The Technically Human Podcast

Welcome to another interview in the "22 Lessons in Ethics and Technology" series! In this episode, I speak with Dr. Pavel Cenkl, about the need for intellectual diversity and multidimensional approaches to technological solutions to the major problems of our time. Professor Cenkl discusses how the major problems we face require that we bring together people trained in a wide variety of approaches. Focusing on environmental issues--climate change, ecological destruction, and the possible proliferation of future pandemics--we consider how ethical approaches to technology depend on thinking across boundaries of ideas and including voices across a variety of institutions, cultures, and experiences.

Dr. Pavel Cenkl is the Head of Schumacher College and Director of Learning and Land at Dartington Trust. He has worked for more than two decades in higher education in America and has always been drawn to colleges and universities whose curriculum fully integrates learning with practice and thinking with embodiment.

Having taught and served as Dean for nearly 15 years at Vermont’s Sterling College, Pavel brings a depth of experience to Schumacher College’s unique approach to experiential learning. While pursuing research in ecologically-minded curriculum design and teaching courses in environmental philosophy, Dr. Cenkl is also a passionate endurance and adventure runner. Over the past five years through a project called Climate Run, he has covered hundreds of miles in the Arctic and subarctic on foot in order to bring attention to the connections between our bodies and the more-than-human world in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

Dr. Cenkl holds a Ph.D. in English and is the author of many articles, chapters, and two books: Nature and Culture in the Northern Forest: Region, Heritage, and Environment in the Rural Northeast (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010); and This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, 1784-1911 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006). He is currently working on a book titled Resilience in the North: Adventure, Endurance, and the Limits of the Human, which threads together personal narrative and observation with environmental philosophy and reflections on what it means to be human.

Welcome to our 3rd episode of the "22 Lessons on Ethical Technology" series! We will be releasing new episodes in the series every first and second Friday of the month through the duration of the series.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. N. Kate Hayles, one of the founding theorists of posthumanism, a key term to understanding the changing and dynamic relationship between humans and machines in the digital age. What is the role of the Humanities in understanding our relationship to technology? How have our technological innovations have changed the nature of “the human?" And what is the future of the human relationship to our machines--and to our understanding of ourselves?

Dr. N. Katherine Hayles is a Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles and the James B. Duke Professor of Literature Emerita at Duke University. She teaches and writes on the relations of literature, science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her most recent book, Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational, was published by the Columbia University Press (Spring 2021). Among her many books is her landmark work How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, which won the Rene Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Literary Theory for 1998-99, and Writing Machines, which won the Suzanne Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship. She has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, and two University of California Presidential Research Fellowships. 

Dr. Hayles is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. She holds a B.S. from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an M.S. from the California Institute of Technology, an M.A. from Michigan State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. Within the field of Posthuman Studies, Dr. Hayles'  book How We Became Posthuman is considered "the key text which brought posthumanism to broad international attention. Her work has laid the foundations for multiple areas of thinking across a wide variety of urgent issues at the intersection of technology, including cybernetic history, feminism, postmodernism, cultural and literary criticism, and is vital to our ongoing conversations about the changing relationship between humans and the technologies we create.

In this episode of "Technically Human," I give my mic over to two guest hosts, David Geitner and Roman Rosser, to interview Dr. Robert Pearl about the intersection between tech, medicine, and our health. Dr. Pearl answers questions about the way that technologies are radically reshaping health care; the hosts ask questions about bias in medicine; and the group discusses the ways in which our current system fails to treat us, well, well.

Dr. Robert Pearl is the former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group (1999-2017), the nation’s largest medical group, and former president of The Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical Group (2009-2017). He serves as a clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and is on the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses on strategy and leadership, and lectures on information technology and health care policy. He is the author of Mistreated: Why We think We’re Getting Good Healthcare—And Why We’re Usually Wrong, a Washington Post bestseller that offers a roadmap for transforming American healthcare. His new book, Uncaring: How the Culture of Medicine Kills Doctors & Patients is available now. All proceeds from these books go to Doctors Without Borders. 

