Tech Hygiene: Recent Episodes
John Biggs and Loren Feldman
A podcast about staying clean (and sane) in a crazy digital world. Hosted by Loren Feldman and John Biggs.
I wanted to share this great interview I recorded this week with one of my favorite writers, Jonathan Taplin.
Jonathan Taplin is a writer, producer, and Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. He's had an amazing career as outlined in his book The Magic Years and recently published a new book, The End of Reality, about the failure of our "great thinkers" to prepare us for a humane future.
In this podcast, we talk about the failure of the 1960s that directly led to our culture of despair and he offers some small ways we can resist - and survive - the coming crisis.
Our theme music is by Policy AKA Mark Buchwald. (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/policy/)
Transcript
John Biggs
Welcome back to Keep Going a podcast about success and failure. I'm John Biggs. Today on the show we have Jonathan Taplin. He is a writer, film producer, Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California, and the author of two of my favorite recent books, The Magic Years, which was about your life, in amid all these rock and roll stars, and then we have the end of reality, which is about Facebook, Metaverse, crypto, and Mars. Welcome, Jonathan. Good to be here, John. Yeah. So I wanted to the premise of the show is basically about failure. And I think the two books sort of lead up to each other in the sense that The Magic Years was about a very, very special time in history, culture was changing culture changed to a degree that was probably unheard of in recent memory. And then when we come up to now we come up to the End of Reality, we sort of see that high watermark, and then the receding of that culture in the form of social media, which to a degree has destroyed almost everything that you talk about in the magic years, would you is that? Is that a correct statement?
Jonathan Taplin
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, Peter Drucker famously said, culture eats strategy for breakfast every morning. And essentially, what he meant was that you can have all the great strategies of how you're going to change the world. But if the culture is not in supportive nothing's going to happen. And so if you think about the 60s in that sense, culture, led politics and ate politics for breakfast every morning. In other words, if you think about 1963, the guy I worked for Bob Dylan, although I wasn't working for him at that point, went down to Mississippi, to Greenwood, and sang it. Voting Rights rallies for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were a kind of daring thing in the sense that that same town a year later, three civil rights workers were murdered by the Klu Klux Klan. And in the sense that that happened, and nothing happened politically for another three years. In terms of voting rights do so in the sense the culture was out ahead of the politics. And in that sense, the culture played a very important role. I would argue, and I do we in the end of reality that since about 1999, or 2000, the culture has taken a knee holistic turn. So you have the rise of gangster rap. You have the rise of gangster television, in the sense of The Sopranos, leading to the wire leading to match down Breaking Bad succession. In other words, series that all of the important TV series was essentially about bad men struggling for power in a world with no morals whatsoever. And so if you have that for, say, 15 years from 2000, to the winter of 2015, and into the 2016 election, it doesn't surprise me that a bunch of people say, Well, maybe we need Tony Soprano to be president. In other words, you get a Trumpist gangster-type figure, becoming the ruler because you think you need somebody to kick ass and take names on. So that's one element. And of course, the other element is a culture of fantasy and escape, which of course starts in the late 70s with star words, and leads you into a world in which say Marvel the Marvel Cinematic Universe is all about fantasy. You know, it's not tied to anything real. And if you think about the four characters in The End of Reality, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen, they are all deeply involved in fantasy culture. Elon Musk would like us to give him $10 trillion to send 50 people to Mars. You know, Mark Zuckerberg has invested 3 billion 4 billion in this thing called the metaverse in his business plan is that you will spend seven hours a day with a virtual reality helmet on and your life will not be tied to anything real. It will be a complete fantasy world. You know, if you want to, if you admire Tony Stark and the adventures in The Avengers, then you can be Tony Stark, and you can rent Tony Stark's house and put on Tony Stark's, you know, suit and fly around and so, and Marc Andreessen, he wrote this article last week. Yep, calling him techno-utopian. And it is so filled with b**t that I cannot even imagine. He says, you know, decentralization harnesses complexity for the benefit of everyone. Centralization will starve you. Well, he owns the most centralized NFT platform in the world OpenSea, which has 90% market share. He's an investor in Facebook, which is a monopolist in social media. He says, markets prevent monopolies and cartels, total nonsense. That social media space is monopolized by two firms, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg. You know, he says, We believe in competition, he doesn't believe in competition at all, we believe in the truth. These mechanisms of social media have been used to spread disinformation on a level that nobody has ever imagined that could be. So um, you know, somehow these people believe that if they say something, you know, they're they're the Uber Munch. They’re straight out of Nietzsche’s playbook, and they ended. And, you know, it verges into fascism, when you get to Thiel and Musk, who have a political point of view, that's pretty damn strong right now. You know, and so. But let's be clear, in terms of your themes of failure, we are headed towards failure. There's just no doubt in my mind, that we are headed towards something that could be incredibly dangerous for humanity. One of the leaders of the AI revolution, gave an interview in Wired last week, and he said, look, he said he was involved in the use of AI for new drug discovery. And he said it's pretty damn good. You know, they said, what it would take just a slightly warped human being to decide that he should use AI to build a bioweapon. And the same technology that he's using on drug discovery could be used for bioweapons. You know, and, and so I think, you know, we're in a, we're in a dangerous place, and nobody's willing to admit to failure, and we're right in the middle.
