Jeff Young spoke with Eswar Prasad, Tolani Senior Professor of Trade Policy and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He recently published the book The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance, where he looks at Bitcoin and the transformative potential of the blockchain, the pros and cons of central bank digital currencies, and the international nature of and adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Today I talked to Helga Nowotny about her new book In AI We Trust: Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms (Polity, 2021).

One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI - and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us.

At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care.

As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at [email protected].

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Paris Marx is joined by James Muldoon to discuss his vision for platform socialism and the different ways we could reorganize platforms to serve the public good over corporate profit.

James Muldoon is the author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech. He’s also a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and the Head of Digital Research at Autonomy. Follow James on Twitter at @james_muldoon_.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

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We are joined by Alex Press (@alexnpress), of Jacobin and the Primer podcast, to do some more Amazonology. This time, we look at the specifics of how HR operates at this company, how its shittiness ends up hurting workers, and how Amazon is gearing up to export more of its working practices to others. But first, we wonder at why and how it was the parties that finally turned the British establishment against Boris Johnson.

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Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Huge robots, including a seven-metre two-tonne vessel named Ran, are on their way to the Thwaites Glacier to learn more about the retreating ice and its impact on Climate Change. But this won’t be the only tech that’s being deployed on the 65-day mission; British Antarctic Survey’s Boaty McBoatface and the Autosub Long Range vehicle operated by the National Oceanography Centre in the UK, will travel under the ice shelf along with Ran. Professor Anna Wåhlin from the University of Gothenburg tells us more about her robot Ran and about the data she’ll be collecting.

Tiny light engines

James Webb telescope tech

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

Studio Manager: Nigel Dix

(Image: Ran navigates its way under the ice front of Thwaites Glacier.

Our guest for this episode is Safiya Noble, an associate professor of gender studies and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Safiya is the co-founder and faculty director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, an interdisciplinary research center focused on the intersection of human rights, social justice, democracy, and technology. She is also the author of the best-selling book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Her nonprofit community work to foster civil and human rights, the expansion of democracy and intersectional racial justice is developing at the Equity Engine.

In this conversation, Safiya debunks the idea that social media and search engine algorithms are purely mathematical and neutral, explaining how they’re biased and can be discriminatory toward Black girls and Asian Americans in particular. She speaks about the dangers of tech companies conducting experiments on the public and the concerning lack of regulatory frameworks for technology. Finally, she explains her shift toward seeing herself as an abolitionist – who wants to abolish predictive technologies.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and here for this episode’s show notes.

In 2013, 26-year-old software developer and political activist Aaron Swartz died by suicide. He had been indicted on federal charges after illegally downloading 4.8 million articles from JSTOR, a database of academic journals, and potentially faced a million dollar fine and decades in jail. While his death made headline news, Swartz had long been an Internet folk hero and a fierce advocate for the free exchange of information. In his book, The Idealist, writer Justin Peters places Swartz within the fraught, often colorful, history of copyright in America. Brooke talks with Peters about Swartz's legacy and the long line of "data moralists" who came before him.

Music in this podcast extra:

"Moss Garden" by David Bowie"Heroes" by David Bowie; performed by The Meridian String Quartet"Life On Mars?" by David Bowie; performed by The Meridian String Quartet.

This segment originally aired in our January 15, 2016 program, "Terms of Engagement."

Platforms are ubiquitous. However, they arguably can only realise their full potential when they are no longer subjected to the imperatives of the profit motive. For this we need: Platform Socialism.

If you would like to support Future Histories by contributing to the collaborative transcription of episodes, please contact us at:

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James Muldoon's Website:

https://jamesmuldoon.org/

https://autonomy.work/

https://autonomy.work/autonomy_digital/

https://twitter.com/james_muldoon_

https://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/politics/staff/muldoon/

http://www.plutobooks.com/9780745346953/platform-socialism/

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/technology-and-democracy/regulating-big-tech-is-not-enough-we-need-platform-socialism/

Tiziana Terranova (Wiki):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiziana_Terranova

https://www.plutobooks.com/9781783714421/network-culture/

https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/shoshana-zuboff/the-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/9781610395694/

https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii116/articles/evgeny-morozov-digital-socialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._D._H._Cole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guild_socialism