Dr. Pearl hosts the popular podcasts "Fixing Healthcare" and Coronavirus: The Truth. He publishes a newsletter with over 12,000 subscribers called  HYPERLINK "https://robertpearlmd.com/newsletter/" Monthly Musings on American Healthcare and is a regular contributor to Forbes. He has been featured on CBS This Morning, CNBC, NPR, and in TIME, USA Today and Bloomberg News. 

David Geitner is a third-year Biological Sciences major and Frost Scholar at California Polytechnic State University. He grew up in Yuba City California where he learned to love science, sports, community service, and the outdoors. He works in an on-campus research lab working with protein phosphomimetics for protein-to-protein interactions. David aspires to be a dentist as quality dental care is a necessity for society. David hopes to go into the military as a dentist and provide a service to his country. Roman Rosser is a student studying Aerospace Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He recently joined the PROVE team which is building a long-distance electric car. Roman hopes to work on designing or building new vehicles and has a particular passion for orbital rockets. His hobbies include lifting, backpacking, surfing and reading.

A special thank you to David Geitner and Roman Rosser for hosting this week’s episode, and to Dr. Pearl for joining us for the show. We’ll be back next week with another episode of the “22 Lessons in Ethical Technology special series,” so stay tuned! You can find more information about the 22 Lessons series and the Technically Human Podcast, on our website, www.etcalpoly.org. 

And don’t forget to subscribe to the show! You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Michael Huth to talk about the ethics of data collection, privacy, and the new age of “privacism.” We talk about his new platform, Xayn, we discuss what it looks like to build a company based on ethical principles like privacy and user autonomy, and Michael explains why we should care about our privacy online.

Professor Michael Huth is Co-Founder and Chief Research Officer of Xayn. He teaches at Imperial College London, where he is on the faculty of the department of Engineering, and he serves as the Head of the Department of Computing, at the Imperial College London. His research focuses on Cybersecurity, Cryptography, Mathematical Modeling, as well as security and privacy in Machine Learning, with with expertise in trust and policy. He served as the technical lead of the Harnessing Economic Value theme at PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Research Hub in the UK. He holds associations with the Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering; the Centre for Smart Connected Futures; the Engineering Secure Software Systems; the Immuno-Pathology Network; and the Quantitative Analysis and Decision Science Section. In 2017, he founded the privacy tech company together with Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and Felix Hahmann. Xayn offers a privacy-protecting search engine that enables users to gain back control over algorithms and data harvesting.

Production and research support from Jared Maslin.

Welcome to our 2nd episode of the "22 Lessons on Ethical Technology" series!

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh, one of the world's leading experts on ethics and technology, in particular robotics and artificial intelligence. We talk about the way that technologies are changing our understanding of ethics and philosophical thinking, how technologies have added to and altered philosophical thinking throughout history, how new technologies--particularly robots, AI, cybernetics, and memory devices--are changing the way we think, and how we understand our ethical obligations to the world, and to each other. 

Prof. Dr. Mark Coeckelbergh is a Professor of Philosophy of Media and Technology in the Philosophy of Department at the University of Vienna, and until recently Vice Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Education. He is also the former President of the Society for Philosophy and Technology (SPT). His expertise focuses on ethics and technology, in particular robotics and artificial intelligence. He is a member of various entities that support policy building in the area of robotics and artificial intelligence, such as the European Commission’s High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, the Austrian Council on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, and the Austrian Advisory Council on Automated Mobility. He is the author of 16 philosophy books and numerous articles, and is involved in several European research projects on robotics.

From 2012-2014, Prof. Coeckelbergh served as the Managing Director of the 3TU Centre for Ethics and Technology), and from 2013-2015, he served as the co‐chair of the Technical Committee ‘Robot Ethics’ of the IEEE Robotics & Automation Society.

He serves on numerous journal advisory boards at the intersection of ethics, society, and technology; he is a fellow of the World Technology Network (WTN) and a finalist of the 2017 World Technology Awards in the category “Ethics”. His new book, Robot Ethics (MIT Press, 2022) is a landmark guide to the ethical questions that arise from our use of industrial robots, robot companions, self-driving cars, and other robotic devices.