John Biggs
Is there precedent for this, or is this unprecedented?
Jonathan Taplin
Well, you know, you probably saw Oppenheimer, right? The movie. And there is a point of course, when Oppenheimer has finally witnessed the test, at ALMA Goro, of the bong and he all of a sudden comes to the realization question of what the hell have I done? What have I created? Now that he didn't think about that beforehand? It is kind of scary to me, you know, but needless to say, it informs the whole last half of the movie, in some sense, he then sets out to stop us from creating the next level, bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and needless to say, runs up against the defense establishment, and they trash him. So, I mean, I guess that's the best lesson that I could think of. The problem is that the people who are financing this are like, Marc Andreessen, they never in their lives could imagine that anything that technology has done could do anything wrong. He's early on his essay. Andreessen writes, We believe there was no material problem, whether created by nature or born technology that cannot be solved with more technology. Yet, here Andreessen is the largest investor in autonomous weapons in the country. In other words, he builds most of the software for autonomous weapons. And, you know, I don't know if your listeners know what those are. But sometimes they're called killer robots. That's a weapon in which the AI inside the weapon decides when to pull the trigger. Another return this over is not a guy in a trailer in Las Vegas, running a drone and deciding to pull the trigger. This is a completely autonomous, independent weapon in the same way that, you know, Elon dreams that one day his cars will be autonomous vehicles. They've never been that yet. But you know, anyway.
John Biggs
So, yeah. Now that will this is this is a question that I have regarding that. I think, I think if you connect these two, if you connect the dots, it's a failure of culture, as you said, well, not you didn't say that. So it seems like a failure of culture, right? So in 2000, we had our nihilist movement of, of differ in terms of movies, a little before that you had I forget when that Will Smith movie came out with Gene Hackman, it was about the about EagleEye or something like that when he was being watched. And all this sort of almost dystopian technological film, all these dystopian cultures came out of it. But what's come out recently, and you're a film producer, so maybe you're maybe you're you have some insight on this. What's come on recently is the “after the dystopia” movie. The Hunger Games. To a degree, you could argue that the Harry Potter stuff is technically a dystopia. Because it's a pretty bad situation for most of the movies. Those stories are being told to us but there are no solutions inside those stories. The little guy never gets one over on that on the robots. Right?
Jonathan Taplin
Well, let's, let's go back to your original question. So if you think about the 60s, what went wrong? What failed in the counterculture? And, you know, I would argue, you know, I'm 76. Right. So I was present at the creation.
