Katharina Meyer is a historian of technology, an artist, a curator, and a researcher. She examines the relationship of technology and power structures, and she’s a strong proponent of Public Interest Tech and Open Source Software — especially of maintaining both.

We talked about the importance of historical and artistic perspectives for the development of tech, about the nonsense of the “lone inventor” myth, the benefits of Technikfolgenabschätzung — that’s technology impact assessment for the non-German speakers out there — and why larger goals such as the public interest or sustainable development goals should guide more tech development.