Talking With Alice About Tech Sh** [TWAAATS]

Only 18% of tech roles are held by women in 2019. Has anything changed for women working in the industry in a post #MeToo era? I’m joined by Abadesi Osunsade and Jo Kerr to discuss what it is like to work and commentate on tech. These are two wonderful women. Abadesi is the founder of… Read More

Paying for basic goods and services is very different now to even 6 years ago. We can pay via contactless payments and our mobiles. We shop online and mainly use debit and credit cards to do this. Even market stalls carry devices for taking card payments and the high street is going cash free. But… Read More

So what is political engagement? Traditionally, it’s meant turning up to cast a ballot in elections, maybe running for the council and joining a party. But in a digital age it means a lot more. We can readily sign petitions, communicate and build movements on social media, speak directly to our MPs online and watch… Read More

Chinese social credit is perhaps the most famous policy to come out of China in recent years. In the West, we tend to criticise and fear it, but we don’t really know what it entails. So, in this episode, we want to actually learn what social credit is all about. Is it really a thinly… Read More

At the end of February 2019, the UK experienced a large moral panic about a fake story. It was rumoured that there was a ‘challenge’ targeted at children which encouraged them to harm themselves. This challenge was called Momo. It was a hoax. Yet schools sent out advice as to how to protect children from… Read More

Are we at a stage where access to the internet should be a human right? Join Alice Thwaite, Vidushi Marta (Article 19) and Areeq Chowdhury (WebRoots Democracy) to talk about human rights! It’s true that the internet is the facilitator for many human rights. A couple picked out from the UN Universal Declaration of Human… Read More

Whatsapp is a platform which is widely used, and widely exploited. This is a podcast of two halves. The first will talk about disinformation on WhatsApp. You may have heard about fake news in India, but disinformation is spread in other countries too. For this discussion, we focus on Brazil. In the second half we’ll… Read More

The dead may well outnumber the living on Facebook within the next 5 decades. These people could be tagged in a photo, friend requested or wished a ‘happy birthday’. What kind of rules should be set here? Should your account be deactivated? Can someone else claim your username after you die? So there are platform… Read More

Today we’re talking about facial recognition systems. These are technologies which can recognise and analyse your face. Used for both identification (i.e. on Facebook in photos, on security doors with restricted access) and for reading emotions (i.e this film makes you happy, this product makes you sad), they are becoming more and more common, and… Read More

We interact a lot with machines. Whether we’re using our mobile phones, giving Alexa commands or even playing with a (sex) robot), we’re now giving these devices more intimate information than ever before. In a way, this means that we might feel like we are in a private relationship with them, but the reality is… Read More