I would argue that in 1967, there was a sense that the counterculture was winning, in the sense that the opposition to the war in Vietnam was growing and that the Civil Rights Movement had been an extraordinary success. Martin Luther King was now conceiving a bigger plan, you know, to combat poverty that was not based on race at all and was based totally on class. He was called The Poor People's Campaign. It was not called the Black Poor People's Campaign was called The Poor People's Campaign. And he was his attempt to say, look, the problems here are not just racial, the problems are class that the American system and capitalism writ large It just traps a lot of people in poverty. Okay, so what happened? There was incredible pushback against that. And then of course, in 68, Bobby Kennedy came out and joined the anti-war movement in the sense that he says he's gonna oppose Lyndon Johnson's presidency and run on an anti-war platform. And in, I cannot tell you, but it was so visceral that in the spring of 68, I was a junior at Princeton, and we were marching every weekend. And then Martin Luther King gets killed. Two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And the heart went out of the movement. And a lot of people, myself included, just concluded, oh, f**k, politics will just break your heart. It's, it's not worth it. It's not worth the pain, and maybe the danger and all of that. And I can tell you that even from the point of view of being around famous musicians like John Lennon and Bob Dylan, they were scared too. And obviously, John Lennon had a right to be scared and ended up being assassinated himself. But the point was, that we gave up and turned to much more internal concerns, whether that was music, drugs, entertainment, self, go to Esalen, and make you feel better, you know, all of this kind of stuff. And that was a total failure. And, of course, what we ended up with was Richard Nixon, you know, and needless to say, one could have the same worries about the next year. It does seem to me what AI is capable of doing in terms of creating disinformation, and we've just seen a real example of it in the last two weeks since the Israeli-Hamas war started. The ability of people to use AI to create massive amounts of disinformation, on social networks is astonishing. And I think they're just getting started. And Musk is said, hey, it's open season, you know, use the platform for what you want.
John Biggs
Is there hope?
Jonathan Taplin
Yeah, there is. I mean, look, I'm not a Doomer. I am trying to think of solutions for these problems, and say to people in general, look, we need to examine these things before it's too late. In other words, now is the time to look at AI and figure out how it could go wrong, and how we could lose control of it. Now is the time to look at disinformation, now is the time to look at what social networks are doing to our polity to our you know, I have a chart I gave, a presentation of, of teenage self-harm. So it's suicide, cuttings, depression, you know, taking drugs, whatever. And it goes is a flatline until 2011. And then it just goes straight up. And what happened in 2011, Facebook, put the Like button. And so now you're in a contest to get likes, your whole meaning becomes, in my light, your whole meaning becomes, how are other people reacting to me, your whole meaning is can I make engagement so people will notice me, your whole meaning becomes this incredibly narcissistic movement, which is now taken over our culture. And that's something we have to confront. And so, as I said, I'm not a Doomer. I just want to find some solutions and the solutions are not in people like Andreessen saying It all there's nothing wrong here. Get out of our way. If you aren't on our side, you're an enemy of progress. And you want to kill people. He said that. You want to kill people.
John Biggs
What was the other line? It was “Love doesn't scale,” which was charming. So okay, so that I think that I think that's that's an interesting movement from the 60s to today. What does what does the world look like? If they're right? And if you're right.
Jonathan Taplin
Okay, so let's see. If they're right, then the world gets economically much more unequal. So Sam Altman, who's the CEO of open AI said that he expected the marginal cost of intelligence to fall very close to zero within 10 years, the earning power of many, many workers would be drastically reduced in that scenario, it would result in a transfer of wealth from labor, to the owners of capital, so dramatic, that it could be remedied only by a massive countervailing redistribution, known as universal basic income. Okay, so Altman, Zuckerberg, Musk, and all these people think that UBI is the solution. In other words, this revolution of AI and robots isn't going to just put blue-collar workers out of work is going to put journalists, it's going to put clerks, it's going to put accountants it's going to put lawyers, it's going to put radiologists, and millions of people out of work. And yet, if you are I proposed to the existing Congress, that they pass a universal basic income. There's not a chance in the world that would happen under the Republican regime right now. So when I was in Washington three weeks ago, I said to a very prominent senator, look, this is coming. And unless you try and think about it, before it hits, you're gonna have people in the street with pitchforks. And he says, Well, that's the only way it'll anything will change. People get in the streets with pitchforks. And that's, that's not a way to run a government. Okay, so that's the dark side, the white side is that we start a resistance movement. And that resistance movement takes place in things like forums like yours. In other words, people suggest that there are other ways of living your life. You know, quit Twitter, to hell with it. Not going to change anything. NPR. I was in Boston last weekend for the Boston Film Festival. And the people at NPR said that they had gone off Twitter because Elon had said they were state media. And so they just quit it. And they assumed that the traffic to their website would drastically fall. And it didn't fall at all. And the woman who ran their social media said we'd been spending hundreds of man hours a week trying to promote ourselves on Twitter. And it was it didn't make any difference.
