Plutopia News Network

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, hosts Scoop Sweeney, Wendy Grossman, and Jon Lebkowsky have an open discussion without a guest, considering what’s buzzing at the moment. The conversation touches on various topics, including being a dilettante versus a specialist, the misuse of AI in solving policy problems, and the influence of technology on participatory medicine. They also discuss the anti-vax movement, the effects of misinformation, and the political landscape, including voter suppression and the influence of venture capital on job security. The episode concludes with reflections on the current state of democracy and the challenges posed by disinformation and authoritarianism.

Contemporary media artist Patrick Lichty returns for another conversation with Plutopians Scoop and Jon. In this conversation, we discuss the current state of digital art. Pat is a Contemporary Media Artist, educator, professional writer/researcher, expert in Augmented/Virtual Reality/Drones, public speaker, and curator. He is a Herb Alpert/CalArts fellow, a TED Global exhibitor, and his writing on culture and art is widely published. As an activist and artist, he was part of or worked with the collectives RTMark, Pocha Nostra, The Yes Men, Terminal Time, Second Front, Shared Universe, and Critical Art Ensemble, showing in the Venice and Whitney Bienniales. His writing on VR, AR, and media culture are widely published, and for 10 years he was Editor in Chief of Media Arts Journal Intelligent Agent, published by Christiane Paul, Adjunct Curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He lives in Winona, MN. Pat Lichty: Digital art is finally getting accepted in the, what I’d say, the high art ecosphere, between museums and galleries and collectors and that sort of thing and you know, there’s been different names for this stuff like, you know, cyberart – that’s kind of where we started into this, then new media, then post internet art, then now we’re kind of getting into digital art, which is, you know, there’s a lot of stuff with the guarantee of it, you know, and this has been the big thing with digital art, you know, how can we guarantee this as something that you can collect or sell and that has to do with verifying it on the blockchain.

In this episode of the Plutopia Podcast, hosts Jon and Scoop engage in a wide-ranging discussion covering various topics, including the ongoing ransomware attack at Ascension Seton hospitals, solar flares, science fiction, billionaire bunkers, and QAnon conspiracy theories. They also touch on the upcoming debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, speculating on Trump’s debate tactics. The conversation highlights Plutopia’s commitment to freewheeling discussions, even if they occasionally veer off into humorous, speculative, or strange territory. The episode provides a blend of current events, personal anecdotes, and societal commentary, reflecting the eclectic nature of our podcast. Jon: Biden and Trump are going to have a couple of debates, or Trump is going to have a couple of debates, whether he will let Biden get a word in edgewise is another question. Scoop: Yeah, he’s not real good at following the rules of decorum and debate. He just wants to scream and yell and interrupt. That’s how the last one’s were. Jon: It’d be cool if Biden showed up with a bunch of black guys carrying bazookas. Scoop: Okay…! Jon: Terrorize Trump for a change.

ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley joins the Plutopia podcast this time. Jay works with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where he researches, writes, and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues. The ACLU is very involved in legislative advocacy. We have a team here in Washington of lobbyists who work with Capitol Hill and federal agencies to try to stop bad things and encourage good things. And also a lot of times just educate staffers. As everybody knows Capitol Hill is run by 20-somethings. And members of Congress who have to deal with every issue under the sun, A to Z, often aren’t very educated on particular abstruse tech issues like what we were talking about. And so just having people who can pick up the phone, people on Capitol Hill who call and help educate them about the realities of things. * * * The ACLU, a multi-issue nonprofit, has a team of lobbyists in Washington working to influence legislation, educate Capitol Hill staff, and address privacy and civil liberties concerns. Jay, as part of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, focuses on issues like digital identity and drones, which have significant implications for privacy and power dynamics. He highlights the risks posed by surveillance technologies and the importance of protecting individual rights against misuse by both government and private entities. The conversation also covers the challenges of combating mass surveillance and ensuring technologies serve the public rather than expanding the power of corporations and government. Relevant Links Ross McNutt and his Baltimore aerial surveillance: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/baltimore-police-secretly-running-aerial-mass Flock: https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/flock_1.pdf Google and Project Maven: https://www.wired.com/story/3-years-maven-uproar-google-warms-pentagon/ The Dawn of Robot Surveillance: https://www.aclu.org/publications/dawn-robot-surveillance Point and shoot chemical detection: https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/new-point-and-shoot-chemical-detectors-raise-privacy-and-constitutional-issues Justice Dept report on Ferguson: https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf More on airport security and facial recognition: https://papersplease.org

Madeline Bocaro describes herself as a passionate fan of rock music. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, she explains her passion for all things rock and roll. We also explore her ultimate biography of Yoko Ono, In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono. I just saw a picture of her in a magazine in 1967. It was a picture of her in front of a frame of one of her films. And I just thought, “This person has kind of a mischievous look. She looks kind of interesting.” And her film was about “Bottoms,” you know, on the screen walking. And I said, “Well, this is kind of cool.” I kept the picture and the following year I realized, “Hey, this is the person that’s with John Lennon.” So I was so happy because now I’m like, “Wow, I can really find out what she’s doing now.” And sure enough, you know, they end up getting married and doing all their events together. The bed-in for peace, then, you know, everything they did. They were on the news every day practically. I started collecting everything she ever did, all the interviews, all her music, all her TV interviews – I would record off the TV. And I’ve been writing about her all my life. In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono HARD COVER BOOKS signed by the author are exclusively available at http://conceptualbooks.com SOFT COVER: also at http://conceptualbooks.com Amazon worldwide AND: http://bookbaby.conceptualbooks.com

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, hosts Jon Lebkowsky, Wendy Grossman, and Scoop Sweeney discuss with guest Mike Nelson, a senior fellow at Carnegie Asia, the evolution and impact of the internet and encryption policies. Mike shares his journey from being Al Gore’s science advisor, contributing to legislation that allowed public internet access, to his current focus on technology policy at Carnegie. He reflects on the internet’s explosive growth during his tenure at the White House, highlighting the lack of cybersecurity concerns at the time compared to the multi-trillion dollar stakes and geopolitical consequences present today. The conversation delves into the ongoing conflict between privacy advocates and law enforcement over access to encrypted communications. Mike criticizes inconsistent encryption policies and warns of the dangers of weakening encryption, which could impact a wide range of legitimate users including journalists. He also discusses the misuse of encryption and cryptocurrencies, noting the latter’s primary use in ransomware. Further, Mike touches on his career trajectory, including his early advocacy for public internet access and his ongoing efforts to combat “stupid policy” through alternative frameworks. The discussion also covers the influence of digital technology on societal structures, politics, and personal privacy, emphasizing the need for careful policy crafting to avoid unintended consequences. The dialogue expands to address broader technology issues like AI, digital leadership, and the sustainability of platforms like Signal. The hosts and guest critique current technology and encryption policies, debating the potential benefits and drawbacks of various regulatory approaches. Michael expresses concern over the future of encryption, digital currencies, and the overarching impact of technology on society, including the shift towards centralized digital power. By the end of the discussion, it’s clear that while technology offers immense opportunities for innovation and problem-solving, it also presents significant challenges that require thoughtful and informed policy responses to ensure it benefits society as a whole. Relevant Links @Mike Nelson on X (Twitter) The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media by Kevin Driscoll The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop “Asia’s Interest in Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency—and Challenges to Cross-border Use” by Robert Greene Carnegie Endowment compendium on “Digital Leadership” Background on “colonial copyright” and how the U.S. copyright first was redesigned to focus on profit rather than culture and creativity. (The original term was 14 years.) Article about Mike’s role in the key-escrow encryption (and the Clipper Chip). Details on the first Presidential Twitter debate (in 2008) from the dawn of Political Twitter. What was Elon Musk’s strategy for Twitter?