Welcome to our very first episode of the "22 Lessons on Ethical Technology" series!

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Herman Tavani to introduce some of the foundational principles of ethical technology, particularly in computing and digital contexts. We focus on how the current need for an ethics of technology developed, and the debates and key moments that gave rise to the current debates about ethics and technology. Professor Tavani introduces listeners  to issues and controversies that comprise the relatively new field of  digital ethics, or “cyberethics.” We discuss a wide range of ethical issues in digital technologies--from specific issues of moral responsibility that directly affect computer and information technology (IT) professionals to broader social and ethical concerns that affect each of us in our day-to-day lives. We discuss how modern day controversies created by emerging technologies can be analyzed from the perspective of standard ethical concepts and theories.

Herman T. Tavani, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Rivier University and currently a visiting scholar (applied ethics) at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  He is the author of Ethics and Technology (Wiley), a widely–used textbook that is currently in its fifth edition.  His academic publications include six other books and more than 100 articles, reviews, and edited works.  He has presented more than 100 invited talks and conference papers at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. and in twelve countries in Europe, Asia, and South America.  Prof. Tavani has been active in several professional academic organizations; he served as an executive director and later as President of the International Society for Ethics and Information Technology, and served two terms as President of the Northern New England Philosophical association.  He has been the Book Review Editor of the journal, Ethics and Information Technology since 1998. 

In this episode of “Technically Human,” I interview Gary Bengier, the author of the award-winning science fiction novel, Unfettered Journey. We talk about the relationship between his prior work as a technologist, and his current career as a writer of science fiction; we talk about the relationship between technology, philosophy, and science fiction; and we talk about the possibility of making moral choices in a world governed by deterministic technologies.

Gary F. Bengier is a writer, philosopher, and technologist. After a career in Silicon Valley, Gary pursued multiple projects animated by his intellectual passions, studying astrophysics and philosophy. He is the author of the award winning science fiction novel, Unfettered Journey. Before turning to writing speculative fiction, Gary worked in a variety of Silicon Valley tech companies. He was eBay's Chief Financial Officer, and led the company's initial and secondary public offerings. Gary has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and an MA in philosophy from San Francisco State University.

Set in a richly imagined near future, Gary’s novel, Unfettered Journey is a cross-genre novel combining thrilling action, adventure, and a love story. It traces an epic journey – from inside the human mind to the vastness of space, from AIs battling in the desert to the peace of a mountain refuge. It asks social, spiritual, and philosophical questions that reach into some of the major topics of this show. How do human values interact with technological products? How does ethics—that is to say, what we should do or ought to do, change and our respond to our new technological world? And how can science fiction itself transform our vision of who we want to become?

Welcome back to a new season of “Technically Human!” To kick off the year, I wanted to start out with a topic that has been coming up for me increasingly as I talk to people in Silicon Valley: free will.

OK, so I know it might seem a bit odd for a show about ethics and technology to feature what might seem like a purely philosophical concept. But spending time talking to folks in the tech scene, I discovered that the topic of free will comes up quite a lot. I wanted to understand why. The conversations made me wonder what it is about our technological culture—and maybe even our technologies themselves--that has reinvigorated this ancient debate, which extends back into the earliest philosophical traditions, and which is crucial to any concept of ethics.

In an age of algorithmic predictions, with tech companies and digital technologies that can anticipate and pinpoint our every move, can we still have free will as we know it? What happens to free will when our genetic technologies can plan what we’ll look like, how physically able we will be, and even who we’re likely to become? How free really are our actions when where we decide to eat is influenced by review sites that promote paid sponsors; where how we spend our money is dictated by data giants who tell us what we should like; and where even who we love is determined by algorithms on dating apps? How do we understand freedom of thought, and action, in an age where our biotechnologies not only record, but also predict and proscribe, how thoughts move around in our mind, and how they become actions?

To understand these questions, I turned to David Lawrence, the author of “Are We Biochemical Robots,” a book he wrote in opposition to Sam Harris’s popular argument against free will, a viewpoint endorsed by many in Silicon Valley. Lawrence, who holds a degree in philosophy from UCLA and a degree in law from USC, is a philosopher social critic, and a philosophical proponent of free will, opposing the determinist views held by many new media personalities. Here’s our conversation.

