Digital Planet

Digital Planet episodes:

• 05.05.2023

  Tech Life

  How is technology changing our lives? Search for Tech Life wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe or follow if you can.

  
• 04.18.2023

  Tech Life: Is AI racing ahead too fast?

  As Google's boss, Sunder Pichai, says he doesn't fully understand its AI products, tech investor Ian Hogarth tells us it's time for a public debate on the technology's future. Reporter Michael Kaloki joins us from Nairobi to explain how the...

  
• 04.11.2023

  Tech Life: Kidfluencers, do we share too much about kids online?

  Tech Life looks into the world of Kidfluencers, and asks if too much of children's lives are shared online to make money - we speak to those involved in the industry in India. We also hear how cyber is playing...

  
• 04.06.2023

  Tech Life: How to make sure the whole world benefits from AI

  Martha Lane Fox reflects on her thirty years in tech, including her front row seat in Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, how she remains one of very few high profile women in the industry, and why we need to make...

  
• 03.28.2023

  Digital Planet says goodbye

  On Digital Planet’s final ever show we discuss the legacy of Gordon Moore, the father of transistors and creator of Moore’s law. Special guests this week are Angelica Mari and Ghislaine Boddington. The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with...

  
• 03.21.2023

  3D printed food – what’s cooking?

  Could 3D-printing be serving us up a tasty food revolution, or is it the ultimate in gimmicky processed foods taking us yet further away from natural eating? In the kitchen, a 3D-printer builds up customised tasty treats like exotic cheesecakes,...

  
• 03.14.2023

  Jimmy Wales on bots and blockages

  Digital Planet caught up with Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. In the first of two interviews with Gareth, Jimmy explains why Wikipedia was restricted in Pakistan recently and how they overcame the block. And he gives his thoughts on Twitter’s plans...

  
• 03.07.2023

  Digital identity: Where are we now?

  It may seem that in some countries surveillance cameras are everywhere – recording almost our every move. We are using fingerprints and facial recognition to get access to our banking, work emails and even our healthcare systems. Alongside this rise...

  
• 02.28.2023

  Ukraine’s drone spotting app

  As Ukraine enters the second year of the full-scale Russian invasion, we hear about an app through which citizens can help alert defence authorities of air attacks. To help prevent future attacks, the country’s Air Defence Forces want people to...

  
• 02.21.2023

  Data in disaster zones

  After the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Northern Syria, how do you collate data to aid those coordinating the disaster response? Cecilia Utas from DEEP (Data Entry and Exploration Platform) explains how important data is in disaster relief and crisis...

  
• 02.14.2023

  Internet shutdowns around the world

  Within hours of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake across Turkey and northern Syria, the internet in Turkey was partially shutdown. And it wasn’t just because of damage to network infrastructure from the quake itself, but Twitter was blocked, as the authorities...

  
• 02.07.2023

  What’s the future of bots on Twitter?

  What is happening with API’s, more commonly known as bots, on Twitter? The platform is set to eliminate free access to its APIs this Thursday, although there appears to have been some backtracking following announcements that bots providing “good...

  
• 01.31.2023

  A smart glove to save babies

  One of the main causes of maternal mortality during childbirth is that the baby cannot be delivered vaginally, most likely because it is not positioned correctly in the womb. Without a plethora of medical equipment and training to check the...

  
• 01.24.2023

  What happens when the Bitcoin miners leave?

  In the summer of 2021 Kazakhstan was the second biggest producer of Bitcoin in the world, but what has happened since the crypto currency crash? Tech reporter Peter Guest is on the show to tell us about his trip...

  
• 01.17.2023

  Self-driving cars could be a massive source of global carbon emissions

  MIT researchers have concluded in a new study that computers that power self-driving cars could generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as the total of the world’s data centres do today. We’ve reported many times on the huge carbon...

  
• 01.10.2023

  Getting online in Ukraine’s blackouts

  One of our listeners in Ukraine contacted us to tell us how he stays online during power outages following bombing in Ukraine. Volodymyr Bielikov is on the show to explain the issues he’s regularly facing with internet connectivity. AI...

  
• 01.03.2023

  Agritech Special Edition

  This week and to start the New Year we take a look at the use of technology in agriculture around the world. Agriculture as an industry is keen to clean up its act on emissions, so what could be better...

