Marketplace Tech

By Marketplace

Technology

What's Marketplace Tech about?

Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood helps listeners understand the business behind the technology that's rewiring our lives. From how tech is changing the nature of work to the unknowns of venture capital to the economics of outer space, this weekday show breaks ideas, telling the stories of modern life through our digital economy. Marketplace Tech is part of the Marketplace portfolio of public radio programs broadcasting nationwide, which additionally includes Marketplace, Marketplace Morning Report and Marketplace Weekend. Listen every weekday on-air or online anytime at marketplace.org. From American Public Media. Twitter: @MarketplaceTech

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Teachers are using Legos to...

10.22.2019

In recent years, Lego has made a big push in education. It makes robotics kits, and kids can learn to code Lego robots on the company’s website. The company is working directly with schools by offering curriculum, teacher training and ...

Marketplace Tech episodes:

10.22.2019 Teachers are using Legos to get kids into STEM In recent years, Lego has made a big push in education. It makes robotics kits, and kids can learn to code Lego robots on the company’s website. The company is working directly with schools by offering curriculum, teacher training and ...
10.21.2019 Waze wants to make carpooling a thing After a decade of trying to improve traffic, the real-time mapping app Waze has spent the last year trying to get its users to carpool. The app hooks riders up with drivers who are commuting in the same direction, and ...
10.18.2019 Free speech on the internet is: A) complicated B) complicated C) complicated D) all of the above It has been quite the week for speech online. Twitter introduced new guidelines on how to deal with world leaders on its platform after Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris called on the platform to ban President Donald Trump. On this ...
10.17.2019 Tesla’s new parked-car trick: Press a button on your phone, the car comes to you. Or close. Maybe. Tesla’s latest over-the-air software update for its cars is perfect fodder for online viral videos. It added a feature the company calls “smart summon.” Owners use an app on their phone to summon their cars from about 200 feet away, ...
10.16.2019 The U.S. is still exporting sensitive tech to China despite a White House clampdown U.S. companies export tens of billions of dollars in sensitive technology every year — AI computer chips, drones or encryption software. They have to apply for licences to do it, and those approvals have dropped in recent years, while rejections ...
10.15.2019 Some ways to keep the power on in California’s fire season PG&E; cut power to more than 700,000 people and businesses last week in Northern California cities as a way to prevent fires from sparking in dry, windy weather. But is a chaotic blackout the best solution? Marketplace’s Ben Bradford tells ...
10.14.2019 Can an app make the call on baseball umpires? With the World Series just around the corner, we’re hearing a lot about players’ stats. But another issue is when an umpire gets a call wrong. Major League Baseball is trying to make those instances less frequent. Over the summer, ...
10.11.2019 Do fake images need to look convincing to be convincing? Christye Sisson, a professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, is working with the Department of Defense to help build a sophisticated tool that can identify fake images. She and her students act like the bad guys — doing painstaking work ...
10.10.2019 Amazon wants the public to know its warehouses are fun enough for the Girl Scouts Amazon warehouses are key to the company’s operations. Items arrive, get sorted and are packaged and shipped off. But they don’t have a reputation for being great places to work. For example, last year, there were those reports about employees ...
10.09.2019 Does encryption help with privacy, or does it violate public safety? Law enforcement officials in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, including U.S. Attorney General William Barr, wrote an open letter to Facebook last week asking it to hold off on plans to expand end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger. ...
10.08.2019 The best way to counter hate speech online might be to have a bot call it out Researchers at Intel and University of California, Santa Barbara, are proposing a new idea to use AI to identify hate speech and then create an automated response to those messages, like pointing out that the words used could be offensive ...
10.07.2019 YouTube isn’t fun for parents trying to shield their kids from scary stuff There is a lot of appropriate content on YouTube for kids, and there’s a whole lot that is not appropriate for anyone. But kids are wily, and they will find ways to watch. Jed Kim spoke with Common Sense Media ...
10.04.2019 When tech unicorns stumble, prices go up for everyone This might be the week that the tech valuation bubble finally popped. WeWork, valued at $47 billion, pulled its IPO, partly over corporate governance concerns, but also because it just isn’t making money. So why did people think these venture-backed ...
10.03.2019 Did Amazon just kick electric vehicle production into a higher gear? Electric vehicle maker Rivian hasn’t produced a commercial vehicle yet. Now it’s tasked with making 100,000 delivery trucks for Amazon. What could this mean for the electric vehicle market overall?
