Techonomics

By Jason Midleton Please take this the right way: do you really need that new credit card at the checkout register? Or as you're purchasing your online cart?  Those retail cards, the ones you're pitched when you're paying for your stuff, can get pricey. And some have some gotchas, too. This week we get credit card analysis - and advice - from an expert in the field, Ted Rossman of CreditCards.com. Also this week, we check in on the Fed with BankRate.com's senior economic analyst (and man with pipes I'd almost kill for), Mark Hamrick.  Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton Personally speaking, I really dig recycled spaces. Drug stores that are now bars. Or gas stations that become restaurants. Churches that become breweries.  If you string enough of those stories together, you get an American story thread -- and that's what national landmarks and historic locations are here to do.  This week we host Renee Kuhlman. She works as Director of Policy Outreach for the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Creative, innovative solutions to preserve our heritage while welcoming the world to our national parks and landmarks are needed.  HOPE Crew projects and lease vacant or underutilized historic park buildings to private entities to defray the maintenance backlog on the structures.  Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton About 10 percent of America's population either has or is leaning toward diabetes, either type 1 or type 2. That said, physical devices that monitor and share data with doctors as well as patients are seeing huge advancements -- so why aren't they being prescribed more. This week we host Dr Saleh Adi. Dr Adi is a pediatric endocrinologist specializing in managing type 1 diabetes in children. He is founder of the Madison Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco, a state of the art center for pediatric diabetes. Medical technology is historically innovative, and the leaps forward thanks to smarter technology, smaller form factors and better sharing capabilities, patients stand to benefit in ways not seen before.  The goal is to get more diabetes devices into a patient's care. Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton They're in there, you just don't always know where they are. Racism, sexism, and probably just about every other -ism there is could be baked into any algorithm. We're human. And when humans code they bring their own, personal biases to the table.  Oh, they're in there, consciously or not.  This week we host author Sarah Wachter-Boettcher, author of "Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic Tech." The tech-lash that's been building all year long - triggered largely by the Facebook slash Cambridge Analytica scandal - is showing no signs of abating. If anything, it's gaining steam. The calls for oversight and regulation of mega-tech companies are growing louder.  On this show, we've drilled into just how biases like sexism and racism can get baked into algorithms - even unintentionally.  Recently, that aspect of how we use and interface with our technology has been seen more through a human behavior lens - we're finding concrete examples of bias, not just theories. Case in point: Apple Health wasn't very inclusive when it comes to women's health needs. Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton Seaweed (and kelp) could save the world. It's nutritious (and delicious). It eats away at all the earth-destroying acids and gases that we relentlessly throw into it (aka acidfication). It regenerates and grows incredibly quick.  And it sustains three ecosystems during its lifetime (shelter for oysters and others; removing acids from the sea; food for us and others; tidal barriers; land-based critters feasting on washed up stalks). Salt Point Seaweed, an organic seaweed farming company based in Oakland, is a bootstrap endeavor that has plugged into an active -- and necessary -- sustainable fishing/farming movement in the Bay Area (and sometimes beyond).  Three women met during research, they all spent time in East Africa, and they all wanted to address climate change. Heck, even the red urchin epidemic is being helped out.  With Bay Area partners, like Fresh Catch, Salt Point Seaweed has been at this for more than a year, with eyes on expansion.  And if there was EVER a business suited for Instagram and gorgeous pics, it's seaweed farming off the Northern California coast.  Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton Technology, being the amoral beast that it is, can be a mixed bag of progress and digression. Digital technology, especially when applied to our work lives, can be alienating and even lead to loneliness.  The more friends we have at work, the happier we are -- and the longer we stay with the company. That's proven data from Future Workplace, and HR advisory and research firm.  This week's guest, author Dan Schawbel, dives deep into not only new research data, but also contextualizes it for the workplace. His new book is titled 'Back to Human: How Great Leaders Create Connections.' Mr Schawbel and Future Workplace's recent data show that 7% of all employees globally have no friends at work and over half have five or fewer total friends. 62% who have five or fewer friends feel lonely either always or very often and 72% say they aren’t engaged. 60% would be more inclined to stay with their company longer if they had more friends.  This was especially true for younger employees. Gen Z (74%) and Millennials (69%) would be more inclined to stay with their company longer if they had more friends than Gen X (59%) and Baby Boomers (40%). Please click through on any of these links for more information, as well as our show page, Facebook page or follow me on the Twitter. The podcasts also live on iTunes and Stitcher. Have great weeks, everybody.--30--

By Jason Middleton

When recycling rare-earth minerals is 100 percent supported, if we skip the recyclying process we're simply the problem.

A recent California Product Stewardship Council survey reported that of 26 surveyed waste facilities from all over California, 83 percent had a fire at their facility. Sixty-five percent of the reported fires were due to batteries.

And if you factor in the finite amount of rare-earth minerals we have on the planet that these batteries require, battery recycling becomes almost an ethical responsibility issue.

Here's my chat with the CEO of Call2Recycle as we talk about a new Bay Area battery campaign.

By Jason Middleton

Hello and welcome back and as always thanks for listening. This week: tech run amok.

We're spending much time with Dr Ian Mitroff, author of Technology Run Amok: Crisis Management in the Digital Age.

Dr Mitroff combines advanced education and training in engineering, industrial engineering and philosophy. He's also a founder of the entire crisis management discipline.

Let's run down some tech outrages and unintended consequences:

Facebook breaches our privacy and sells our information to outside businesses without telling us. Google sides with China’s efforts to enforce censorship. Snapchat’s hold on users leads some to undergo plastic surgery to improve their selfies.

Social media struggles with hate speech; Facebook and YouTube ban Alex Jones’s hate speech but Twitter allows him to continue before finally shutting him down for good.

And no one can guess what introducing technology into the human body – including the brain – will mean for humanity.

The mid terms are coming up and the top-tier issues are there - budget deficits, immigration, me too - but the second tier issue of technology policy is a surprising area of bipartisanship - for the most part.

To help us unpack where the political parties agree, and where they part ways, we have a researcher and author from the American Enterprise Institute, Dr Roslyn Layton.

Housing issues, income disparity, strained public institutions ... heck, even the commute is piling up quicker than anticipated.

This week we host an author who is taking his documentary filmmaking and interview skills into book form with Cary McClelland's 'Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley.'

Silicon City is a book of interviews - providing more than 100 angles on a story that can seem overwhelming. A zeitgeist that feels almost suffocating in its complexity - and in the decades it took for our society to land in this spot.