  
• 12.27.2022

  The Tech of 2022

  We’re looking back on the technology year that was 2022. We go firstly to Ukraine to look at the booming tech industry before the war and discuss how that is doing now. Also how the cybersecurity declaration signed...

  
• 12.20.2022

  Eight million SIMs blocked in Ghana

  More than 8 million unregistered SIM cards have been blocked in Ghana. The Ministry of Communications and Digitisation set a final deadline for mobile phone users to link their SIM card to their identification cards and now those who have...

  
• 12.13.2022

  Shopee in Thailand – is it safe?

  One of the biggest platforms in South East Asia, which is as popular as Google, YouTube and Facebook, has stopped bank transfer payments. Users have reported money missing from their accounts – the transactions should have been secured with a...

  
• 12.06.2022

  Predicting cyclones with mobiles

  Due to climate change cyclones are increasing in frequency and intensity. Data available to study these weather phenomena though is quite scare, so a new project at Imperial College in London, hopes to harness the computing power of people’s...

  
• 12.01.2022

  Robots that can assemble almost anything.

  Researchers at MIT have made significant steps toward creating robots that could practically and economically assemble nearly anything, including things much larger than themselves, from vehicles to buildings to larger robots. Many objects could be built from tiny identical...

  
• 11.22.2022

  Twitter – what next?

  What is happening with Twitter and what can we expect? Bill Thompson give us his assessment while Angelica Mari discusses the how the new direction of the platform Pix payments two years on PIX payments have revolutionised how people...

  
• 11.15.2022

  The Open Internet for Africa

  We hear about a new plan to drive economies and improve lives across Africa – the Open Internet project between the continent and the EU. A report “The Open Internet as Cornerstone of Digitalisation” is funded by the EU...

  
• 11.08.2022

  Controlling protesters in Iran via phones

  A new report shows how the authorities in Iran can track and control protestors phones. An investigation by The Intercept news organisation has found that mobile phone coverage is being switched from a healthy 5G or 4G network to...

  
• 11.01.2022

  The Twitter takeover

  Elon Musk completed on a 44-billion-dollar takeover of Twitter last week. He’s expressed the want to restructure the platform and create a digital ‘town square’, a potential space for free speech, growth and learning. But defining freedom of speech is...

  
• 10.25.2022

  Chip exports and US-China relations

  The Biden administration announced a monumental policy shift earlier this month, set to limit and control the exportation of artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies to China. The restrictions will block leading U.S. chip designers from accessing the Chinese market; selling...

  
• 10.18.2022

  5bn mobile phones to become waste in 2022

  The WEEE forum estimates that of the 16 billion mobile phones in the world about 5.3bn will no longer be in use this year. Despite being packed with precious metals like gold, silver and palladium and other recyclable parts...

  
• 10.11.2022

  Internet under attack in Ukraine

  Ukraine has faced internet outages since missile attacks restarted on Monday -a drop of more than 20% was recorded yesterday by The Internet Observatory Netblocks. This loss of connectivity is not thought to be due to cyber attacks but...

  
• 10.04.2022

  Pandemic pushes women online

  In 2020 more than 40% of the world’s population was not using the internet, with many more women being unable to get online. Now a new global study into digital access in 90 countries shows that although women were disproportionately...

  
• 09.27.2022

  Tiny robots cure mice with deadly pneumonia

  Microrobots have been created and used to treat the most common form of pneumonia that infects patients in ICU. In experiments, currently carried out in mice at the University of California San Diego, the tiny robots swam around the lungs...

  
• 09.20.2022

  Gamification – does making things fun work?

  Do you track your physical activity on your phone, count your daily steps, or how many calories you’ve burnt? Perhaps you are learning a new language using an app or have performance-related leaderboards at work? All these things...

  
• 09.13.2022

  Community Networks: Connecting the unconnected

  The Digital Divide in Tribal Communities Across the North American continent, there is a stark difference in the availability of the internet to different communities. Tribal lands are typically remote, rural, and rugged landscapes, and often have very patchy, or non-existent...

  
• 09.06.2022

  Happy birthday Digital Planet!