So I mean, look, the resistance movement takes lots of flavors. It's a young woman who has a restaurant in Maine that surrounds her in the 20 acres surrounding her. People who grow vegetables, people who raise cows, people raise sheep, and people who raise goats, and she has this commune, surrounding her restaurant. And, and it's, you know, it's kind of magical. It takes a place of, you know, I'm involved in the Americana. I'm the chairman of the Americana Music Foundation. So you go down to Nashville two weeks ago. And you have all these people playing Panchos and fiddles and acoustic instruments, and singing in Close harmonies, as if you could have transported yourself back to 1938. And in other words, people who value the cultural past, not people who just thought everything started with Kanye West, you know. So it takes the part of people making documentaries and films that try and dive into this. There was a front line on Elon Musk last week. That was amazing. So I think it's, and it also takes people who are willing to be in the middle of it, who say, hey, wait a minute, we need to stop. You know, we need to think about this. You know, and then that sense, it seems important to me.
John Biggs
Alright, well, I think that's, that's fascinating. I want everybody to grab the book, The End of Reality, How Four Billionaires are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto. So we're not going to Mars? Do you think we’re going to hang out here for a little?
Jonathan Taplin
Well, that's what he wants you to think that we should abandon Earth. And you know, instead of fixing the problem, they want us to go off into this fantasy universe. And it's not going to help.
John Biggs
And then I want you to read The Magic Years as well. That was an amazing, basically a travelogue, almost of the of the 60s, just meeting all those people. It's been a real pleasure. I'm glad that I could have you on.
Jonathan Taplin
Thank you, John. Appreciate it.
John Biggs
This has been Keep Going, a podcast about success and failure. I'm John Biggs. We'll see you next week.
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Update Description
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Bilal Pervez is the founder of Chube, a new app for kids. In this podcast we talk about the future of content and why those awful Jonny Jonny videos are so popular.
Aliya Prokofyeva wants to build cities in space. I ask her when we can all go. She's the CEO of Galaktika and she's in the space race to win it.
In this potentially NSFW (but fun) episode, I talk to Alexandra Fine of Dame Products about her work in relationships and sex toys. It's a wide ranging conversation that might not be exactly for the little ones.
Peter Rubin is the author of Future Presence and has some fascinating things to say about intimacy, VR, and the future of communication. This was one of my favorite episodes and well worth a listen.
David Weinberger is an author and early Internet pioneer. In this podcast we talk about machine learning, the future of our minds, and some of the coolest AI he's ever seen.
The amazing John Sundman joined me this week for a candid talk about hope, writing, and the value of philosophy. He's one of my favorite writers and I hope you enjoy this unique podcast.
Amol Sarva is one of my favorite thinkers and this week I brought back an older episode in which we talk about the future of work. Enjoy!
Bill Studebaker of Robo Global brings us the news of robots that will fix us when we're sick and carry us around when we're old. It's some amazing stuff.
Anna Ahola Ward aka Annebot is a futurist and writer. She recently wrote a Futurist Call To Arms and she is working hard to create "super futurists" whose job it is to share the future with the rest of the world. She believes that sharing and social good are the future and we discuss media, cryptocurrencies, and the cool vs. the square. It's a great convo.
Clara Brenner is the co-founder of the Urban Innovation Fund and a staunch believer in the future of augmented cities. While she isn't a complete optimist, she believes tech and government can work together to make our cities better. Take a listen and follow her on Twitter!
Meltem Demirors is the CEO of CoinShares and a deep thinker in the crypto space. Her breadth and depth of experience is wonderfully refreshing and we had a great time talking about the future of funding and crypto.
Mark Hopkins is an IBM Futurist and has been thinking about blockchain and media since both of those things became hot topics. His work spans multiple decades and he's built some amazing tools. In this podcast we talk about the future of blockchain as it relates to media and the importance - and rise - of micropayments.
Blockchain CEO Ouriel Ohayon joins us this week to talk about the future of blockchain and where the bitcoin price is going. He's a thorough and smart thinker so he's well worth a listen.
Felix Van de Maele is the founder of Collibra, a data governance service that maintains data integrity. In this podcast Van de Maele shares his vision of the future of big data.