This time on the Plutopia podcast, our evil alien overlords, Jon and Scoop, talk about their favorite science fiction films and TV series.

Filmmaker Friedrich Moser is on a crusade for truth. His new film “How to Build a Truth Engine” features investigators from the fields of technology, journalism, folklore and neuroscience who show that if you can hack the information feed, you can hack somebody’s mind. Friedrich Moser: Anything that happened in the world would become the cornerstone of a new conspiracy story, like a small story. In some you have this web of conspiracy stories that grow together and then on top of that you see the formation of a real conspiracy. And that’s the conspiracy that led to January 6th and the capital riot because a lot of people who were there, and I’m not talking about the Proud Boys – I’m not talking about those, but like normal ordinary people. A lot of people who were there genuinely believed that they were there to save democracy. So their feedback loop system of the model of the world that is in the mind and the real world had been cut off by relying exclusively on this online community for information. And that’s a really dangerous thing.

In her new book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care., Susannah Fox focuses on the health care needs of patients and caregivers. She points out the need for better communication and networking for anyone who has difficulty navigating the American healthcare system. Susannah Fox: With all of the technology that we have now, at the base of it, it’s really about the connection between and among people who are facing the same challenge, who are lost in the maze of healthcare, who find out that they’re not alone. And that moment that you find that just in time someone like you, it’s the same incredible excitement that we all felt in the early days of being online, it’s the same feeling that people have now on TikTok and whatever is the latest platform. Susannah Fox is a health and technology strategist. She is a former Chief Technology Officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where she led an open data and innovation lab. She has served as the entrepreneur-in-residence at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and she directed the health portfolio at the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project.

On the March 21st Plutopia Livestream, woke Plutopians discussed the financial woes of that orange-haired politician, the Biden impeachment hearings, RFK Junior, student loans, the University of Austin, South by Southwest and much more. “I think it was a sock puppet…”

David Gans has a long history of making music, writing about music, and broadcasting music. He recently added a new entry to his musical résumé, teaching “Psychedelia and Groove: The Music and Culture of the Grateful Dead,” a continuing studies course at Stanford University. But what I proposed was a class that was going to be very, very loosely structured. And I said, “Here are six things that we will address in these six sessions, but they won’t be rigidly divided into these things, because everybody that I invite to talk about this with me will have expertise in all these areas.” I said, “We’ll talk about the history, we’ll talk about songwriting, we’ll talk about improvisation, we’ll talk about the culture, the deadhead culture, and how the Grateful Dead impacted the music and the world around them. And we’ll talk about the Grateful Dead’s amazing way of interpreting music – it’s one of the most important things they did was take music from outside the Grateful Dead and make it their own.” David regularly streams performances at https://www.youtube.com/@dgans. Photo by Nancy Carbonaro

Jen Persson is director of the UK Civil Liberties Group, Defend Digital Me. She campaigns for a safe, fair, and transparent collection of children’s data in education and elsewhere. What happens when you start collecting school records is that they’re about children, but those records age as the people do, and now we have a record of about a third of the UK population who have been in state education over the last 20 years. So anyone under 47 also has a national pupil record, and it is de facto becoming a go-to national identity database. It is something that other departments and even the police have started to use as how to find people. And that for me is a really concerning development and something that was foreseen and argued about 20 years ago. And I think any collection of data that is starting should be asking the same questions now about thinking about how they would be down the line. So that’s kind of one aspect of what we do is around government – state-collected information about children. And then we also look at things like technology that’s used in education, so things like biometrics, AI, apps, and platforms. Jen is an advocate for digital privacy and human rights, is director of the digital privacy organization, Defend Digital Me. She writes about government plans to use personal data from education, health, and other parts of the public sector, for purposes beyond our reasonable expectations. Relevant Links danah boyd (research on teens online) UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child Sonia Livingstone Center for Democracy and Technology Electronic Frontier Foundation Open Rights Group Privacy International KOSA

This time on the Plutopia Podcast, Jake Dunagan joins us as we explore the future of governance and democracy. This podcast is from the Plutopia Live webcast on 2/22/2024. Jake is Director of the Governance Futures Lab at the Institute for the Future. More information here: https://www.iftf.org/people/jake-dunagan/ Jake Dunagan: As much as it is anathema to my values, the MAGA wing has shaped the conversation, and they are dominating the conversation, and they are moving the window over. And so that is, again, in a neutral sense, leadership. And so what’s the countervailing to that, rather than just trying to hold on to the last bits of maybe majority rule? You know, maybe if you win elections, it just feels very desperate on the left to try to hold on against this juggernaut of focus. It’s not the majority, but it is a focused, mission-driven group of people that have no end point other than seizing absolute control over the system. And so what do you do? It’s the greatest dilemma that we’ve faced, I think, in our lifetimes for sure, is what do you do when your opponent does not play by the rules, and you’re trying to hold on to legitimacy in the other group? The other side is not. I mean, I think that’s our democracy death spiral at this point. Points to consider: The conversation about the future of democracy is dominated by the MAGA wing of the Republican Party. This group is focused on seizing power and does not care about the traditional norms of democracy. The dominance of the MAGA wing is due in part to the fact that they have a clear vision for the future, while the left is focused on holding onto the status quo. The left needs to develop a compelling vision for the future of democracy that is better than the one offered by the MAGA wing. This vision should include things like protecting individual rights and freedoms, and ensuring that everyone has a fair shot at success. The left needs to be more strategic in its thinking. This means being willing to play hardball and fight for what it believes in. The Republican Party has been taken over by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and there is no longer any room for dissent within the party. The only way to stop the MAGA wing is to push back against them in a way that is uncomfortable and disruptive. This may require people to step outside of their comfort zones and take risks.

This time on the Plutopia podcast, we investigate Texans’ love affair with high school football. Football culture… Capture the energy of high school football in Texas, and you could power a planet. A view of Texas from space on any Friday night in-season could be blinding – those Friday night lights at football stadiums across the state. We talked about the game and the culture on Plutopia Live, Thursday, 2/15/2024. An urban legend claims the best time to commit burglary in an average Texas town is on a Friday night during a high school football game! In Texas, high school football isn’t just a sport; it’s a way of life. Friday night lights illuminate small towns and big cities alike as communities gather to support their local teams. High school football games often draw large crowds and foster a sense of community pride. However there’s a decline in football participation, particularly in high school. This decline is attributed to concerns about the harmful effects of concussions and sub-concussive hits, potentially causing brain damange in some cases, leading many parents to keep their kids away from tackle football as a safety precaution. Changing demographics, athletic specialization, and the rise of non-sanctioned activities like club sports are also potential causes for the slumping involvement in football and other traditional sports. Originally webcast February 15, 2023 – on the weekly Plutopia News Network Livestream at YouTube. Photo: Keith Johnston, Unsplash

Moira Meltzer-Cohen has provided legal services for persons arrested in the course of justice struggles, including Indigenous communities and social movement groups. Moira Meltzer-Cohen: I mean, it doesn’t just contribute to greenhouse gases, right? I think that might be sort of the thing that everyone is most aware of. But the pollution, the environmental degradation, the mutagenic potential of all of the radioactive dust that is created by different kinds of mining, these are all consequences of colonial modes of resource extraction that probably would not be happening if anyone bothered to actually follow the aspirational international law norms that are being set forth in, like for example, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. That is not really something that has been provided for in America. There are these consultation requirements that are A, very minimal, and B, often ignored. Moira Meltzer Cohen is an educator, attorney, and abolitionist serving overlapping communities of activists, LGBTQ+, and prisoners. Moira provides criminal defense, particularly for those arrested in the course of justice struggles; representation of witnesses before federal grand juries; and advocacy for those seeking gender affirming and other necessary (but often withheld) health care while in prison.

