North Korea is known as one of the most isolated countries in the world. Yet, there are North Koreans who have access to some of the same kind of technologies that are available to the rest of the world, albeit with severe restrictions. A new report suggests that some even hack their smartphones to get around the stringent digital controls. The authors of the report looked at North Korean phones and spoke to two escapees, a former computer programmer for the North Korean government and a former computer science student. One of the authors Martyn Williams as well as North Korea expert and co-host of the BBC podcast The Lazarus Heist Jean H. Lee join us on the programme.

Clean Drinking water at the push of a button

Military virtual and augmented reality

The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Ghislaine Boddington.

Studio Manager: Steve Greenwood

(Image: Woman browsing on tablet in the dark

In this episode, Prof. Margaret O'Mara of the University of Washington discusses the origins and workings of the US Tech industry - in reference to her 2019 book: The Code - Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. 

There is a growing literature and practice around how to equitably collaborate with traditionally marginalized communities to build better technology. A pair of investigative reports into Worldcoin’s launch may well serve as the basis for an instructive case study in what not to do. 

The first report, by Richard Nieva and Aman Sethi at BuzzFeed News, was published April 5th. It’s titled Inside Worldcoin’s Globe-Spanning, Eyeball-Scanning, Free Crypto Giveaway: The Sam Altman–founded company Worldcoin says it aims to alleviate global poverty, but so far it has angered the very people it claims to be helping.

The second report, by Eileen Guo & Adi Renaldi at MIT Technology Review, was published April 6th. It’s titled Deception, exploited workers, and cash handouts: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users: The startup promises a fairly-distributed, cryptocurrency-based universal basic income. So far all it's done is build a biometric database from the bodies of the poor.

Tech Policy Press had the chance to talk to both pairs of journalists separately last week. 

My guest Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell, AO FAHA FTSE is an Australian anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technological development. She taught Anthropology at Stanford before being recruited to Intel in 1998 to build out their social-science research program in their advanced R&D labs. There, Bell and colleagues helped orient Intel to a more market-inspired and experience-driven approach, establishing Intel's UX competency and, indeed, introducing the viability of UX research within high technology. Together with Paul Dourish, she wrote the book 'Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing', an exploration of the social and cultural components of ubiquitous computing. In 2017 she returned to Australia, appointed as Entrepreneurial Fellow and distinguished professor at Australian National University's College of Engineering and Computer Science where she directs the School of Cybernetics and the Autonomy, Agency & Assurance Institute.

In our conversation I refer to her recent paper in the MIT Technology Review, 'The metaverse is a new word for an old idea'

I mention this short documentary “You’ve Never Been Completely Honest” by Joey Izzo. (Trigger warnings apply — read the interview with Izzo before watching to figure out if you really want to watch it.)

Genevieve mentions an audio recording of Gregory Bateson called "Versailles to Cybernetics" and a recording Stewart Brand made with Bateson and Margaret Meade that is in a kind of annotated transcript here: "For God's Sake Margaret!"

"Cybernetic Serendipity" is the exhibition she mentions curated by Jasia Reichardt.

Please consider supporting this podcast! You can do so over here at patreon.com/nearfuturelaboratory. You can also buy me a "coffee" over at ko-fi.com/bleeckerj

Thank you for your support!

In Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (FSG Originals, 2020), Tim Hwang investigates the way big tech financializes attention. In the process, he shows us how digital advertising--the beating heart of the internet--is at risk of collapsing, and that its potential demise bears an uncanny resemblance to the housing crisis of 2008.

From the unreliability of advertising numbers and the unregulated automation of advertising bidding wars to the simple fact that online ads mostly fail to work, Hwang demonstrates that while consumers' attention has never been more prized, the true value of that attention itself--much like subprime mortgages--is wildly misrepresented. And if online advertising goes belly-up, the internet--and its free services--will suddenly be accessible only to those who can afford it.

Tim Hwang is a writer, researcher, and currently the general counsel for Substack. He is the former director of the Harvard-MIT Ethics and Governance of AI Initiative and previously served as the global public policy lead for artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network (Twitter: @caleb_zakarin).

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

In this episode of Big Tech, host Taylor Owen speaks with Ephrat Livni, a lawyer and journalist who reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook at The New York Times. One of Livni’s focuses has been how cryptocurrencies have moved from the periphery of the financial world into the mainstream. 

The cryptocurrency movement originated with a commitment to the decentralization of money and the removal of intermediaries and government to enable person-to-person financial transactions. Early on, governments viewed cryptocurrency as a tool for illicit criminal activity and a threat to institutional power. In the last two years, cryptocurrency has moved into the mainstream, with sporting arenas named after crypto companies and flashy celebrity endorsements and Super Bowl ads. Crypto markets are extremely volatile with great interest from retail investors and venture capitalists. There’s a lot of enthusiasm about crypto, but not a lot of information.

With crypto moving into the mainstream, companies that wish to create trust with their customers must be more transparent, accept regulations and act more like the institutions they initially sought to disrupt. As Livni and Owen discuss, this is not a sector that regulators can ignore: it is complicated, fast-changing, multinational, and demanding a great deal of thought about how best to proceed.