS, CHRIS & ADAM DISCUSS:- Are we good at predicting the next big technology? (seems like… no)
- How the first automobile relates to the Alexa project
- Should Alexa be emotionally intelligent?
ABOUT JEFF ADAMSJeff Adams has been a speech technologist for 25 years, spending time at Nuance, Yap, and Amazon. At Amazon, Jeff founded the Alexa Speech Group and led the team of speech and language scientists that built the automatic speech recognition and natural language understanding engines that Alexa runs on. Today he is the CEO and Founder of Colbalt Speech.
Links & Resources- Check out Jeff Adam’s podcast: The Voice Box
- More about the Alexander Winton and the founding of the automobile (Saturday Evening Post, 1911).
TALK BACKFollow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
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Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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1 hr 1 min - S6E7 - For-Profit Prayer Apps: Good For The Soul?SHOULD WE PUT OUR MONEY WHERE OUR PRAYER IS?
How do you pray? In the morning? With friends from church? How about with your smartphone? Millions of people already are, and paying a subscription to do so. And Big Tech thinks you will too. Are Prayer Apps good for the soul? Adam and Chris dive into the spiritual, and financial, realities of Prayer Apps and this new pay-to-pray world.
We do everything else on our phones. Why not praying too? But how might these apps change the ways people connect with God? And should we have to pay for it?
Prayer Apps made headlines in 2021, winning the attention of Silicon Valley investors to the tune of more than $175 million dollars. If Silicon Valley believes people's prayer lives could become big business, maybe Christians should be asking a couple questions too.
LINKSForbes reported that venture capital funding for religious, primarily Christian, “apps have increased from $6.1 million in 2016 to $48.5 million in 2020 and $175.3 million in 2021.”TechCrunch talked to Hallow’s founder, Alex Jones, about their $40 million investment from Peter Thiel and Drive Capital.Religion News Service reported on Glorify’s 40 million from the venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz, and a host of celebrity supporters. More here from TechCrunch.TALK BACKFollow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
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Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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59 min - S6E6 - Restless Devices: Interview with Felicia Wu Song
LIVING WITH AN IMMANENT SENSE OF THE DIGITAL
Felicia Wu Song is a Christian sociologist who says digital natives aren't as native as we think. Is there any hope for the rest of us? She says, yes.
Chris interviews Dr Felicia Wu Song about her new book Restless Devices. She explains her belief that our digital routines and habits are themselves forms of discipleship. She says they not only form our habits, but also shape our identity, community, and relationships.
And as a sociologist, Dr Song also draws attention to Big Tech's platforms and design decisions, the structures and systems they create, and the defaults those designs introduce to digitally mediated relationships.
Afterwards, Adam and Chris explore more what those routine and habits look like for them, and the struggles that come with the "immanent sense of the digital," as Dr Song puts it in her book. They imagine together what new habits and designs could help them better relate digitally to the most important people in their lives.
LINKS & RESOURCES
Dr Felicia Wu Song is Professor of Sociology at Westmont College in California, and author of the book Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence and Place in the Digital Age, published by Intervarsity Press.- Dr Song mentions James K A Smith's work on counter-liturgies, which factor heavily into his books Desiring the Kingdom and You Are What You Love.
- Chris mentions Marshall McLuhan's book The Medium is the Massage, an avant-garde 60s/70s book that uses graphic design to explore the ideas of his seminal work, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
TALK BACK
Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
55 min - S6E5 - The Rise and Fall of the Expert
WHOSE EXPERTS? WHICH INFORMATION?
Doctors and scientists have fallen on hard times. Experts are facing a crisis of trust, and we think technology is a major factor. We explore why on this episode of Device & Virtue.
Chris proposes how elders, priests, and magicians gave way to the modern expert, how digital media has led to the expert’s decline, and who is rising up in their wake.
Meanwhile, Adam says that information overload is something the Bible addresses in surprising ways. Navigating the new information economy starts with some age-old wisdom.
LINKS & RESOURCES
- Adam recounts a theory about places like Stonehenge and Easter Island being “memory spaces.” Learn more in Lynne Kelly’s book, The Memory Code.