  In this special 21st birthday show we’re bringing our Digital Planet community together for the first time since 2019. The team has been asking World Service listeners about their favourite bit of tech – we hear from around the...

  
• 08.30.2022

  Inoculation videos against misinformation

  Inoculation against misinformation Could people be inoculated and protected against misinformation online? A new study published in Science Advances shows that short animated videos could protect people from harmful content. Controlled experiments where people were shown how misinformation is...

  
• 08.23.2022

  India’s cyber scam scourge

  Nearly a third of people in India lost money through online fraud in 2020 alone. Of them, it is thought that only 17% saw any returns through redressal mechanisms. Despite this prevalence of scams, reports have shown that the Indian...

  
• 08.16.2022

  Misinformation on the midterms on social media

  With the US midterm elections only a few months away Twitter has announced how it plans to “enable healthy civic conversation” on its platform i.e. how they plan to control political disinformation. Journalist Emma Woollacott who has written about the...

  
• 08.09.2022

  How Nancy Pelosi’s flight was tracked

  Were you one of the 2.92million people who was watching Nancy Pelosi fly into Taiwan on FlightRadar24 bypassing Chinese bases in the South China Sea as it approached Taipei? It’s one of the most popular flight tracking sites in...

  
• 08.02.2022

  Is disability tech delivering?

  Why does tech not understand my speech? Physicist Dr Claire Malone is facing a problem: no speech-to-text software understands her. She is living with cerebral palsy, a condition that affects her movement and muscle coordination, including her speech. Claire shares how...

  
• 07.26.2022

  Grassroots data – holding the powerful to account

  Open source investigators We live in an age where there is data on almost everything, and a large chunk of it is publicly available. You only need to know where to look. There are many investigators on the internet that are...

  
• 07.19.2022

  Self-driving cars on the horizon?

  A recent amendment to a regulation by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) will extend automated driving technology to 130 km/h. The regulation, which will come into effect in January 2023, will set the standard for car manufacturers...

  
• 07.12.2022

  Are internet shutdowns evolving?

  Internet shutdowns have been a global issue for many years, and Digital Planet has reported on many of them, from Cuba and Myanmar to Iran. A new United Nations Human Rights Office (OHCHR) report now warns of the dramatic real-life...

  
• 07.05.2022

  Deepfake calls to European mayors?

  On June 24th, the mayor of Berlin thought she was on a video call with the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko. The call, however, was fake. The head of the Deutsche Welle’s fact-checking team Joscha Weber tells Gareth what happened,...

  
• 06.28.2022

  What’s the deal with the metaverse?

  So what is the metaverse really? Following a montage of BBC World Service listeners’ responses and opinions, contributing expert Ghislaine Boddington will shed light on this question. As it turns out, while there are current examples of virtual worlds, the...

  
• 06.21.2022

  Japan tackles online insults

  Increased punishment for online insults in Japan Japan has taken the first steps to make online insults punishable by up to one year in prison. This new legislation comes two years after the suicide of Japanese reality TV star and professional...

  
• 06.14.2022

  Archiving music in glass

  ‘Project Silica’ uses ultrafast laser optics and machine learning to utilise glass as a storage device. The fused silica glass is fully resilient to electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and to the most challenging environmental conditions, ensuring the data written into it...

  
• 06.07.2022

  Community Networks: Connecting the unconnected

  Across the North American continent, there is a stark difference in the availability of internet to different communities. Tribal lands are typically remote, rural and rugged landscapes, and often have very patchy, or non-existent internet connectivity. Dr Traci Morris explains...

  
• 05.31.2022

  Data-driven football

  Data-Driven football With the end of this year’s Premier League season and the Champion’s League final in the last two weekends, viewers around the world were cheering on their favourite teams. While the rules of football may not have changed much...

  
• 05.24.2022

  Detecting earthquakes with seafloor internet cables

  Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory have released research that utilises existing subsea telecommunications cables as environmental sensors, for example to detect earthquakes. These cables exist in many parts of the world already, so this finding has the potential to...

  
• 05.18.2022

  Reclaiming African art in digital form

  A Nigerian project called Looty is seeking to take back African art in digital form. Members go into museums, take LiDAR scans using their phones, and recreate these African artworks as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The first piece is one of...