Twitter isn't new. In the past, people used to share their thoughts and observations in far less high-tech ways but the effects of the new media landscape are still being assessed. Professor and author Lee Humphreys talks about the future - and past - of social media in her new boo The Qualified Self.
Piergiorgio Grossi is the IT head at Ducati and in this episode of Technotopia we look at the decades old company in the context of future transportation systems. It's a great chat.
Fabiano Caruana is a brilliant mind. He's a professional Chess player of world renown and has been thinking about the problems associated with human/computer interaction and augmentation for years. In this podcast we talk about what it feels like to be beaten - and work with - computers that are designed to destroy your chances at winning.
Suraj Patel is an unusual politician - he actually understands tech. He's running for Congress in New York and aims to lead the way in terms of tech and the future. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss why politicians are so behind and how he aims to help.
One of my favorite writers is Clive Thompson. His work appears in Wired, the New York Times, and BoingBoing and he's working on a book about programmers. I spoke with him about his recent research into the mind of the programmer and how the computing class are the lawyers of the 21st century.
Haydar Haba is a VC and entrepreneur and he's betting big on crypto. In this episode of Technotopia we go deep on his investing strategy and where he sees innovation going next.
Jeff Schmidt runs the Columbus Collaboratory, a unique think tank dedicated to building security and system solutions for major clients. Jeff and I talked about the future of cybersecurity and where the group was headed.
Amol Sarva has a had a long history with mobile computing. The founder of Virgin Mobile, he went on to build the amazing Peek email device and then went on to found Knote. After a few months, he realized that his app was the back end to what humans really wanted - connection. Now he's running thousands of square feet of shared offices and growing daily. I talked to him about the future of work and what it takes to make a truly mobile product.
Osama Hashmi runs the consultancy Mocha 7 in Seattle and he's seen it all. In this episode of Technotopia we look at problems facing the next generation and, luckily, talk about ways to fix them.
James Murry aka Murr joined us on this unique episode of Technotopia. Murr is the star of TruTV's Impractical Jokers and the author of an amazing thriller coming out this summer. We talk about the future of entertainment and what it takes to make it in the 21st century.
Social media is getting hit hard these days and Falon Fatemi is working on new ways to help us connect without all of the 20th century baggage. In this Technotopia we talk about her company, Node, and how AI will help us meet people.
First, this is a completely SFW episode. Roboticist Gil Weinberg is the father of Shimon, an amazing Marimba-playing robot with a head and camera that can make wild music with a live band. In this episode we talk about the future of music robots, what we can expect to see in robotics thanks to his research, and what it would take for a robot to make tunes like Isaac Hayes.
While I realize another podcast about ICOs might be a bit much I had the unique opportunity to sit down with Paul Vigna and Michael Casey to talk about their new book, Truth Machine, and the future of finance. It's a wide-ranging discussion and I hope you enjoy it. There is even a nice Q&A at the end.
Paul Vigna has been writing about crypto for years and his new book, The Truth Machine, focuses on the blockchain, the network that runs the bitcoin network. In this episode of Technotopia we talk about the technology and where it's headed.
Jonathan Zufi obsesses about cool stuff. His latest product, the LifeClock One, is an obsessive recreation of the LifeClock watch from Escape From New York and his book, Iconic, is a fascinating look at Apple products from beginning to end. In short, he knows a lot about cool stuff. Join us as we talk about design, art, and the future of dystopian fiction.
When investor and entrepreneur Jalak Jobanputra first visited a blockchain conference five years ago she got goosebumps. The experienced investor had heard of cryptocurrencies but now that they had truly come into maturity she was excited. Now, five years later, she's building her entire VC practice around blockchain and sees bright days ahead for the technology. Join us as we talk about the future of blockchain and where she feels the technology is headed.
The PLATO computing system started out as an early educational tool in the early 1960s. The system, which launched well outside of Silicon Valley, captured the hearts and minds of thousands of early hackers and I spoke to Brian Dear, author of The Friendly Orange Glow: The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture about the platform and his deep research into early computing. It's a fascinating discussion.
Jeremy Ring was an early employee at Yahoo as well as a State Senator. In this episode of Technotopia we talk about his book, We Were Yahoo, and what politics can learn from tech.