Hey Technically Human listeners! We’re very excited to introduce a special series of episodes that we’ll run throughout the year—“22 Lessons on Ethical Technology for the 21st Century.” The series features 22 of the most important thinkers at the intersection of tech, ethics, and human values, from around the world. In the series, I speak with Kate Hayles about how we became posthuman. I sit down with Evelynn Hammonds to talk about race, medicine, science, and technology. Jason Lewis and I talk about indigenous knowledge and technology. And more! Over the series of these 22 interviews, we hope to bring you a panoramic picture of how technology is changing what it means to be human—and how essential features of human society--like art, culture, philosophy, politics, and justice are entangled with tech culture and production. We hope you’ll stay tuned.

In addition to the “22 Lessons” special series, this season, we’re coming back with a ton of new exciting episodes from landmark thinkers and leaders in the industry, with guests like Gary Bengier, who debuted his first science fiction novel after a career in tech, notably as E-Bay’s Chief Financial Officer; Dr. Robert Pearl, the CEO of Kaiser health, in an episode about tech, medicine, and our health, and Medha Parlikar, the CTO of Casper Labs, for a discussion about the ethics of the blockchain. It’ll be an exciting year. If you want to learn more, or contact us with suggestions, complaints, or ideas, you can contact us. Be in touch! 

And don’t forget to subscribe to the show to make sure you don’t miss an episode! You can find us on your favorite podcast app--apple podcasts, Google Play, Spotify—or wherever you get your podcasts.

The “22 Lessons in Ethical Technology” series is co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Cal Poly Strategic Research Initiative Grant Award. The show is written, hosted, and produced by Deb Donig, with production support from Matthew Harsh and Elise St. John. Our head of research for this series is Sakina Nuruddin. Our editor is Carrie Caulfield Arick.

Rate or review us on Apple Podcasts, and feel free to contact us with any suggestions, complaints, or ideas. To learn more about the 22 Lessons on Ethical Technology series, visit www.etcalpoly.org. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show so that you don’t miss an episode!

**RE-RELEASE**

Ok, ok ok. So I know I said that we weren’t releasing episodes until September. But this week, we learned that one of our previous guests, Steven Olikara, former Millennial Action Project CEO and current candidate for US Senate, just got one step closer to winning his bid to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for the 2022 election. Steven is campaigning in Wisconsin for a critical seat in an election year that will determine which party controls the Senate as a majority for the next two years. The Democratic nominee will face off against current sitting senator, Republican Ron Johnson.

This is not a political podcast. And I’m not hosting this show as a partisan. But “Technically Human” is a podcast about human values, about the pursuit of ethics and equity in our society, and about how we can build a society that better stands to live up to our human values. So many issues at stake for the future of an ethical and equitable world, technological and otherwise, hang in the balance of this election. Steven is the only candidate in this race that I believe will unequivocally protect, support, and enhance these values.

There is only one debate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary for US Senate and Steven needs 5,000 people to donate by this Thursday in order to qualify for the debate stage. If 5,000 people donate just $1 each by this Thursday, June 30th at 11:59 pm EST, Steven will qualify for the debate and the world will get to hear his message. 

To support, please visit https://secure.actblue.com/donate/olikara_debate.

ORIGINAL SHOW NOTES: 

In this week's episode, I speak to Steven Olikara, founder of the Millenial Action Project (MAP), the largest nonpartisan organization of young lawmakers in the U.S. Steven and I discuss the role of tech in political activism and the challenges of bipartisanship in a technological age. 

Steven Olikara has been named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Law & Policy, and a Forward Under 40 by the Wisconsin Alumni Association. 

JUST IN: This week, Steven announced his decision to form an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, with the goal of running as a candidate in the 2022 election.

To learn more about Steven's campaign and his vision for the senate, grounded in the ideal of dignity for all, visit www.www.stevenolikara.com. 

Podcast produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.