Dr Richard Bartle is Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He co-created the first virtual world, MUD or multi-user dungeon, a progenitor of the Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game industry. His 1996 Player Types model has seen widespread adoption by MMO developers and the games industry in general. He’s the author of Designing Virtual Worlds and How to be A God: A Guide for Would-Be Deities. Prior to the interview, he told us “I regard games as a medium of personal expression by their designers. I simply want better games.” Richard Bartle: I was always a gamer and I’d always been creating worlds, paracosms. When I went and got to the University of Essex I was planning to make a world implemented in software. But I saw that Roy [Trubshaw] had just started like a week earlier work on this game MUD and I thought no, there’s no point in me writing my game if Roy’s doing the same thing. So he was a year older than me so he was more experienced programming, he knew all the stuff from that. So I started helping him with content and eventually Roy had to do his family of projects so he handed over the code ownership of MUD to me. That’d be 1980 and that’s when I started working with it. But the reason that we were working on it, at least in part Roy was working on it through curiosity because he was just interested in computers, he wanted to know and wanted to do things. But the real, the under libraries for it was because we wanted to make our own world because the real world sucked. MUD Links MUDII, the latest incarnation of the world’s very first MUD! Multi User Dungeon 2

Renshin Bunce is a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest who received Dharma transmission in 2013. She worked as a hospice chaplain from 2010 until she retired in 2022. Her latest book is Remembering Myogen Steve Stücky. Renshin Bunce: The impetus for the book was, I am, as you said, a Zen teacher. And Steve Stücky died ten years ago. At the time of his death he was one of the Abbots at San Francisco Zen Center. When he was made Abbot, he had not lived at Zen Center for, I don’t know, 20 years or something. So he was quite a surprise. He was Abbot for seven years when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And that was enough time for people to, I would say, begin to get to know him. His death was an enormous shock. So I have found in the years since his death that I was repeating stories about Steve to my students. So the point to the book was to gather those stories in the hopes that some kid who has become so curious about Zen that they’re coming around one of the Zen Center buildings. And they go in the bookstore and they’ve heard about this Steve Stücky. Who was he? So what I was hoping for, this is good. This never occurred to me before. What I was hoping for was to concretize his – make permanent his – teachings.

Brenda Laurel is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a pioneer in developing virtual reality, a public speaker, and an academic. She is known for her work on virtual reality and her advocacy for diversity and inclusiveness in video games. She founded Purple Moon, a company that created computer games for girls, in 1993. Purple Moon was bought by Mattel in 1999 and eventually shut down, but Laurel’s work has had a lasting impact on the gaming industry. Link to Computers as Theater at Amazon. Brenda Laurel: Our thought was to try to do some research to figure out how we might get girls engaged with technology so they wouldn’t be afraid of it. That was the initial impulse. And then as we went around, we interviewed like 1,000 kids all over the country, several years of research. We started learning things that we could do with those games that might be actually relevant and liberating for girls between the ages of 8 and 12. And so our mission became twofold, really. One was a computer literacy attractant. That was the initial impulse. But as we got into it, it was about – oh, shit, man, we can do some things for little girls that might make a big difference in their lives. And as I was raising three of them at the time, I was closely related to the problem space.

joey lopez phd loves media, all kinds of media. That love of media was confirmed at UT Austin’s ACTLab, where he was teaching assistant for Sandy Stone, the legendary academic and media theorist. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we discuss ACTLab, high-end audio gear, and joey’s work at Texas A&M’s Media and Gaming Lab. joey lopez: When I took soundscapes Sandy was like, production’s important, but why are you making this? What are you making? What’s the story? What is sound? Why does sound matter? What was sound and what will sound be? Oh, it was just intoxicating. So I just really latched onto that to the extent that I ended up taking a plethora of classes with her on multiple topics. And it’s also where I learned HTML. I learned HTML and notepad at the ACT Lab. And by the second semester, I was making websites for hi-fi companies. And that would end up being like a $500 to $1,000 a month side gig that I did all the way through my PhD. I was hosting either dealer or importer level websites for gear that they were selling. And that was really fun. And I learned it all in the ACT Lab. joey lopez phd – joey lopez phd is an Associate Professor of the Practice at Texas A&M and Director of the Department of Communication’s Media & Gaming Lab. joey is a polymath of sorts whose works range from Chicana Feminism to automotive journalism to hardware and software development cheerleading. He is often described as a degenerate who is looking for other degenerates to cause “otherness” with. He is a co-founder of the Convergent Media Collective, a group of “stuff makers” who span multiple disciplines and geographical spaces. He is also a co-owner of a High-End Audio shop called Dremonoid’s in San Antonio, TX. He is a fellow of the ACTLab Program which was founded by tech goddess Sandy Stone. Links mygeekylife.com https://www.instagram.com/joeyhifi/ https://www.instagram.com/dreamonoids/ https://www.instagram.com/tamumediagaminglab/

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we discuss the various technologies and sites that comprise the Fediverse. Johannes Ernst and Tom Brown have explored the Fediverse since the early days of the movement for an alternative to big social media. Johannes Ernst: Think of social media as this one linear feed that somehow streams by you. The best we can do, all we can do, can be to organize this differently, for example, or have different kinds of friend classes, like the Google+ used to do back in the day. There’s so many innovations and innovative things you could do if you could innovate as an innovator, which you can’t do on top of Facebook or on top of Twitter or any of these things. But you can in the Fediverse. One of the big problems that the world has is that so many of our communication channels from mass media to social media are fundamentally manipulated by interests that we cannot see and we cannot understand, and we would probably disagree with if we knew what they were. And so one of the premises on the societal level that the Fediverse has is that we are building a communication network that at least can’t be manipulated by unaccountable third parties, which is a huge proposition as far as I’m concerned. Johannes Ernst (@[email protected] on Mastodon)is a technologist, entrepreneur and community organizer. At Dazzle, he works on technology and governance enabling people to get back control over their on-line lives including their identity and their personal data. He is also co-organizer of the Fediverse Developer Network and FediForum, a twice-yearly unconference for the people who move the Fediverse forward. Tom Brown (@[email protected] on Mastodon) is a software developer and beer league hockey player. Links: David Pierce in The Verge: 2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse – an excellent summary of the case for the Fediverse. Anil Dash in the Rolling Stone: The Internet is About to Get Weird Again — Dash argues that a 25-year draught in decentralized innovation is now ending. Johannes’ notes from an interesting meeting at Meta on what they are up to with Threads: https://reb00ted.org/tech/20231208-meta-threads-data-dialogue/

Attorney Ed Cavazos specializes in technology and intellectual property law. He joins the Plutopia podcast this time as we explore artificial intelligence, content moderation, and telemedicine. Ed feels that lawsuits to stop AI programs like ChatGPT and open AI will likely fail. Ed Cavazos: There will be temptation to overreact. And we could lose some real valuable benefits of these technologies if we do that. I don’t know if this is a great place to be, right? I mean, the world may have been better the day before they unleashed this stuff, but it’s out there now. And I actually am optimistic that there will be more benefits than harm. But the harm is real. The dangers are real. And I mean, we could just go down a list, right? And we could get things wrong. We could get bad medical advice. It could be used to scam you – you think it – email scams and voice scams, the Nigerian prince type thing – you think it’s bad now? I think wait for those guys to start leveraging AI to make it really hard to know if you’re talking to someone real or someone fake. And all that’s coming. I know that’s out there. I know that’s bad stuff. But I think the legal system is just going to have to deal and try to keep up with it. I don’t think we can kill it. Ed Cavazos’ previous Plutopia interview: https://plutopia.io/ed-cavazos-cyberlaw/

Gus Hosein worries about data, everyone’s data. As executive director of Privacy International, Gus has a long history of fighting to protect people’s data from exploitation by companies and governments. When the Bush administration introduced the US-VISIT system, we were the only organization on the planet that opposed it, saying, this is ridiculous. You shouldn’t be fingerprinting kids coming to visit people in the US. But Americans didn’t really care. Although it was funny, because at that time, the Brazilians were a little bit rebellious. And they decided to retaliate against Americans by fingerprinting all American visitors. And Colin Powell was Secretary of State at the time, and he was on his way to Brazil. When he was asked about that, he said he was going to make his displeasure clear to the Brazilians that that was not a good practice. He couldn’t even imagine that this was standard US policy. I was working at the time campaigning against that system, and the Japanese government had also introduced its equivalent system. And the EU was very much on our side, saying, no, you should not be collecting data on EU citizens who are just visiting the US. And the data collected in the US-VISIT system, the fingerprint data is kept for 100 years. Gus Hosein is the Executive Director of Privacy International, a London-based charity that works across the world to protect people and their data from exploitation by governments and companies. He has worked at the intersection of technology and human rights for over twenty-five years.

