Plutopia's own Jon Lebkowsky was an early adopter of digital technology and the internet. On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon presents a personal history of digital tech, life online in the 1990s, the internet, and much more.

Jon Lebkowsky:

So I heard that you could get a pretty decent computer, personal computer, an IBM PC clone from a company that was called PC's Limited. And PC's Limited was actually a DBA for a company called Dell Computers. So I bought one of the first Dell computers, which was through PC's Limited. And carted it home and I had this computer and this amber monitor, no color, just amber, that was it. And a stack of manuals like this [holds hands to suggest size], huge stack of manuals, one for each computer program and one for the computer itself and one for the monitor and all this stuff that I had to read through and learn. And I started kinda banging away on the computer and then it's like, okay, Marsha, now what I wanna do next is I wanna log in via long distance to this system that's out in California and it's gonna be about 10 bucks an hour. And this led to a rather tense discussion. And of course, acknowledging who wears the pants in the family, we squashed that idea.

Currently cohost of Plutopia News Network, Jon was formerly CEO of FringeWare, Inc. and editor/publisher of FringeWare Review; associate editor at bOING bOING and Factsheet Five; writer for Mondo 2000, 21C, Wired, Whole Earth Review, Austin Chronicle; sub-editor at Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; and blogger at Worldchanging. A member of the online community The WELL for over 30 years, he cohosts three WELL forums: VC (virtual communities), Media, and Civil War (.ind) conferences.

In his 1941 short story, "Runaround," Isaac Asimov created his three laws of robotics:

* A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

* A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law, and

* A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection is not conflict with the first or second law.

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Cindy Grimm and Bill Smart feel Asimov's laws miss the mark when it comes to laws of robotics.

Bill Smart:

Asimov's three laws, everyone brings them up. They were a plot device by a guy - who had never seen a robot - to drive story. If you were to think about it for five seconds, they are a reasonable three things to come up with. If you think about it for ten seconds, they fall apart of course. We do need structures and we do need a way of thinking about the ethics and morality of a social impact of robots. But I think it's way more nuanced - way, way, way more nuanced - than you could compile into a paragraph of text.

Cindy Grimm:

I mean something even simple like, a robot should always do what you tell them to do, they should always get out of your way, that might not actually make sense. If the robots are all trying to get out of your way and so on, but there's a needed delivery or they actually need to get somewhere, then maybe the robot does actually need to take priority over the humans. You can't really have those conversations when you start from the place of, you know, all robots should kowtow to humans and stuff.

Cindy Grimm is an American computer scientist, roboticist, and mechanical engineer. Bill Smart researches the areas of robotics and machine learning. Both are professors in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University.

Links

* We Robot

* We Robot 2023

* Wendy's summary of this year's "We Robot"

* XKCD on Asimov

* Ghost Work, by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri

* Wendy's review of Ghost Work

Don Norman has been a professor, industry executive, consultant, keynote speaker, and author. He's worked in electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and design. He's the author of several books, among them Design for a Better World, his latest; also including The Design of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity,, Emotional Design and The Design of Future Things. Don believes you should design for people the way they are, not for how you want them to be. He joins the Plutopia Podcast this time as we discuss his journey from 1988's The Design of Everyday Things to his latest book, Design for a Better World.

Don Norman:

I wanted to do something that actually was much more important for the world - and the world is a mess and I thought, what can I do to make a difference? And I thought about all the problems that exist, but I've also said, gee, you know, lots of good people have written about all these problems. I don't have anything to add. And I looked for the solutions. Well, lots of good people have written about the solutions. I don't have anything to add. Most of them are technology solutions, however. But then I said, wait a minute, we have all these problems, we have all these solutions but they aren't being done. Why aren't they being done? And I realized the real issue was human behavior and that maybe that's where I could say something. And so what I tried to do was put together the problems that I thought I could say something new on.

Photo by Peter Belanger

Links:

Wendy Grossman's review of Living with Complexity

"Responsible AI: Bridging From Ethics to Practice" by Ben Shneiderman

Heavy Weather, by Bruce Sterling

Charlie Stross's blog

Viridian Design Movement

Conceptual media artist, activist and educator Patrick Lichty joined the Plutopia Live show for a wide-ranging discussion of current events and the future. We explored migration and borders, climate change, AI and art, and the techno-tsunami of new ideas.

Patrick Lichty:

When we think of the idea of the future, I think something that's a relatively new thing I think is really, really interesting called Paleo-Future Studies and the idea of what the future ... in other words, like the future isn't what it used to be. And so what happens, I think part of the questions I was thinking about and asking was the matter of saying what is the future now as opposed to what it was, as opposed to "2001, A Space Odyssey." We're now thinking about AI, whether crypto technology, blockchain technology is actually going to take hold. And I think AI is going to transform a lot of things. It reminds me of an event very similar to that, when my father retired over computers coming to his insurance office, and I think this is as big of a shift. It's as big of a shift as smartphones.