Nick Montfort is a professor in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies/Writing and the author of a new book, “The Future.” His book explores "future makers" - people who create the future with their work. It's a fascinating read and he's a fascinating thinker in the space.
Elizabeth Dunn has been researching and writing about the business of restaurants and her recent pieces are a fascinating look at where we're headed in the world of food. We talk about the winners and losers in the coming war for our tummies.
Polly Rodriguez is the co-founder and CEO of Unbound, an ecommerce site dedicated to women's sexuality. In this episode we talk about the future of human to human contact and what happens when you look beyond the cliches.
Machine learning expert has some fascinating things to say about the coming AI explosion and how we're more likely to see armies of smart systems rather than a unified artificial intelligence.
Lopp is my favorite thinker in cryptocurrency and the information he shared with me back in 2016 is still applicable today. Take a listen as we gear up for fresh episodes in the new year.
This week on Technotopia we talk to writer Tobias Stone whose focus on the future is tinged by lessons of the past. It's a fascinating discussion with a fascinating thinker.
In this episode we talk to Rahul Sood, founder of Unikrn and creator of one of the most successful recent US ICOs.
James Williams is a doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute. He studies the ethics of attention and persuasion in technology design and spoke with us about the rise of attention-grabbing advertising and media and how we can fight back against the onslaught.
This week I speak with Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at GMU and and editor at MarginalRevolution.com, one of my favorite sources for amazing things. This wide ranging conversation covers income inequality, future economics, and the benefits of despair.
RERUN - This week we talk to Bassem Hamdy of Procore about the future of construction and the coming changes that will fix the way we build buildings.
Mitch Goldstone runs ScanMyPhotos, a service that scans photos. This week we talk to him about the future of memory and media.
This week we talk to Chris Boos, the man who trained a robot to beat humans at FreeCiv.
Cryptocurrency expert Gil Penchina joins us this week to talk about the future of token sales.
Stephanie Alys is a Co-founder and Chief Pleasure Officer (CPO) for British lifestyle brand, MysteryVibe. That's right: this episode is about robotic pleasure devices.
This episode we talk with Emilio Ferrara, a researcher who has discovered that botnets can be used for good.
This week we talk to Abe Burmeister of Outlier clothing, a company that looks to the future when it comes to spider silk and goat hooves.
This week we talk to independent game maker Zoe Quinn about her new book, Crash Override.
On this episode we learn about some real tools that can prevent us from getting hacked.
In this episode we talk to Kristoffer Lawson, the creator of one of the coolest user interfaces I've seen in a long time. Lawson also talks about the future of personality transplants.
Ed Zitron is a PR professional with an interesting view on the future. In this episode we talk about power, network, and bread.
Ofir Barzilay works for Cyberbit, a company that manages IOT for big buildings. In this episode we talked about how to protect buildings in the future.
In this episode I talked with Rabbi Abe Cooper, Associate Dean, Director Global Social Action Agenda of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Rabbi Cooper's insight on hate groups, cyberterrorism, and good childrearing are a wonder and he turned this podcast into a really nice monologue. Enjoy!
Rob Reid is the former founder of Rhapsody and an accomplished fiction author. His new book, After On, is available now and he has a lot to say about art, design, and the future.
This week we'll rerun an amazing episode I recorded with Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn. Enjoy!
Rahul Sood is the former CEO of VoodooPC and now runs an e-sports betting system called Unikrn. He has been doing some deep thinking about the future of cryptocurrency and has some fascinating things to say about our wallets.
Founder of beacon company Estimote talks about the softness of our future and how knowledge workers can join the machine.
This week we talk to Bassem Hamdy of Procore about the future of construction and the coming changes that will fix the way we build buildings.
This week we feature Stephen Forsey, co-founder of high-end watch company Gruebel Forsey. These watches are miracles of mechanical engineering and it's fascinating to hear Stephen talk about the future of watchmaking.
Bryony Cole is the founder of the Future of Sex podcast and she joins us to talk about, well, the future of sex and to let us know about a sex tech hackathon happening in New York THIS WEEKEND.
This week we talk to the founder and CEO of Hint, Kara Goldin, about the future of water and diet.