10.02.2019 Gun owners want smart guns on the market but don’t want to buy them For decades, gun manufacturers have tried to figure out how to create a smart gun — one that could only be fired by the gun’s owner and could be activated by a fingerprint or a radio signal sent from the ...
10.01.2019 Buying property is emotional. Tech can help people understand their home’s climate risk. Lots of homes are dealing with an increased risk of flooding due to climate change, and lots of homeowners are still relying on the federal government’s FEMA maps, which were intended to be used by the insurance industry, not consumers. ...
09.30.2019 Building a better algorithm to predict flood risk in the age of climate change Residents of Charleston, South Carolina, hunkered down earlier this month as Hurricane Dorian struck the East Coast. They came out largely unscathed. But it was just the latest flooding threat in this low-lying coastal city. It’s the kind of place ...
09.27.2019 The WeWork IPO really didn’t work. Yet. Who is that affecting? For WeWork it’s been a couple of weeks for the co-working unicorn — its valuation has dropped by tens of billions of dollars. WeWork delayed its move to go public. Its public IPO filings made people’s hair curl with stories ...
09.26.2019 An app that pays you for your data? Yes, actually. Digi.me is an app that lets you connect all your various online accounts. It scoops all the data on you and puts it in one encrypted location that you can control. Then, with your permission, a new company called UBDI ...
09.25.2019 Twitter hires social scientists to help figure out our conversation problem Twitter commissioned a two-year study to help it create metrics for what is a healthy conversation and what isn’t. Host Molly Wood spoke with Rebekah Tromble, who teaches media and politics at George Washington University and is one of the ...
09.24.2019 Some iPhones are now made with recycled rare earth minerals. Will that change the rest of the industry? New smartphones come out like clockwork every year, and most people buy new phones every two years. But that upgrade cycle is terrible for Earth. Smartphones are energy intensive to manufacture and involve mining dozens of different rare earth minerals. ...
09.23.2019 Gov. Gavin Newsom on California climate change and tech’s role in fighting it For our climate tech series “How We Survive,” host Molly Wood spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom. She asked him if he saw the tech industry as having a role in helping communities adapt and preventing more disasters.
09.20.2019 East Palo Alto: Next door to Big Tech, vulnerable to climate change In Silicon Valley, the tiny town of East Palo Alto has not shared in the wealth of the tech boom. It’s sandwiched between Palo Alto, home of Stanford University, and Menlo Park, home of Sand Hill Road and venture capital ...
09.19.2019 Where is Big Tech on solutions for climate change adaptation? To find out what the tech industry is doing to develop solutions to climate change, Molly Wood asked: Is it fair to expect private companies to make adapting to climate change part of their jobs?
09.18.2019 A visit to X: The tech moonshot factory is working on climate change Host Molly Wood speaks with Astro Teller, who leads X and whose official title is captain of moonshots. Formerly Google X, it’s the division of Alphabet devoted to moonshots — big, crazy technology bets that hopefully turn into companies. Its ...
09.17.2019 With all of Silicon Valley’s startup money, where’s the investment in climate tech? We’re in the heart of the tech industry this week, the Silicon Valley, which is also the home of the huge venture capital funds that back a lot of the innovation here. And those are concentrated in a quiet office ...
09.16.2019 At the intersection of tech, climate and the land of Silicon Valley We’re taking our climate tech series, “How We Survive,” to the epicenter of technology: Silicon Valley. It’s not just a metaphor for the tech industry, it’s a real place. Cities, businesses and people are surrounded by a rising sea and ...
09.13.2019 States take on Google with antitrust investigation. This won’t be quick. This week, attorneys general from 48 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico announced they’re joining forces to investigate whether Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior. Some of those AGs are also part of another investigation into similar questions ...
09.12.2019 Drivers wanted: EVs are all over the Frankfurt Motor Show The Frankfurt Motor Show opened this week in Germany, and automakers are showcasing their hot, new electric vehicles. As always, prices for many of the electric cars run well above the means of a humble public radio employee. You’ve got ...
09.11.2019 Pindrops work. But if you (or your drone) require location precision, there’s an app for that. What3words is a company that has divvied Earth into 57 trillion squares, each with its own unique string of three identifying words. Anyone with the company’s app or website can translate locations from those words.
09.10.2019 It’s happening in Knoxville: Time, money and marketing make smaller cities viable tech hubs For smaller cities outside of the epicenters of tech, developing as a hub is a long process with a lot of things that must go right. Jed Kim speaks with Jim Biggs, who worked in Silicon Valley for years before ...
09.09.2019 It’s not a given that tech in the classroom improves learning Marketplace’s Jed Kim spoke with Daniel Willingham, who’s a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and researches how we learn. He said balancing tech’s promises and its realities has been a learning experience of its own. (9/9/2019)
