Raw Data

What happens to our data when we die? Digital estate planning is becoming an increasingly important topic, though many of our laws have not yet caught up. These days, we leave behind entire histories of our lives online, which can hold both monetary and sentimental value for our family and friends. Through the lens of death, we can also begin to appreciate the value of our digital histories for civil society more broadly.

How do you get your news – and how do you think your news gets to you? The pathway of information flow involves layers of decisions that in many ways are opaque. So are we achieving the universal access to all knowledge that the early Internet idealists had hoped for, or are we increasingly seeing the world through filters that we're not even aware of?

As we hear over and over again, environmental issues are mounting, and the stakes are huge. So how might big data be used to tackle the issues of sustainability, climate change, habitat loss, and species extinction? And even more than that, can it offer us new ways of engaging in a relationship with nature?

Are we addicted to the Internet? Is it even appropriate to use the language of addiction about smartphones and other digital devices? After all, tech companies intentionally appeal to human nature – our desire to connect with others, our boredom, our love of surprise, our loneliness – to hook us onto their products. So how much responsibility do they hold in all this?

Elections and political messaging are changing in the new media landscape. Campaigns are using big data to target voters with better precision, and tech companies are making decisions behind the scenes about how political information is being presented to us. What does all this mean for the future of democracy? This podcast is supported by Worldview Stanford and the Stanford Cyber Initiative.

Cryptocurrencies could revolutionize money and finance. But even more than that, they symbolize how trust is changing as we increasingly rely on technology rather than traditional institutions - like banks and governments - to handle some of our most important problems. Right now, money has only been partially digitized, and it plods around the world at a snail's pace compared to how fast data moves. But all that could change with truly digital cryptocurrencies. This podcast is supported by Worldview Stanford and the Stanford Cyber Initiative.

Big data is revolutionizing health and medicine, from genomics to wearable technologies to precision health. But is our medical care system prepared for algorithms that can diagnose us and make decisions about treatment? And even more than that, what will the doctor-patient relationship look like in the era of big data?

What is the future of work? Today, all of our careers are being transformed by big data, from how we find it, to how we collaborate with others, to how our professional reputations are shaped. We explore both the opportunities and risks of moving our work online. This podcast is supported by Worldview Stanford and the Stanford Cyber Initiative.

Welcome to Raw Data! In this first episode, hosts Mike Osborne and Leslie Chang explore how normal, everyday digital footprints can reveal surprisingly intimate facts – like whether your parents are divorced, and whether you own a gun. This podcast is supported by Worldview Stanford and the Stanford Cyber Initiative.