Science fiction author and undisputed Queen of Cyberpunk Pat Cadigan joins this episode of the Plutopia podcast. We explore cyberpunk, artificial intelligence, and her recent novelizations of classic sci-fi movies and Japanese anime. Pat tells us she has no plans to write her own movie scripts… I am probably the wrongest person in the whole world to ever consider writing a screenplay, because apparently, you have to pitch this stuff. And my idea of a pitch is studio executives come to me and explain why I should give them time of day. I don’t make 30-second pitches on elevators to guys who can’t read. I’ve had just enough of Hollywood over the years to know that I’m probably not a good candidate for writing, for a studio. The other thing that they all seem to have is industrial strength ADHD, where they’re all excited about one project. And it’s all they can talk about. And then suddenly, you don’t hear anything about it, and everyone’s on to something else. Previous Plutopia interviews with Pat: Pat Cadigan: Alien 3 and Me Pat Cadigan: Covid and Cancer Won’t Stop Me from Going to Work Pat’s Latest Novelization Photo by Andy Miah. License

Andy Cohen is a blues musician who, when he’s not on the road touring, resides in Memphis Tennessee. He plays mostly southeastern music that he found on old 78 RPM records. Andy’s performances include blues, gospel, country dance music, fiddle tunes, ballads, classic rags, country songs, and boogies. If there’s one thing Andy loves as much as playing blues, that would be talking about the blues. I lived in Asheville, North Carolina in the mid 1970s. And I met a man there, his name was Walt Phelps, and he could play a little bit of guitar. And I asked him where he was from, and he said, I’m from Lawrence, South Carolina. And he was born in the same year as [Reverend Gary] Davis. He was in his close to 80 when I met him. I said, when you were a kid, did you know a blind kid that could pick his ass off? And he said, yeah, you’re talking about Gary Davis. I knew him, and I knew his brother, Buddy Pinson. I knew them both. And then he proceeded to take my guitar and he played “Candyman” just exactly like Reverend Davis taught me. Links Andy’s website: http://www.andycohenmusic.com/ Various music recordings at Wendy’s website: https://www.pelicancrossing.net/mp3s.htm Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics, by Phil Jamison Buy the book Riverlark label: http://www.riverlark.com/oldtimecds/ Cornell Folk Song Society: http://cornellfolksong.org/ Harry Orlove: http://harryorlove.com/ Bottle Hill band at Fox Hollow Folk Festival 1970: https://archive.org/details/bottle-hill-fox-hollow John Roberts and Tony Barrand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberts_and_Barrand Dave van Ronk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Van_Ronk The Duhks: https://duhks.com/ Eliza Carthy: https://eliza-carthy.com/ Martin Carthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Carthy Rev Gary Davis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverend_Gary_Davis Media Reverend Gary Davis: Andy Cohen, “Franklin Blues”: Ray Fisher, singing Willie’s Lady:

Plutopia’s own Jon Lebkowsky was an early adopter of digital technology and the internet. On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon presents a personal history of digital tech, life online in the 1990s, the internet, and much more. Jon Lebkowsky: So I heard that you could get a pretty decent computer, personal computer, an IBM PC clone from a company that was called PC’s Limited. And PC’s Limited was actually a DBA for a company called Dell Computers. So I bought one of the first Dell computers, which was through PC’s Limited. And carted it home and I had this computer and this amber monitor, no color, just amber, that was it. And a stack of manuals like this [holds hands to suggest size], huge stack of manuals, one for each computer program and one for the computer itself and one for the monitor and all this stuff that I had to read through and learn. And I started kinda banging away on the computer and then it’s like, okay, Marsha, now what I wanna do next is I wanna log in via long distance to this system that’s out in California and it’s gonna be about 10 bucks an hour. And this led to a rather tense discussion. And of course, acknowledging who wears the pants in the family, we squashed that idea. Currently cohost of Plutopia News Network, Jon was formerly CEO of FringeWare, Inc. and editor/publisher of FringeWare Review; associate editor at bOING bOING and Factsheet Five; writer for Mondo 2000, 21C, Wired, Whole Earth Review, Austin Chronicle; sub-editor at Millennium Whole Earth Catalog; and blogger at Worldchanging. A member of the online community The WELL for over 30 years, he cohosts three WELL forums: VC (virtual communities), Media, and Civil War (.ind) conferences.

In his 1941 short story, “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov created his three laws of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law, and A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection is not conflict with the first or second law. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Cindy Grimm and Bill Smart feel Asimov’s laws miss the mark when it comes to laws of robotics. Bill Smart: Asimov’s three laws, everyone brings them up. They were a plot device by a guy – who had never seen a robot – to drive story. If you were to think about it for five seconds, they are a reasonable three things to come up with. If you think about it for ten seconds, they fall apart of course. We do need structures and we do need a way of thinking about the ethics and morality of a social impact of robots. But I think it’s way more nuanced – way, way, way more nuanced – than you could compile into a paragraph of text. Cindy Grimm: I mean something even simple like, a robot should always do what you tell them to do, they should always get out of your way, that might not actually make sense. If the robots are all trying to get out of your way and so on, but there’s a needed delivery or they actually need to get somewhere, then maybe the robot does actually need to take priority over the humans. You can’t really have those conversations when you start from the place of, you know, all robots should kowtow to humans and stuff. Cindy Grimm is an American computer scientist, roboticist, and mechanical engineer. Bill Smart researches the areas of robotics and machine learning. Both are professors in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University. Links We Robot We Robot 2023 Wendy’s summary of this year’s “We Robot” XKCD on Asimov Ghost Work, by Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri Wendy’s review of Ghost Work

Don Norman has been a professor, industry executive, consultant, keynote speaker, and author. He’s worked in electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and design. He’s the author of several books, among them Design for a Better World, his latest; also including The Design of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity,, Emotional Design and The Design of Future Things. Don believes you should design for people the way they are, not for how you want them to be. He joins the Plutopia Podcast this time as we discuss his journey from 1988’s The Design of Everyday Things to his latest book, Design for a Better World. Don Norman: I wanted to do something that actually was much more important for the world – and the world is a mess and I thought, what can I do to make a difference? And I thought about all the problems that exist, but I’ve also said, gee, you know, lots of good people have written about all these problems. I don’t have anything to add. And I looked for the solutions. Well, lots of good people have written about the solutions. I don’t have anything to add. Most of them are technology solutions, however. But then I said, wait a minute, we have all these problems, we have all these solutions but they aren’t being done. Why aren’t they being done? And I realized the real issue was human behavior and that maybe that’s where I could say something. And so what I tried to do was put together the problems that I thought I could say something new on. Photo by Peter Belanger Links: Wendy Grossman’s review of Living with Complexity “Responsible AI: Bridging From Ethics to Practice” by Ben Shneiderman Heavy Weather, by Bruce Sterling Charlie Stross’s blog Viridian Design Movement

Conceptual media artist, activist and educator Patrick Lichty joined the Plutopia Live show for a wide-ranging discussion of current events and the future. We explored migration and borders, climate change, AI and art, and the techno-tsunami of new ideas. Patrick Lichty: When we think of the idea of the future, I think something that’s a relatively new thing I think is really, really interesting called Paleo-Future Studies and the idea of what the future … in other words, like the future isn’t what it used to be. And so what happens, I think part of the questions I was thinking about and asking was the matter of saying what is the future now as opposed to what it was, as opposed to “2001, A Space Odyssey.” We’re now thinking about AI, whether crypto technology, blockchain technology is actually going to take hold. And I think AI is going to transform a lot of things. It reminds me of an event very similar to that, when my father retired over computers coming to his insurance office, and I think this is as big of a shift. It’s as big of a shift as smartphones.