- Adam and Chris talked about Google’s nGram search engine for finding the rise of the term expert
- But they didn’t know what n-gram meant! Here’s the answer
TALK BACK
Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
48 min - S6E4—How NFTs Could Change the (Real) World
Sometimes a new technology comes along that you’ve barely heard of but could change everything. Like how we OWN things. Adam & Chris are putting the fun in Non-Fungible Tokens—the relatively new digital tech also known as “NFTs”
OWN THE NFT FOR THIS DEVICE & VIRTUE EPISODE
Are we kidding? No! You can buy the NFT for this very episode! CHECK IT OUT HERE
CHRIS & ADAM ARGUE ABOUT NFTS
They use the same underlying technology as Bitcoin, but NFTs aren’t money—they are being used more like a digital deed—an ownership certificate that allows people to buy digital goods.
Some of the questions Adam & Chris argue about this episode:
- There are already people paying millions of $ for some digital cat images online. It seems crazy. Are NFT’s a fad?
- Digital things can be copied with just a right-click! Why does anyone care about owning an “original?” What is an original anyway?
- If NFTs stick around, what are the effects on the world?
- What is a Christian ethic of ownership?
LINKS & RESOURCES
OpenSea —Chris called this the current “Amazon of NFTs”- American rock band the Kings of Leon sold an album as an NFT
- Artist Beeple sold digital art collection for a record $70 million
“No, NFTs Aren’t Copyrights” by Harrison Jordan via TechCrunch“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”—1935 essay by Walter Benjamin that Adam brings up talking about how technology has affected our view of “originals”Manifold—NFT digital agency doing complex “digital contracts” with NFTsTALK BACK
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Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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54 min - S6E3 - The Metaverse
Well. Facebook has announced that their new name is Meta. As in “metaverse.” As in a science fiction nerd-term becoming reality. As in—is this our future??
Chris & Adam laugh and raise eyebrows as they watch Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of what he thinks future life will be like for relationships, work, and play. What does a virtual reality life offer that life today doesn't? Is this bad? Good?
And what does a Christian think about an alternate reality? A virtual reality that is becoming less “virtual” every day?
WATCH THE FACEBOOK/META KEYNOTE VIDEO
LINKS
- “Founder’s Letter 2021 “ from Mark Zuckerberg
- LM Sacasas: Notes from the Metaverse (The Convival Society Vol 2, No 16)
- Matthew Ball: The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find It, and Who Will Build It
Snow Crash, the scifi book where the metaverse term originally came fromTALK BACK
- Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
- Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
- Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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57 min - S6E2 - Interview: "Wise Phone" Creator, Chris Kaspar
Meet a new smartphone that can’t install apps, doesn’t have Facebook, and that’s why people want it. Does it make life better?
Adam interviews Chris Kaspar, founder of Techless and maker of the Wisephone, aiming to change how people relate to their most personal device. They talk about digital addiction, parenting, smartphone self-control, and more.
Then, in the post-interview discussion, Chris and Adam discuss whether they would get a Wisephone. They even get around to suggesting some ways the Techless might make the Wisephone better.
Links
- Learn more about Techless, the Wisephone, and Chris Kaspar on Techless’s website.
- See our Season 3 episode on screen time: “Tech Savvy Family: Smart Screen Time And Parenting Digital Natives.” Chris and Adam each interview their sisters to find out how they manage devices for their kids.
Talk Back
- Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
- Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
- Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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55 min - S6E1—Is My Smartphone Listening to Me?
Is my smartphone listening to me? Too many creepy stories are out there about suspiciously perfect ads appearing after just a conversation with a friend!
So Adam starts getting a little paranoid and tries an experiment with some friends. Then he brings It to Chris to prove that our phone’s microphones have to be spying on us.
Welcome to the world of digital marketing which is still right in front of us but many people don’t entirely understand.
MARKETING TECH FROM EASY TO CREEPY MAGIC
LINKS & RESOURCES
What the big companies say
- Google’s policies for app developers
Lots of articles linked back to this one article… which Chris said was more sensational than getting to the bottom of anything.
- Vice: Your Phone Is Listening and it's Not Paranoia: Here's how I got to bottom of the ads-coinciding-with-conversations mystery
Patents that Adam mentions
- Facebook secures patent to track users' TV viewing with microphones, cameras, GPS
Studies we mention by universities or independent firms:
- Gizmodo: These Academics Spent the Last Year Testing Whether Your Phone Is Secretly Listening to You
- BBC: Why phones that secretly listen to us are a myth
What is the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?
TED Talk from professor Zeynep Tufekci: We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads
TALK BACK
Follow Device & Virtue on Instagram and Twitter.
Follow Chris and Adam on Twitter.
Support Device & Virtue on Patreon.
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57 min
About Device & Virtue
From the publisher's feed
Chris & Adam argue the wrongs and rights of technology and faith in everyday life—from A.I. to Facebook to DNA tests—and how a Christian might live in the middle.