09.06.2019 For U.S. Navy destroyers, old controls might be safer than new tech The USS Fitzgerald collided with a Phillipine container ship in June 2017, killing seven sailors. Then, just two months later, the USS John S. McCain collided with a Liberian merchant vessel, killing 10 sailors. Megan Eckstein, deputy editor for USNI ...
09.05.2019 How much longer until people want to date Alexa? The 2013 Spike Jonze film “Her” imagined a not-too-distant future where digital voice assistants become super lifelike. And then it becomes a love story between a man and a machine, which seemed crazy, maybe a little gross. Since then, we’ve ...
09.04.2019 Detroit’s first director of digital inclusion helps a divided city get online Detroit is one of the least-connected big American cities. According to the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, less than half of homes there have broadband internet. That means hundreds of thousands of Detroiters stand on the losing side of a growing ...
09.03.2019 Australia is figuring out its own way to wrestle with tech giants This summer, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission delivered the results of a big investigation on the impacts of Big Tech — especially Google and Facebook. It looked at competition and privacy, and how social media has crippled local journalism, ...
09.02.2019 Electric vehicles are getting noisier, for safety’s sake In the European Union, new models of electric vehicles must make some sort of noise to address some safety concerns. Some carmakers are already doing that, and they’re taking it as an opportunity to craft signature sounds. Marketplace’s Jed Kim ...
08.30.2019 “Amazon’s Choice” does not vouch for product quality “Marketplace Tech’s” Jed Kim spoke with Nicole Nguyen, who is a technology reporter at BuzzFeed News. The “Amazon’s Choice” label helps boost items’ sales, which also helps Amazon, since it gets a cut. But Nguyen said there’s not much known ...
08.29.2019 Plug-in planes are coming, faster than ever “Marketplace Tech’s” Jed Kim spoke with Graham Warwick, executive editor of Aviation Week. They talked about the rapidly evolving electric plane sector and how electric flight could potentially reinvigorate regional air travel. (8/29/2019)
08.28.2019 More schools are analyzing students’ online lives in the name of safety As a new term begins, a growing number of schools will be scouring students’ social media posts and emails for warning signs that they may pose a safety threat. (8/28/2019)
08.27.2019 Teens on screens might be a good thing It feels like we’re constantly bombarded with news stories about how screens and technology are destroying our kids’ mental health. Turns out, though, when it comes to adolescents, those negative impacts of screen time may be overblown. (8/27/2019)
08.26.2019 How the economy, energy and tech show up in “Mad Max” Marketplace’s Jed Kim spoke with Matthew Kahn, an economist at Johns Hopkins University, about the energy, technology and economics on display in “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.” He said that for him, the movie shows how free markets falter in a ...
08.23.2019 Apple Health: Once the company’s ambition, now has stalled For a while in 2018, it seemed like Apple was going to upend the health industry. The company announced an app that could monitor your heart rate and detect irregularities. It was bringing your medical records to your iPhone. It ...
08.22.2019 If you don’t like Facebook, try building your own social network If you don’t like Facebook, you can just leave, but maybe you can leave — and build your own social network. One programmer wrote a guide on how to create your own DIY platform for that. Molly Wood talks to ...
08.21.2019 Patreon lets fans support online creators directly. Its CEO wants to keep service personal. Increasingly, creators are turning to platforms with a membership model as a way to earn a living. Patreon is a website with such a model. It lets fans support projects of their choosing with recurring donations in exchange for everything ...
08.20.2019 Before driverless cars come driverless office park shuttles? There’s no one way forward for autonomous car technology. Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving car company, is still testing fully autonomous cars as taxis in the Phoenix area. Tesla is putting semi-autonomous features into its own cars for consumers to buy. And ...
08.19.2019 How fake Twitter accounts spread misinformation and distort conversation It’s easy to create a fake account on social media. Facebook admitted that billions of accounts on its platforms could be fake. Last year alone, Twitter suspended more than 70 million bots and fake accounts, but they keep appearing. The ...
08.16.2019 Wired gets the tea on three years of struggle at Google Google, as a company, has a long history of internal disagreement and activism. But in recent years that internal culture, where employees are encouraged to argue with executives, with each other and to protest decisions and policies they don’t like ...
08.15.2019 Robots help humans save water as climate change makes every drop count As the effects of climate change grow, the market for technology to monitor and adapt to those impacts grows as well. In this installment of our series “How We Survive,” reporter Daniel Ackerman explores the use of robots in service ...
08.14.2019 How networking can lead to more diversity in tech There’s been more attention lately on who’s part of the tech boom and who’s not. At Facebook, Google and Apple about three in four technical employees are men — the coders, engineers and developers. African Americans make up a tiny ...

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