Cory Doctorow has a problem with corporate bullies. In his latest book, The Internet Con, How to Seize the Means of Computation, Cory details how monopolies have taken control of much of the tech sector and are unlikely to give it back without a fight. Cory Doctorow: Corruption arises out of monopoly, so we know what our marching orders should be, and obviously it’s much harder under monopolistic conditions to do something about it. The best time to have prevented monopolies was 40 years ago but the second best time is now and we are living at a historically unprecedented moment in which there is interest in public service provision, good governance, good public administration and returning power over the structure of your daily life from corporate boardrooms into publicly accountable meetings held by publicly accountable agencies. Cory is a science fiction author, activist, journalist, and ball of fire. He’s written quite a few books, including Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitallism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. Cory’s been bringing back muckraking big time at Pluralistic.net. Portrait by Jonathan Worth

Journalist John Schwartz joins Plutopians to discuss journalism and climate science. After two decades at the New York Times, John has joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Journalism as a professor of practice concentrating on climate science. UT has been very good to me and it turns out that I love teaching, and the students are great. And it’s also not a bad thing to be trying to launch people into the world of journalism, and especially – I’m teaching a course in covering climate, covering the environment. And I really feel it’s important to get people into that field especially – the science communication/climate communication field – and have them be good at it and have them come from not necessarily the Ivy Leagues but from every part of the country. And so doing this from Texas is especially satisfying. John has written extensively about climate science and environmental issues. He is a strong advocate for science communication, and has argued that journalists have a responsibility to report accurately on climate science and to help the public understand the issue. He argues that climate journalists need to be more proactive in telling stories about the impacts of climate change that are already happening. He has also said that journalists need to do a better job of explaining the science of climate change to the public. Links Oddly Normal: One Family’s Struggle to Help Their Teenage Son Come to Terms with His Sexuality by John Schwartz This Is the Year I Put My Financial Life in Order by John Schwartz A.R. “Babe” Schwartz, John’s father Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? Mr. Texas by Lawrence Wright The Heat Will Kill You by Jeff Goodell

Karen Levy is an author, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and associated faculty at Cornell Law School. Her research focuses on the legal, organizational, social and ethical aspects of data-intensive technologies, particularly in contexts that are marked by conditions of inequality. In her book, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance, Levy examines the impact of electronic logging devices (ELDs) on truck drivers. ELDs are devices that are hardwired into truck cabs and track how much time drivers spend driving. The devices were mandated by the US Department of Transportation in 2017 in an effort to reduce truck accidents caused by driver fatigue. Karen Levy: Back in 1980, trucking was still a regulated industry. The federal government set rates in the industry. It was much more heavily unionized. And truckers made about $110,000 a year in today’s dollars, so a pretty decent living. Truckers today make about $47,000 a year. So half, basically, what they made 40 years ago. And so when you create these conditions, you end up in a position where people are going to end up breaking the law to keep the lights on at home. So if we think that that’s a problem – the federal government doesn’t really want people breaking the law as much as they are. So they suggested a proposed rule in the Department of Transportation, mandating what are called electronic logging devices [ELD]. And what these are are basically devices that are hardwired into the truck cab that keep track of how much truckers are driving. The idea is that it’s a little digital tattletale. It tells the government what the trucker goes through, a wait station or is inspected. It keeps a record of whether or not that trucker has exceeded the allowable hours. And this is now required of all truckers in the United States. It’s been required for about five years. And what my research has focused on is the evolution of this rule, of this technology, and trying to understand how the life of trucking and the day-to-day work of trucking looks different when truckers are being monitored this way versus before when they were just keeping track of their time using the pencil and paper.

Technologist, thought leader and podcaster Tom Parish joins the Plutopia Podcast as we explore developments in artificial intelligence, privacy, the Internet of Things, and job security. Tom Parish: The difference about AI is there’s so much Hollywood myth associated with gloom and doom and what’s going to come in – the end of the world and all that. And a lot of worry about how it’s going to impact jobs. I began to think, look, it’s going to happen, it’s not going away. And one of the most amazing things about this version of AI is that it’s so reflective of who you are. You know, it can reflect back to so many different aspects of your own personality. It can seem almost like a real entity itself. And so when I thought about that from the perspective of where do we really want to go with this, especially if you were looking for employment, what’s ultimately more important than just knowing something about AI if you are out on the job market again five years from now or ten years from now? It’s knowing about yourself. I use the mantra, be what the machines can’t be. Be more you, be more human. Tom Parish is a thought leader and facilitator of conversations around technology and the problems of our times. Tom worked with AI researchers at the MIT AI Lab back in the 1980s, and he helped move Motorola’s IT infrastructure to a TCP/IP-based network in the 90s. He worked with Motorola’s first Internet Marketing Group. He has 30-plus years in management in networking, cloud computing, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and process control, enterprise software, mobile technology, customer relationship management, social media, AI, and multi-media production, as well as a career as a musician and a film colorist. And he’s produced a LOT of podcasts. Key points: AI is becoming increasingly powerful and accessible, and it is important to be aware of the risks associated with the technology. AI has the potential to be a powerful tool for good, but it is important to use it responsibly. Human creativity and empathy are essential in the age of AI. Tom encourages people to focus on their unique strengths and to use AI to amplify their abilities.

Journalist and educator Jeff Jarvis, who believes we have entered the post-print age of communication, joins Plutopians to discuss his book The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet. Jeff created and edited Entertainment Weekly and wrote about media for TV Guide, People Magazine, and The Guardian. He’s a blogger at buzzmachine.com. He holds the Leonard Tow Chair in Journalism Innovation and directs the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He cohosts a podcast, “This Week in Google,” and has written several books, including What Would Google Do and his latest, The Gutenberg Parenthesis. Jeff Jarvis: I think society was fundamentally conversational before print. That’s fairly obvious, that’s what we had. But even in the early days of print, Luther and the Pope held a conversation through their books and burnings of them. Erasmus and Thomas More wrote letters to each other for the purpose of including them in the books because that was part of the conversation. What ruined the conversation, I think, was the mechanization and industrialization and corporatization of print and its products, this idea that they were products for that matter, and people couldn’t fit into a conversation at that scale. And now my hope is that we rediscover the conversation. We’re bad at it. Society’s long out of practice with it. We’re doing an awful job of it. I’ll concede all of that. But I treasure all the voices that can now be heard that were always there that were not heard in mainstream mass media run by people who look like me: old white men. Relevant links: Wendy Grossman’s review of The Gutenberg Parenthesis. Tom Standage – The Writing on the Wall – tomstandage.com Jeff Jarvis’ next book – Magazine Charlton McIlwain – Black Software Douglas Rushkoff – Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus Tiny News Collective The Ferret Bristol Cable Marshall McLuhan: The Medium is the Massage Black Twitter Photo by Robert Scoble. CC BY 2.0

Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy are co-authors of the book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, The Case for Good Apologies, where they draw on a deep well of research in psychology, sociology, law, and medicine to explain why a good apology is hard to find and why it doesn’t have to be. They also have a website called SorryWatch, where they track bad apologies and occasionally good apologies as well. In their book, Susan and Marjorie have identified the good, bad, and ugly ways we say I’m sorry for that thing I did or said or didn’t do or didn’t say. We like to distinguish between corporate politician celebrity apologies that are made not to truly be apologetic but to salvage your brand. You know that bad stilted corporate apology. You know there’s also the sort of influencer celebrity Instagram notes apology which or you know in general like little video apology from a famous person where they don’t wear their makeup so you know they’re serious. They’re often holding a small fluffy dog. They always start with, “Hey guys, I just wanted to talk to you myself.” And then it comes into this litany of self-justification. Good apologies tend to make things vanish from the forefront of the public mind. One of the things that fascinated me doing research for this book, I came across the Zeigarnik effect, which suggests that you remember uncompleted actions better than completed actions. The authors argue that apologies are essential for repairing relationships and restoring trust. They also provide a six-step process for giving a good apology. A good apology puts the other person’s feelings front and center. 1. Say “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.” Not “I wanted to apologize for” or “I regret.” SAY THE WORDS. (We can talk about why those specific formulations are the right ones later, but we bet most people can guess.) 2. Say what you’re sorry FOR. Name the thing. Not “the situation” or “what happened.” 3. Show you understand why it was bad/wrong/a cause of pain. 4. If you need to offer some explanation, BE CAREFUL; don’t let explanation become excuse. (This is the hardest step for me, btw.) 5. Explain what you’re doing to ensure it never happens again. 6. Make reparations, if that’s possible. 6.5 = LISTEN. People want to be heard. Let them talk. Let them discuss why they’re upset. It’s .5 because you don’t SAY or DO anything except bear witness. (And indeed, you shouldn’t interject when you’re letting them have their say.) About the Sorrywatchers (from their website) Susan McCarthy Susan is the author of Becoming a Tiger: How Baby Animals Learn to Live in the Wild (HarperCollins) and co-author with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals (Delacorte). A modest person, she seldom mentions that the latter book was an international bestseller. Publications she’s written for include Discover, Guardian.co.uk, Outside, Parade, Salon, Smithsonian, and Wired. McCarthy wrote a piece for Salon on apologies (“How to Say You’re Sorry: A Refresher Course”) which has been lastingly popular, and which has encouraged her to think more about the matter. McCarthy writes about animals on the blog The Nature of the Beast (According to Susan McCarthy). This combines observations about animals, humor, and sometimes drawings. Take a look. If you don’t like it, too bad. She’s not sorry. Except for herself. McCarthy lives in San Francisco. A carbon-based life form, she is a native of Earth. “I love your sunsets,” she reports. Marjorie Ingall Marjorie has written for many magazines and newspapers, including Tablet (where she was a columnist for a decade), The New York Times, Ms., Food & Wine, Wired, Self (where she was a contributing writer), Glamour (where she was a contributing editor), and Sassy (yes, that one), where she was at one time or other the senior writer, health editor, and books editor, and won several awards for health and social issues coverage. She’s the author of Mamaleh Knows Best; the co-author of Hungry, written with the model Crystal Renn; the author of The Field Guide to North American Males; a contributor to Here Lies My Heart: Essays on Why We Marry, Why We Don’t, and What We Find There (Beacon); and the co-author of Smart Sex (Simon & Schuster), a now-retro guide for teenagers. She’s also a former writer/producer at the Oxygen TV network, where, in a meeting with Oprah, she saw Oprah’s giant diamond earring fall out of her ear, get entangled in her sweater and dangle temptingly above the conference room floor. Ingall considered leaping for it, plucking it from the angora and fleeing to pay off her mortgage, an impulse for which she does not apologize. At the end of her rousing and mesmerizing pep talk, Oprah (who had not given any indication that she had noticed the fallen earring) cool

Plutopia Live was on vacation hiding from the heat – but last week the weather was lowered from molten lava to merely hellish so we resumed our regular Thursday show on YouTube (9/21/2023). Join us now for a rebroadcast of that show where we discuss the former president who shall not be named, fascist takeovers, social media, brain implants, and much more. And we’re not mentioning Donald Trump by name! At least, we’re trying not to do that… He who shall not be named is a master of self-promotion, and he often uses his name to generate attention. By not mentioning him by name, can we deprive him of this attention? And let him know that we don’t think he’s a “leader,” just a con man with a bad attitude. Jon: I just want to frame a conversation here, and we don’t have to talk about for very long, if you don’t want to, but this guy, this guy who shall not be named, the one that we’re not gonna talk about, – you could call him a juggalo or something like that. Scoop: Yeah, well, Trump has been– Jon: I don’t think he’s gonna have a receptive audience there. Scoop: He’s been a union buster for most of his life. I mean, his entire family was built on that. They didn’t allow unions at any of his companies. Jon: You mentioned his name. You’re not supposed to do that. Suzy: I didn’t say his name. Jon: It wasn’t you, it was Scoop! Jon: Get a gallon of liquor. Scoop: Okay this is the “his name we shall not say” jar. So I’m putting a quarter in. Suzy: Oh, nice. Nice, nice, nice. Jon: We’re all gonna get rich!

December 8th…1980 A deranged young man assassinated John Lennon. That same day an RKO Radio crew recorded what would prove to be Lennon’s final interview. RKO’s Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their apartment at the Dakota in New York. On December 8th 2023, Laurie Kaye’s memoir Confessions of a Rock N Roll Name Dropper is set for release. Laurie joins the Plutopia Podcast this time as we discuss her book and explore the events in her life that led to the interview that still haunts her. Laurie Kaye: The entire interview was so amazing to me. And even though I knew how John and Yoko had met and got together, John and Yoko both told me the entire story of their original meetup. And it was so cool. And not only that, but their first date, which was two years later, and how that ended up being the night that they recorded Two Virgins. And the next morning, when the sun came up, ended up making love for the first time. And it was so beautiful to hear them talk about that and remember it and just see the looks on their faces and the joy of memory. And not only that, but leading up to it, John talking about how excited he was to hear Yoko sing while he was singing and how she brought out in him all the different parts of his recording ability. Links: Laurie Kaye’s Website Order “Confessions of a Rock N Roll Name Dropper at Barnes And Noble

Educator and author Amy Bruckman joins the Plutopia podcast this time. Amy is Regents’ Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Contributing Editor Wendy Grossman joins Jon and Scoop as we discuss Amy’s book “Should You Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge.” We also explore compensating creators, online conspiracies, venture capital as a killer of apps and ask “Is Google Search reliable??” Amy Bruckman: You know, the reason I wrote my book was to help people to understand what a knowledge-building community is. And I think understanding the design factors that go into any successful community can contribute to a successful knowledge-building community. Like finding ways for people to feel pride in what they contribute, for example, and finding ways for peer review to correct errors. That one is really critical. You need to make sure that people’s contributions are in small pieces that can be easily combined. People will do lots of things if they can do a little bit here and a little bit there. If you give people a giant thing to do, then they’re going to say, oh, I don’t have time. But if you give them a little chunk, then they’ll do it. So, if you break things into little chunks where lots of people can contribute, it zips together without too much effort. There’s a lot you can do. Links Should You Belive Wikipedia? Sample chapter, full text Review of the book by Wendy Grossman The Great Good PLace, by Ray Oldenberg: Wikipedia overview | Publisher’s page | Link to buy the book Social Warming, by Charles Arthur Study of chemtrail belief