Cory Doctorow has a problem with corporate bullies. In his latest book, The Internet Con, How to Seize the Means of Computation, Cory details how monopolies have taken control of much of the tech sector and are unlikely to give it back without a fight.

Cory Doctorow:

Corruption arises out of monopoly, so we know what our marching orders should be, and obviously it's much harder under monopolistic conditions to do something about it. The best time to have prevented monopolies was 40 years ago but the second best time is now and we are living at a historically unprecedented moment in which there is interest in public service provision, good governance, good public administration and returning power over the structure of your daily life from corporate boardrooms into publicly accountable meetings held by publicly accountable agencies.

Cory is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and ball of fire. He's written quite a few books, including Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitallism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Cory's been bringing back muckraking big time at Pluralistic.net.

Portrait by Jonathan Worth

Journalist John Schwartz joins Plutopians to discuss journalism and climate science. After two decades at the New York Times, John has joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Journalism as a professor of practice concentrating on climate science.

UT has been very good to me and it turns out that I love teaching, and the students are great. And it's also not a bad thing to be trying to launch people into the world of journalism, and especially - I'm teaching a course in covering climate, covering the environment. And I really feel it's important to get people into that field especially - the science communication/climate communication field - and have them be good at it and have them come from not necessarily the Ivy Leagues but from every part of the country. And so doing this from Texas is especially satisfying.

John has written extensively about climate science and environmental issues. He is a strong advocate for science communication, and has argued that journalists have a responsibility to report accurately on climate science and to help the public understand the issue. He argues that climate journalists need to be more proactive in telling stories about the impacts of climate change that are already happening. He has also said that journalists need to do a better job of explaining the science of climate change to the public.

Links

* Oddly Normal: One Family's Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality by John Schwartz

* This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order by John Schwartz

* A.R. "Babe" Schwartz, John's father

* Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?

* Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright

* The Heat Will Kill You by Jeff Goodell

Karen Levy is an author, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and associated faculty at Cornell Law School. Her research focuses on the legal, organizational, social and ethical aspects of data-intensive technologies, particularly in contexts that are marked by conditions of inequality.

In her book, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance, Levy examines the impact of electronic logging devices (ELDs) on truck drivers. ELDs are devices that are hardwired into truck cabs and track how much time drivers spend driving. The devices were mandated by the US Department of Transportation in 2017 in an effort to reduce truck accidents caused by driver fatigue.

Karen Levy:

Back in 1980, trucking was still a regulated industry. The federal government set rates in the industry. It was much more heavily unionized. And truckers made about $110,000 a year in today's dollars, so a pretty decent living.

Truckers today make about $47,000 a year. So half, basically, what they made 40 years ago. And so when you create these conditions, you end up in a position where people are going to end up breaking the law to keep the lights on at home. So if we think that that's a problem - the federal government doesn't really want people breaking the law as much as they are.

So they suggested a proposed rule in the Department of Transportation, mandating what are called electronic logging devices [ELD]. And what these are are basically devices that are hardwired into the truck cab that keep track of how much truckers are driving. The idea is that it's a little digital tattletale. It tells the government what the trucker goes through, a wait station or is inspected. It keeps a record of whether or not that trucker has exceeded the allowable hours. And this is now required of all truckers in the United States.

It's been required for about five years. And what my research has focused on is the evolution of this rule, of this technology, and trying to understand how the life of trucking and the day-to-day work of trucking looks different when truckers are being monitored this way versus before when they were just keeping track of their time using the pencil and paper.

Technologist, thought leader and podcaster Tom Parish joins the Plutopia Podcast as we explore developments in artificial intelligence, privacy, the Internet of Things, and job security.

Tom Parish:

The difference about AI is there's so much Hollywood myth associated with gloom and doom and what's going to come in - the end of the world and all that. And a lot of worry about how it's going to impact jobs. I began to think, look, it's going to happen, it's not going away. And one of the most amazing things about this version of AI is that it's so reflective of who you are. You know, it can reflect back to so many different aspects of your own personality. It can seem almost like a real entity itself. And so when I thought about that from the perspective of where do we really want to go with this, especially if you were looking for employment, what's ultimately more important than just knowing something about AI if you are out on the job market again five years from now or ten years from now? It's knowing about yourself. I use the mantra, be what the machines can't be. Be more you, be more human.