This week we're talking to Sarah Kaufman, Assistant Director at the NYU Rudin Center for Transportation. Kaufman believes that transportation is about to experience a sea change and that, in the end, New York and other urban areas will have to adapt or fail.
This week on Technotopia we present Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn. We talk about sex tech and the problem of connection in an over-connected society.
On this week's show we talk with Andrew Zimmern, a chef and traveler. Zimmern believes that food culture is now the driving force behind the future of ecology and the environment and that everyone has the right to good, wholesome food.
Richard Clarke is a former White House cybersecurity expert and one of the most interesting people I've talked to on the podcast. His next book, Warning, will be out May 23. In this episode he talks about the "sentinel personality" and what it takes to tell the world something terrible is about to happen.
This week on Technotopia I talk to Greg Mark, founder of Markforge. Mark has made 3D printers that can make carbon fiber and true metal parts at a fraction of the cost of traditional printers. It's an amazing technology and he's a really cool guy.
This week we bring back a great interview with Makerbot founder Bre Pettis on the future of manufacturing.
Richard Florida is a professor and writer and his latest book, The New Urban Crisis, looks at the way cities can expand and grow with technology and innovation. You can pick up his book now.
This episode we talk to Peter Walker, author of How Cycling Can Save the World. He has some fascinating ideas on how future cities can make the most of cycles and ebikes.
This week I talk to Ryan Holiday, author and media columnist for the New York Observer. Ryan has been writing on stoicism and the future of media and he offers a quick and final fix for our social media woes.
This week we talk about Estonian e-residency and the eventual dissolution of borders with entrepreneur Tobias Stone.
Greg Ferenstein has a lot to say about the future of politics and media and he's a fascinating writer and speaker.
This week we revisit the podcast we ran with Charlie White, a write and cannabis consultant.
UPDATED AUDIO. This podcast features the creator of the Ripple Rug, Fred Ruckel. Ruckle talks about the future of manufacturing in America and how to thwart scammers.
This week we talk to Kirill Tatarinov, the CEO of Citrix and a man who knows his way around punch cards. Our topic? The future of computing, from quantum machines to 3D interfaces.
This week we talk with Noah Rosenberg whose ideas about AI, art, and computing are cutting edge.
On this inauguration day episode of Technotopia we talk about the politics of failed states and what it takes to pull ourselves out of a tailspin.
Scott of ScottEVest makes jackets with lots of pockets... and they're really cool. This week I talk to Scott about the future of wearables and why clothing hasn't changed in centuries.
We're back after a short holiday break with Roi Carthy, CMO of Shine, a web ad blocker. We talk social media, politics, and peace.
We'll be back with our regularly scheduled podcasts after the holiday. Until then, enjoy Ruben Bolling in a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion.
This podcast comes from and interview I ran with Neal Stephenson at TechCrunch Disrupt.
Technotopia is taking a little break for the holiday. Here's one of our favorite podcasts with Brian Solis.
Flavio Villanustre is an expert in Big Data and has just released a new platform designed to let fans of open source try their hand at massive data stores. He works at LexisNexis and has a lot to say about the future of data at our fingertips.
Jeff Wong has been in the Valley for decades. He was formerly an exec at eBay and then built his own startups before landing at Ernst & Young where he's in charge of building cool new products. He talks about the future of corporations and what it looks like from inside a big company.
This week we have Christian Villum of the Danish Design Center. He. does some amazing work in smart cities and design.
Amar Hanspal is an SVP of Product at Autodesk and wanted to talk to us about the future of manufacturing and the tools future makers will use to change the world. Cool stuff.
Ralph Clark has a job that, hopefully, will someday soon disappear. He is CEO of Shotspotter, a system that listens for and triangulates shots fired in cities, jungles, and forests. His system, live in 90 cities, is essentially a quick and easy way for police to listen for dangerous situations and respond as necessary. He talks about Smart City World Expo Congress in Barcelona and we discussed the future of gun violence and the problems facing modern cities.
Charlie White is a writer and consultant and has been working in politics and media for decades. He's written more than a million words online and knows a think or two about the future of our written, video, and online world.
This week on the show I talk with cartoonist Ruben Bolling, one of my favorite political commentators and all-around funny guy. This podcast is a blast.