Rob van Eijk, the Future of Privacy Forum’s Managing Director for Europe, joins Contributing Editor Wendy Grossman, Jon, and Scoop in this wide-ranging discussion about data privacy and advertising technology. We explore digital advertising, cookies, ad blockers, privacy law, AI and ads, and we ask the question, “What the heck is hyper-nudging?” Rob van Eijk: The fact that you interact with digital content makes it that your behavior will be recorded, but also, in real time, analyzed. And obviously we’re all individuals, we have many aspects in common, or course, but there are aspects that generative AI will be able to pick up, and then ads and value propositions can be changed according to that. So this is what I mean with “hyper-nudging,” and the statistical approach with AB testing works really well with being able to fine tune that communication that you have through digital advertisements and your web browsing behavior – to fine tune that to who we are. Relevant Links: Presentation slides on real-time bidding for the Article 29 WorkingParty Rob’s dissertation on real-time bidding New York Times 2012 article on real-time bidding Center for Democracy and Technology GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation The ePrivacy Act Digital Services Act Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Conference Photo by Frank Jansen

Hugo Campos’ efforts to liberate health data from implantable medical devices has drawn widespread praise and recognition. He joins e-Patient Dave deBronkart, a cancer survivor and an international keynote speaker on healthcare, on the Plutopia podcast. Hugo Campos: I think the trend has been from being passive patients to become engaged in participatory medicine, and the more, I think, tools become available and the more knowledge becomes available, we’ll continue moving toward more patient autonomy. I think so. We may not be prescribing our own medication ever, but I think there is a great chance for even AI to be able to help with diagnosis, and help with care, decision-making, and all of these things that are important in the life of a patient – where the healthcare system may not always be available to help. Hugo Campos has been a creative director, art director, visual designer, marketer, computer programmer, and presentation coach. He is an advocate for patient autonomy, accountability, and access to health data. He was named a White House Champion of Change for Precision Medicine by President Barack Obama in 2015 for his data liberation advocacy. What particularly drives Hugo is a passion for participatory medicine, connected health, and patient empowerment through the use of technology. Link to the Society for Participatory Medicine

Wagner James Au thinks there may be a metaverse in your future! He joins the Plutopia podcast as we explore the various incarnations of the metaverse, including Second Life and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. We also discuss the birth of the metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, and its appearance in many sci-fi books and movies. Wagner James Au: Military veterans started meeting with each other in Second Life, and so they’re anonymous through their avatars, they’re all over the world, they’re all over the country. But they would start meeting together and discussing really deeply personal issues, like their PTSD, or their injuries in combat. Very powerful, for them. I wrote an Atlantic piece about this; I quoted a retired Colonel saying “some Marines are telling me that Second Life works for them like nothing else has done before.” I think a lot of the organizations miss that. So I make it a big focus of my new book, Making a Metaverse that Matters – to see what’s organically evolving in metaverse platforms like Second Life, like VRChat, like Rec Room, like Roblox… because you’ll often find organically emerging, really powerful real world use cases like that. Wagner James Au has written about digital culture, especially the metaverse for many years. He’s been a freelance reporter, a metaverse consultant, a game developer, a screenwriter. He was also a white-suited avatar named “Hamlet Au,” the first embedded journalist in a virtual world, Second Life, beginning in 2003. In his just-released book, Making a Metaverse that Matters, he writes with authority about the history of the metaverse concept and the reality vs the hype re virtual worlds. Making a Metaverse that Matters reviewed by Wendy Grossman Mentioned in the podcast: Ernest Cline: Ready Player One (novel) Philip K. Dick: Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Neal Stephenson: Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell. YouTube: Introducing the Icelandverse “The Truman Show” “Confirming Danah Boyd’s Early Concerns, Studies Suggest Women Much More Likely To Get Motion Sickness From Using VR” Doug Rushkoff: Survival of the Richest

Climate scientist Michael Tobis returns to join Plutopians as the planet continues to bake and burn. We discuss the Canadian wildfires, climate change, and political roadblocks to finding a solution. I think most of the members of the so-called conservative party here are going to be climate deniers, too. Especially since many of them – the bulk of them – are from Alberta, which is the Texas of the north, if you’ll pardon. It’s basically petroleum, ranching, and cold instead of petroleum, ranching, and hot. There’s been a lot of cultural overlap – there’s a longstanding resentment of the east and the power centers that feeds into this. So the yahoos are out in force here, sorry to say. (Image by Cristian Ibarra from Pixabay) Other Plutopia conversations with Michael Tobis: The Bad Stuff is Getting Closer (August 16, 2018) Climate, Covid, and Crazy Times (August 16, 2021) A Canadian Perspective with Michael Tobis (March 14, 2022) The Heat (May 8, 2023)

Geologist and geoscience writer Andrew Alden joins Plutopians to discuss his book Deep Oakland, inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Andrew gives us a guided tour of Oakland’s history and geology. Andrew Alden: It’s a new kind of book. Any of you, if you wanted to, you could write a book like that for your own city. I’m not declaring a franchise, but I’m saying Deep Oakland is a new type of book, and I hope that it gets a wider readership and inspires more books like it. I don’t have to write every book, you know – the more authors who can do this, the better. I want to wake the world up to what modern geology has to offer. Geology is not your grandfather’s geology. It’s your grandchildren’s geology. It’s a geology of the 21st century. It’s the geology the 21st century needs as we face terrible re-structuring of the world economy. Alden is a geologist and geoscience writer who has worked for the US Geological Survey and reported for KQED and Bay Nature. Through his writing Alden raises awareness for what he calls the deep present: the appreciation of the ancient underpinnings that shape the modern-day surroundings of daily life. His website is oaklandgeology.com.

Climate activist, former hippie flower salesman and politician Max Nofziger returns to the Plutopia podcast. We discuss Max’s political career in Austin, his environmental activism, his in-progress memoir and much more. Max Nofziger: You know, I led those campaigns to stop fossil fuel plants. And nobody wants to do that now, you know why? Because it’s really hard. When we campaigned against the lignite plant, our opponents said if we don’t have it, people are going to freeze in the dark. Okay, scare tactic. We won anyhow; nobody froze in the dark – back then. Now they do. But back then… And then when we shut down the four coal plants, that was the argument then, people are going to freeze in the dark. No they’re not! Nobody… there were no brownouts, there were not blackouts, nobody froze in the dark. So we shut down power plants, and managed to fill that void, that gap, with solar power, energy conservation, and wind power.

Zen Buddhist priest Renshin Bunce joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss Buddhism and Renshin’s life as a priest. Renshin received dharma transmission in 2013. She worked as a hospice chaplain from 2010 until she retired in 2022. Renshin Bunce: Soto Zen is no gaining idea. We don’t practice, and practice – there are a few words, like practice, like God, like love, like life – they have so many meanings. When I say practice, what am I saying? Let’s say that the hard work of actual on the cushion zazen. So, we are taught you can’t go to that trying to *get* something. But of course, if we didn’t get some kind of result from it, we wouldn’t keep doing it. So back to your starting point, I think, is to actually be so courageous as to not cling to those results.

Alan Chamberlain aka Axon explains his music and his journey to recovery. We explore country music, songwriting, the power of music in recovery, and the 12 Step process. Axon plays a few songs in the process. Alan is a singer/songwriter in the “herban” cowboy tradition. His songwriting examines the Western mythos in defiance of the popular image created by an atavistic mass media. He says “I’ve learned from studying songwriters like Guy Clark, John Prine, Nancy Griffith and James McMurtry that if you’re going to write a multigenerational novel in three choruses and a bridge, you’re going to have to make a lot of shit up, and then leave a lot of shit out.” I traveled around a lot in my early years. I set out to become the next Bob Dylan, and discovered that that job was already taken. But I traveled around the southwest, I traveled around the southeast – I come from mid-Missouri, and found that I could generally find employment as a singing cowboy in medium-sized college towns, as a new kid in town. And so I would get three to six months before I stopped being the new kid in town, before I’d then move on to another town, and that was kinda how I developed my persona and my style and all that.