Tom Parish is a thought leader and facilitator of conversations around technology and the problems of our times. Tom worked with AI researchers at the MIT AI Lab back in the 1980s, and he helped move Motorola's IT infrastructure to a TCP/IP-based network in the 90s. He worked with Motorola's first Internet Marketing Group. He has 30-plus years in management in networking, cloud computing, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and process control, enterprise software, mobile technology, customer relationship management, social media, AI, and multi-media production, as well as a career as a musician and a film colorist. And he's produced a LOT of podcasts.

Key points:

* AI is becoming increasingly powerful and accessible, and it is important to be aware of the risks associated with the technology.

* AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for good, but it is important to use it responsibly.

* Human creativity and empathy are essential in the age of AI.

* Tom encourages people to focus on their unique strengths and to use AI to amplify their abilities.

Journalist and educator Jeff Jarvis, who believes we have entered the post-print age of communication, joins Plutopians to discuss his book The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet.

Jeff created and edited Entertainment Weekly and wrote about media for TV Guide, People Magazine, and The Guardian. He's a blogger at buzzmachine.com. He holds the Leonard Tow Chair in Journalism Innovation and directs the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He cohosts a podcast, "This Week in Google," and has written several books, including What Would Google Do and his latest, The Gutenberg Parenthesis.

Jeff Jarvis: I think society was fundamentally conversational before print. That's fairly obvious, that's what we had. But even in the early days of print, Luther and the Pope held a conversation through their books and burnings of them. Erasmus and Thomas More wrote letters to each other for the purpose of including them in the books because that was part of the conversation. What ruined the conversation, I think, was the mechanization and industrialization and corporatization of print and its products, this idea that they were products for that matter, and people couldn't fit into a conversation at that scale. And now my hope is that we rediscover the conversation. We're bad at it. Society's long out of practice with it. We're doing an awful job of it. I'll concede all of that. But I treasure all the voices that can now be heard that were always there that were not heard in mainstream mass media run by people who look like me: old white men.

Relevant links:

* Wendy Grossman's review of The Gutenberg Parenthesis.

* Tom Standage - The Writing on the Wall - tomstandage.com

* Jeff Jarvis' next book - Magazine

* Charlton McIlwain - Black Software

* Douglas Rushkoff - Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus

* Tiny News Collective

* The Ferret

* Bristol Cable

* Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage

*

Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy are co-authors of the book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, The Case for Good Apologies, where they draw on a deep well of research in psychology, sociology, law, and medicine to explain why a good apology is hard to find and why it doesn't have to be. They also have a website called SorryWatch, where they track bad apologies and occasionally good apologies as well.

In their book, Susan and Marjorie have identified the good, bad, and ugly ways we say I'm sorry for that thing I did or said or didn't do or didn't say.

We like to distinguish between corporate politician celebrity apologies that are made not to truly be apologetic but to salvage your brand. You know that bad stilted corporate apology. You know there's also the sort of influencer celebrity Instagram notes apology which or you know in general like little video apology from a famous person where they don't wear their makeup so you know they're serious. They're often holding a small fluffy dog. They always start with, "Hey guys, I just wanted to talk to you myself." And then it comes into this litany of self-justification. Good apologies tend to make things vanish from the forefront of the public mind. One of the things that fascinated me doing research for this book, I came across the Zeigarnik effect, which suggests that you remember uncompleted actions better than completed actions.

The authors argue that apologies are essential for repairing relationships and restoring trust. They also provide a six-step process for giving a good apology.

A good apology puts the other person's feelings front and center.

1. Say "I'm sorry" or "I apologize." Not "I wanted to apologize for"

or "I regret." SAY THE WORDS. (We can talk about why those specific

formulations are the right ones later, but we bet most people can

guess.)

2. Say what you're sorry FOR. Name the thing. Not "the situation" or

"what happened."

3. Show you understand why it was bad/wrong/a cause of pain.

4. If you need to offer some explanation, BE CAREFUL; don't let

explanation become excuse. (This is the hardest step for me, btw.)

5. Explain what you're doing to ensure it never happens again.

6. Make reparations, if that's possible.

6.5 = LISTEN. People want to be heard. Let them talk. Let them

discuss why they're upset. It's .5 because you don't SAY or DO

anything except bear witness. (And indeed, you shouldn't interject

when you're letting them have their say.)

About the Sorrywatchers (from their website)

Susan McCarthy

Susan is the author of Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild (HarperCollins) and co-author with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (Delacorte). A modest person, she seldom mentions that the latter book was an international bestseller.

Publications she’s written for include Discover, Guardian.co.uk, Outside, Parade, Salon, Smithsonian, and Wired. McCarthy wrote a piece for Salon on apologies (“How to Say You’re Sorry: A Refresher Course”) which has been lastingly popular, and which has encouraged her to think more about the matter.