Tech Policy Podcast

From January 10, 2022 (Episode 309): Joseph Uscinski (University of Miami) argues that the internet is not increasing the prevalence of conspiracy theories.

Links:

Don’t Blame Social Media for Conspiracy Theories—They Would Still Flourish Without It

Robert Atkinson is president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. He joins the show to discuss his new book, Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy, co-authored with David Moschella.

Topics include:

• Tech panic: speeding-uppers vs. slowing-downers
• Tech and privacy: try living in an analogue village!
• The wicked problem of content moderation
• Is tech progress bad for the middle class?
• Is tech driving market concentration?
• “Industrial planning”: dirty words?

Links:

Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths about Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy

Richard Morrison (Competitive Enterprise Institute) joins the show, in a crossover episode with the Free the Economy podcast.

Topics include:

• The history of podcasts
• The rise of micro media (find a thousand true fans!)
• Performative tech doomerism
• The idleness of romanticizing the past
• The quest for online community
• Conservatives in the Technium

Links:

Free the Economy

Why Conservatism Failed

The Quest for a Better Online “Community”

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for: TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold and Ari Cohn talk about pornography and free expression.

Topics include:

• The Founding Fathers: epic porn fiends (j/k)
• Obscenity law, a brief history
• Do conservatives still want to ban James Joyce?
• “I know it when I see it”—Worst. Legal standard. Ever.
• Is there a moral case against porn? (Spoiler alert: No)
• The Fifth Circuit botches internet speech law

Links:

Tech Policy Podcast #360: Red States vs. Every SCOTUS Internet Precedent

A Reagan Judge, The First Amendment, And The Eternal War Against Pornography

Texas Legislature Convinced First Amendment Simply Does Not Exist

Is Porn Harmful? The Evidence, the Myths and the Unknowns

Ryan Scirocco is the spacesuit business development lead at Collins Aerospace. Collins, an RTX business, is, along with its partners ILC Dover and Oceaneering, developing a new generation of spacesuits for NASA. Ryan discusses everything that goes into keeping people alive in a freezing zero-gravity vacuum far outside the biosphere.

Topics include:

• A spacesuit is a mini-spaceship
• Space: it wants to kill you
• Spacesuit history
• What’s new? No more mirrors!
• Testing spacesuits on the vomit comet
• The ISS, the Moon, and beyond

Links:

Collins Aerospace Completes Key Spacesuit Testing Milestone

Space Symposium

Tech Policy Podcast #349: The State of Space Exploration

Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discusses, in exquisite detail, the First Amendment problems with H.R. 7521, the House bill to ban TikTok.

Topics include:

• Your First Amendment right to read crazy shit
• TikTok ban bros: throwing spaghetti at the wall
• Foreign broadcast-ownership rules: so passé
• “iT’S nOT sPEech, It’S CoNDuCt”
• H.R. 7521: Least. Tailored. Law. Ever.
• Banning media: it’s what the other guys do
• McCarthyism: so hot right now

Links:

A Breakdown of the Bizarre Factions Fighting Over the TikTok Ban Bill

Tech Policy Podcast #344: TikTok and the First Amendment

Tech Policy Podcast #368: How the Government Gets Your Data

Tech Policy Podcast #289: The History, Use, and Abuse of the Fairness Doctrine

The only thing Congress can agree on is to ban TikTok!?

Daphne Keller (Stanford Cyber Policy Center) and Corbin Barthold (TechFreedom) discuss the Supreme Court oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri (government jawboning of social media platforms) and the NetChoice cases (state content moderation laws).

Links:

Six Things About Jawboning

The Lies the 5th Circuit Told You About the Government ‘Pressuring Social Media to Censor’

Tech Policy Podcast #350: When the Government Yells at Social Media

FAQs About the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court, Part 1

FAQs About the NetChoice Cases at the Supreme Court, Part 2

The Long Reach of Taamneh: Carriage and Removal Requirements for Internet Platforms

God Help Us, but Brett Kavanaugh Could Save the First Amendment

‘Orwellian’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Samuel Hammond (Foundation for American Innovation) discusses his essays on “AI and Leviathan.” Can government institutions cope with the coming technological disruption of AI?

Topics include:

- AI’s trajectory

- New Deal agencies in an AI world

- Public Choice Theory vs. the AI juggernaut

- Uber and micro-regime changes

- Government as a network of smart contracts

- Techno-totalitarianism vs. techno-feudalism

- AI Renaissance city states?

- Collapse as a feature, not a bug

- A techno-optimist’s revealed preferences

Links:

AI and Leviathan: Part I

AI and Leviathan: Part II

AI and Leviathan: Part III

Where is This All Heading?

AI: Dumb human to Einstein in a heartbeat

Tech Policy Podcast #337: China and Domestic Surveillance

Tech Policy Podcast #327: The Collapse of Complex Societies

Byron Tau (NOTUS) discusses his new book Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State.

Topics include:

• Some history: four generations of data brokers
• The continuing evolution of data collection and technological surveillance
• The great danger: data fusion / comprehensive data profiles
• Why won’t Congress regulate government data use?
• National security vs. privacy
• Should we fear a social credit system?

Links:

Means of Control

NOTUS

X: @ByronTau

Tech Policy Podcast #337: China and Domestic Surveillance

Brandon Gorrell (Pirate Wires) joins the show to discuss The White Pill, his optimistic (and mind-blowing) newsletter covering “the frontiers of tech, science, space, and more.”

Topics include: 

• Combatting the overwhelming negativity on social media. 
• Lasers are amazing.
• Why space exploration?
• Did the Big Bang really happen?
• The Pirate Wires brand — beautiful vibe!
• Breaking the New York Times / NPR decel monoculture.
• Advances in IVF.

Links:

The White Pill