Dave deBronkart and Doc Searls take aim at the American healthcare system. They discuss empowered patients, medical technology, electronic medical records, and much more. Dave, known on the internet as e-Patient Dave, is a blogger, health policy advisor and international keynote speaker. Dave beat stage IV kidney cancer in 2007. Doc is an American journalist, columnist, and a widely read blogger. He was co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, a book about the impact of the Internet on marketing, claiming that conventional marketing techniques are rendered obsolete by the online “conversations” that consumers have and that companies need to join. And Dave just wrote a blog post called “The Evolution of Who Knows What: A Cluetrain Manifesto for empowered patients.” Doc Searls: To my persistent astonishment, doctors want to communicate, send data to each other, by fax, an ancient analog technology. It’s still the case, it’s still the case! Dave deBronkart: I know, I know. And there’s so much foolishness, you know. They will complain that email is not a secure way to send you your information, because it could leak. There are constant horror stories… Doc: As a digital thing, you can leak, but an analog thing can’t leak, because it’s not digital… (laughs) exactly! Dave: Well, guess what? There are constant horror stories of a doctor’s fax machine dialing the wrong number and sending all your information. Doc: (Laughs) There’s an analog hole for you! Clips Doc Searls, The Patient as the Platform: The new health care infrastructure must be built on independent and autonomous patients, not on systems that surround and subordinate patients. Once it is, the systems will be vastly improved, and far more profitable for all. We cannot fix health care only at the institutional level. No company and no government agency can fix health care, any more than any company or government could fix networking or computing. Those had to be fixed by hackers building solutions for everybody and not just themselves. (Even if they were just “scratching their own itch”.) Today the Internet, Linux, and countless free and open source code bases are core infrastructural systems on which civilization itself relies. The amount of business this vast and growing infrastructure supports so far exceeds the amount it undermines and obsoletes that it’s silly to even bother doing the math — if it could be done in any case. One might as well argue against the Big Bang. Jon Lebkowsky, “Doc Searls: patient as platform and ‘point of integration'”: To have true independence and control, we need access to all of that data, and as Doc says, we need to be the “point of integration for the health care we get, and the point of origination for controlling that care.” Dave deBronkart, “The Evolution of Who Knows What: A Cluetrain Manifesto for empowered patients”: In recent speeches I’ve increasingly focused on a comparable change we can no longer deny: if “Knowledge itself is power,” as Francis Bacon said, then we can no longer deny that the power structure in medicine is changing as knowledge spreads. I’ve called it “The Evolution of Who Knows What,” and it’s hot stuff, because it’s undeniable and it’s truly changes what’s possible Links e-Patient Dave: Democratizing Healthcare Doc Searls’ Weblog Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) KardiaMobile HIE of One

Howard Rheingold joins Jon and Scoop for a discussion that includes virtual communities, social media, AI and chatbots, media education, good vs bad on the Internet, cultural evolution, and tools for thought. Howard is a writer, critic, and teacher, former editor of “Whole Earth Review”, and author of several books including Virtual Reality, The Virtual Community, and Smart Mobs. Howard Rheingold: The Internet and social media is like a tide that lifts all boats. And that means that the hospital ships and the pirate ships are enabled. If you are the only gay teenager in a small town, or you have a very rare disease that only one in a million people have, then social media is a lifeline for you. If you’re the only Nazi in a small town, you can connect with like-minded souls and do bad things. When I wrote The Virtual Community, when I first wrote the article “Virtual Communities” in Whole Earth Review in 1987, the online population was mostly college students and computer scientists and a few early adopters, like all of us. Now it’s a significant percentage of the human race. I think it’s about a quarter or a fifth of the human population, and with that, you’re going to get the people who want to do good things and the people who want to bad things, and it’s pretty clear that the ability to do bad things has been vastly amplified. Howard’s Patreon Howard on Wikipedia Howard on Mastodon Howard on Twitter Photo by Chris Michel CC BY-SA 4.0

In this Plutopia podcast, we’re joined by Joanna Bryson, an academic expert in intelligence, both natural and artificial. In a conversation led by Wendy Grossman, we explore intelligence, both artificial and natural. Bryson has experience in programming and systems administration in several commercial sectors, and degrees in both psychology and AI from Chicago, Edinburgh, and MIT. She has been a professor since joining University of Bath Computer Science in 2002. Since 2008 she has been increasingly involved in AI policy and AI regulation, advising governments, NGOs, and corporations. Joanna Bryson: “The problem here is not with robots taking over the world, but with people taking over the world (or at least corrupting large parts of it) by pretending that robots are responsible. In fact people and corporations that decide how robots act. “The fact is, robots completely belong to us. We author AI, we don’t give birth to it. People, governments and companies build, own and program robots. Whoever owns and operates a robot is responsible for what it does.” – AI Ethics: Artificial Intelligence, Robots, and Society Links Joanna Bryson on Twitter Joanna Bryson’s Blog Can we trust AI? (Video) Paper on the EU AI Act (PDF) “Just Another Artifact” (1998) The Curse of Bigness, by Tim Wu Mindf*ck, by Christopher Wylie “Making Bitcoin Legal” by Ross Anderson, Ilia Shumailov and Mansoor Ahmed (PDF) Tracers in the Dark, by Andy Greenberg Moral Crumple Zones, by Madeleine Claire Elish “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?,” by Timnit Gebru, Emily M. Bender, Angelina McMillan-Major, Margaret Mitchell “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” by Lina Khan The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, by Katharina Pistor

Writer, blogger, and author Wendy Grossman, author of net.wars joins Plutopians for a conversation about hacking with Bruce Schneier, an internationally renowned computer security professional and author. Bruce’s latest book, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and How to Bend Them Back, is an expanded view of hacks and hackers beyond computers to other kinds of systems, from tax laws to financial markets to politics. Bruce Schneier: Things like https are now everywhere. Google is securing email between itself and the other major email providers. And a lot of the passive methods that the NSA used ten years ago aren’t working today. Now, the flip side of this is corporate surveillance has gone from zero to sixty over those ten years, and now, if you are a government, and you want to surveil somebody, you tell Facebook to tell you what they know about them. Or Google, or Apple, or any of those companies. Resources Bruce Schneier’s website, Schneier on Security Wendy Grossman’s review of A Hacker’s Mind Some other books by Bruce Schneier: Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World 2003 Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive, 2012 Data and Goliath, 2015 Click Here to Kill Everybody, 2018 Mentioned in the discussion: Angela Sasse Moral Crumple Zones Nick Bostrom “Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence” Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr

Plutopians talk to Claire Fitch, a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research contemplates the role that simulated natures in virtual reality (VR) play in shaping trajectories of human-environment relations. In order to unravel the current forms and functions of this medium, she investigates various ways in which VR is used to provide experiences of nature, and consider how these natures act as arenas in which human-environment relationships are (re)considered, (re)negotiated, contemplated and enacted. This research centers the socio-material entanglements of virtual nature environments, contextualizes this within a broader discussion of mediated subjectivity within techno-capitalism, and considers the overlap of the two as a dynamic and central geographic question of the Capitalocene epoch. We discuss her doctoral research into virtual reality simulations of nature. We also explore the impact of capitalism on the environment, AI, and much more. Claire Fitch: So I was doing a lot of environmental organizing and thinking a lot about human-environment relationships, and came to Human Geography in my Master’s as a sort of combination of these two, the human and the environmental. And I wasn’t really interested in technology at the beginning, but being an environmental organizer and talking to so many folks about their relationships to climate change and their feeling of precarity as youth confronting climate change, I was also becoming really fascinated with watching people simultaneously having this really strong connection to technology. I finished my Master’s in 2017, so at this point everybody had phones they were using all the time, everybody was becoming deeply entangled in social media, and this was a lot of the way people were living their lives. And I was really interested in these environmentalist communities, seeing how people negotiated their presence in cyberspace, their identity formation in cyberspace, at the same time that they were sort of struggling through their identities or their futures on earth, in this material world.