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Neurath

https://resonate.is/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-of-walmart

S02E10 | Aaron Benanav on Associational Socialism and Democratic Planning:

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s02/e10-aaron-benanav-on-associational-socialism-and-democratic-planning/

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e44-benjamin-bratton-on-synthetic-catallaxies-platforms-of-platforms-red-futurism-part-1-2/;

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e45-benjamin-bratton-on-synthetic-catallaxies-platforms-of-platforms-red-futurism-part-2-2/

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e31-daniel-e-saros-on-digital-socialism-and-the-abolition-of-capital-part-1/;

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e32-daniel-e-saros-on-digital-socialism-and-the-abolition-of-capital-part-2/

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e16-richard-barbrook-on-imaginary-futures/

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e58-jasper-bernes-on-planning-and-anarchy/

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e55-michael-seemann-zur-macht-der-plattformen-teil-1/;

https://www.futurehistories.today/episoden-blog/s01/e56-michael-seemann-zur-macht-der-plattformen-teil-2/

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#JamesMuldoon, #JanGroos, #FutureHistories, #Podcast, #Interview, #PlatformSocialism, #Socialism, #Sozialismus, #Capitalism, #DigitalSocialism, #Platforms, #DigitalEconomy, #Tech, #BigData, #BigTech, #DigitalPlatforms, #DigitalFuture, #GlobalCommunities, #TechnologyDebate, #ShoshanaZuboff, #Digitalisation, #Digitalisierung, #Kapitalismus, #DigitalerKapitalismus, #Platforms, #Plattformen, #DigitalerSozialismus, #Democracy, #Demokratie, #SurveillanceCapitalism, #AutonomyDigital, #GuildSocialism, #AssociationalSocialism, #PostCapitalism, #FutureHistoriesInternational,

Today I speak with Professor Kate Henne. Kate is the director of RegNet, which is the school of Regulation and Global Governance at ANU. She also leads the Justice and Techno Science Lab within the RegNet school. Kate’s research interests and areas of expertise are enormous, and I’ll put links to just some examples in the show notes, but to give you a flavour, they focus on the intersection of the politics and technology as it relates to biomedicalisation, criminalisation, gender regulation, human enhancement and wellbeing, and heavily discussed in this podcast, surveillance and police technologies.

Technologies of these kinds are profilerating and making their way into our life in visible and invisible ways. They’re becoming normalised, part of how we deliver services, how we prevent or monitor cheating, or how police police. Various digital technologies aren’t just focused on organising calendards or romantically swiping in your neighbourhood, they’re increasingly being called on to address systemic and structural issues in our community – it’s not clear whether these technologies do more harm than good. What is clear is that that the potential benefits of technologies are married to real risks. And those risks mean we need to have a conversation about regulation.

Kate is a wonderful expert to guide us through that conversation. Despite being so knowledgeable, Kate is a very generous conversationalist, and very regularly highlights the excellent research of her colleagues. I think you’ll enjoy this one to start off the year.

Timestamps:

Shownotes:

Professor Kate Henne’s research profile: https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/kate-henne

Justice and Technoscience lab: https://regnet.anu.edu.au/research/centres/justice-and-technoscience-lab-justech

Some of Professor Henne’s research on regulation of doping in sport: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0193723515596203?casa_token=CBifKcX5E28AAAAA:fQVcN4cWvRpAZZYnWlEhd2XZVaok7GZ4Pfb9yGN-LeTYGoSS_APM5i1CYfbRIVuW10nKRbWKyy9oJqE

https://regnet.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2019-01/Dilemmas%20of%20Gender%20and%20Global%20Sports%20Governance.pdf

Research mentioned from a/Professor Natasha Tusikov: https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/download/12908/8475/

Safiya Umoja Noble’s book, Algorithms of Racism: https://nyupress.org/9781479837243/algorithms-of-oppression/

The inside story of games that shaped the modern world. Including Atari's Nolan Bushnell on his game Pong which helped launch the video game industry. Plus the origin of Grand Theft Auto, the man who invented Tetris, the son of the Lego brick pioneer and the true story of Monopoly. Max Pearson also talks to the technology journalist Louise Blain about the development of the huge gaming industry and where it goes next.

Photo: Pong being played at a retro games event in Germany (Getty Images)