Joey DeVilla is a blogging hero of mine and a really smart guy. In this episode we talk about RFID, NFC, and accordions and he even plays us a little bit of Microsoft lore on the old squeezebox. Enjoy!
In this episode we talk to Laura Dawson, an expert on publishing and metadata. I asked her about what books will look like in 10 years. You'll be surprised by her answer.
Amar Hanspal is an SVP of Product at Autodesk and wanted to talk to us about the future of manufacturing and the tools future makers will use to change the world. Cool stuff.
This week we talk to John Sundman author of Biodigital and Acts of the Apostles. His work predicts CRISPR, genetic machines, and on-chip viruses and he lives in Martha’s Vineyard where he’s writing a new book.
This week we talk to a pioneer in technology, Ken Mages, an inventor and co-founder of Secure One.
I've long loved Brian Solis' work and I'm pleased to have him on the show talking about cameras, Coca Cola, and travel.
This week we have a special treat. I spoke with Neal Stephenson on stage at Disrupt in San Francisco and was able to ask him questions about the future and the place of fiction in innovation. It was a fun interview and he was a great guy.
Walter Duncan is a former teacher turned startupper who believes that education is the key to a better world. His product, Quickey, is making it easy for teachers to computerize their classrooms.
This week on the show we talk to Paul Papadimitriou a speaker on innovation and amazing things.
This week we have a classic episode from Ben Hammersley who was one of the coolest and most influential thinkers on the show in the past 20 weeks. Check him out!
This week we talk to one of the founding team members of MTV Russia and the creator of convergent media group, Rob Anderson.
Rich is an online comedy legend and this episode he talks about the future as he sees it. Warning: this episode is pretty raunchy so I'd recommend not listening with little kids.
This week we talk about education and the future of computer-aided schooling with the president of Siminars.
Antonia is the author of Chaos Monkeys, one of the best-written books on the startup world I've ever read. It's an amazing read and he has a lot to say about the future.
Eliot Peper is a novelist and entrepreneur who has written a number of amazing books. His latest, Cumulus, is available on Amazon.
Author John Sundman talks about the arc of history and the future of genetic engineering.
David Fine is a writer and speaker on the future of cities. You can read his Medium posts here.
Jeffrey Martin makes a 4K resolution spherical camera that can take amazing 360-degree videos. He's been making immersive photos and video for decades and his work has been featured around the world. Today he talks with us about the limitations of VR and the future of 360-degree storytelling.
This time we talk to Bitcoin entrepreneur Haseeb Awan who is a little bearish on finance but bullish on the rise of the East and the changes afoot globally.
In this episode we talk to Raj Raghunathan, author of If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy?
In this fascinating episode futurist Joe Brewer talks about allof the changes afoot for us in the next 20 years and his hope thatwe survive them. His ideas are chilling yet exciting.
This week we talk to patent attorney Krista Contino Saumby who talks to us about patents, the Godly Powers, and the future of international inventors.
This week we learn about AI from Jana Eggers, CEO of Nara Logics and creator of smart tools for big data.
This week on Technotopia I talk to Michelangelo Guarise, the community manager for the UDOO project, an amazing single-board computer that is as powerful as a PC.
Entrepreneur and general Renaissance man Arlo Gilbert is joining us to talk about the future of health, robots, and why Google got out of the Big Dog industry.
This week I talk to Melina Papadopoulos about the future of communications in an always-on world.
This week we talk to Jameson Lopp, a bitcoin/blockchain expert who tells us about the future of trust.
In this episode futurist Paul Higgins talks about work, cities, and the future of travel.
This week we talk about how Spam is the run-off of mental attention and how privacy will allow us to move from multi-tasking to multi-personalities.
This week we have Ryan Cousineau, an amateur futurist with some interesting ideas on energy and future cities.
This week we talk to Peter Singer, writer and consultant. Singer has a deep background in future military technologies and has a writer's eye for the future.
This week we talk to an amazing choreographer who works with some unusual dancers -cranes over city skylines.
This week we talk to journalist and artist Ben Hammersley, he of the amazing mustache. He talks to us about why Batman sucks, who will win a zombie attack, and how to be a better person.
This week we talk to Mark Stevenson writer of An Optimist's Tour Of The Future and a reluctant futurist.