Looks Like New

Many of us assume everyone has access to the Internet. In light of the last few years of global pandemic, however, we observed headlines about the unconnected and the issues that were created in social, work, and educational daily experiences.

Why are some Americans, especially in the rural Midwest flyover states, left without access or with incredibly slow Internet speed?

To answer these questions and explore policy failures, we speak with Dr. Christopher Ali, a Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications at Penn State University. Dr. Ali’s research and advocacy work focus on exploring the lived experiences and the implications of broadband policy.

Being an entrepreneur in the international cryptocurrency market involves numerous challenges—from government regulations to cultural context. These challenges play out very differently around the world. The conversation revolves around cryptocurrency in India, web3 entrepreneurship, and cryptocurrency technology-based arcades for gamers. Nikita Menon speaks with Siddharth Menon, a founder of various startups including Tegro, WazirX, and Crowdfire. He shares his experiences as a serial entrepreneur and highlights how blockchain can shape the future of diverse industries around the world, from art to gaming.

Blockchain was created to build democratic systems but more often than not we see stories of scams, frauds and attacks. Despite these allegations, there are a few builders who continue to work towards improving this technology; builders who wish to see a democratic internet being enabled by the blockchain.

Hari Anantharaman speaks with Austin Griffith to understand what it means to be a builder in web3. Based in Colorado, Austin is a member of the Ethereum foundation and an educator aiming to teach more people Web3 development. In this month’s feature, Austin talks about his curriculum SpeedRunEthereum and further discusses how the blockchain helps build a fair internet.

ChatGPT, short for “Conversational Generative Pre-training Transformer,” is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI that can understand and generate natural language with a high degree of accuracy. It has been a hot topic lately, for contexts in education and industry. This technology is capable of tasks such as language translation, question answering, and text generation – all while generating human-like responses.

This month’s show features Kai Larsen, a researcher and professor at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. Kai is an expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence and we discuss how ChatGPT might revolutionize the future.

Hosted by Brayden Mahdavi.

Cryptocurrency has been in the news this past month after a cascade of bankruptcies unraveled a web of fraud. This comes after a year of already declining markets recast the 2021 crypto boom in a dark light. However, the headlines usually stick to flashy financial projects with big bottom lines.James Brennan speaks with Marisa Rando from PactDAO to learn how mutual aid can be served by blockchain – without ever adding a price tag to anything. Based in New York City, Pact uses decentralized tech to help coordinate community action. Marisa walks listeners through how Pact is navigating this unique middle ground of decentralized tech and local organizing.

With the journalism industry dwindling across the country, journalists formed the Colorado Sun as a beacon of hope.

The Colorado Sun is a small but mighty digital news source for the state of Colorado. It is a Public Benefit Corporation making it first and foremost dedicated to serving the Colorado public, and setting it apart from traditional news sources. We talked to Eric Lubbers, in charge of Technology and Strategy for the Sun, to better understand how it operates.

Do social media networks have to be addictive, or polarizing, or advertising-funded?

This conversation explores lessons from the past that could help us make social media better today. Our guest is University of Virginia media studies professor Kevin Driscoll, author most recently of “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.” He brings us stories of an almost-lost era before the Internet became widespread, whose traces are still very much with us.