Joi Ito, Director of the MIT Media Lab, shares insights on the intersection of technology and society. He discusses the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism and its exploitation of user data. Ito critiques how tech often oversimplifies complex societal problems while emphasizing the need for ethical considerations in innovations like AI and CRISPR. He also reflects on the importance of integrating liberal arts into tech education and highlights the role of young tech workers in reshaping industry values for a more responsible future.
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Unconventional Education
Joi Ito's non-traditional background includes nightclub DJing and dropping out of college twice.
He found early internet communities more resilient and sophisticated than university monoculture.
insights INSIGHT
Early Internet Optimism
Early online communities offered connection and a sense of freedom, leading to ideas like emergent democracy.
Ito invested in early social media platforms, foreseeing the transformative power of online interaction.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Accidental Support Group
Ito's blog post about quitting drinking unintentionally created an online support group.
This highlighted the internet's power to connect people around shared experiences organically.
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Published in 1950 and revised in 1954, 'The Human Use of Human Beings' argues for the benefits of automation to society, analyzing the meaning of productive communication and discussing ways for humans and machines to cooperate. Wiener emphasizes the potential for machines to amplify human power, release people from manual labor, and enable more creative pursuits. He also explores the risks of dehumanization and subordination and offers suggestions on how to avoid these risks, advocating for the use of machines to increase leisure and enrich spiritual life rather than solely for profits[5][4][1].
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
In this book, Shoshana Zuboff provides a comprehensive analysis of surveillance capitalism, a new economic order where corporations accumulate vast wealth and power by predicting and controlling human behavior. Zuboff details how this form of capitalism, originating in Silicon Valley, has spread into every economic sector, creating 'behavioral futures markets' where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold. She argues that this system, free from democratic oversight, poses significant threats to democracy, freedom, and human future, and urges readers to take action to protect their autonomy in the digital world.
Joichi "Joi" Ito, the director of the MIT Media Lab, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about engineers who over-simplify the world's problems, the Media Lab's role in "surveillance capitalism," and why the values of the tech world will shift from within.
In this episode: Ito's background and what the Media Lab does; techno-utopianism and the early days of the internet; how Ito got to MIT; computers implanted in the human body; Shoshana Zuboff and "surveillance capitalism"; the gap between technology and the law; why we're not living in a simulation; what’s missing from the AI discourse; the problem with how tech solves problems; the dangers of bad policy; and the subordination of liberal arts at schools like MIT.
Decoder with Nilay Patel 
