David Runciman is a professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the host of the critically acclaimed podcast Talking Politics. In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, he speaks to Alina Utrata about why corporations are robots, how singularity might have already come about, why we should think seriously about the political philosophy of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, and what technologies he worries about in the future.You can follow, Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4 For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XArticles mentioned in this podcastSilicon Valley’s Vampire: David Runciman on Peter ThielI read Dominic Cummings blog so you don’t have to: David Runciman on Dominic CummingsElon Musk, Sea Turtles and the dangers of long-termismDangerous ideas of longtermismNick Clegg in profile in Politico The Evening Rocket: Jill Lepore’s podcast series on Elon Musk’s ideologyA long-read in the FT about how the US shut down Facebook’s crypto-currencyBooks mentioned in this podcast:The Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim HwangThe Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alina Utrata speaks with Lauren Bridges, a PhD candidate at the the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania who studies big data infrastructures and surveillance regimes. They talk all about Amazon Ring: Why does Amazon want footage of your front door anyways? How is this surveillance shared with law enforcement agencies across the country? Where does this surveillance fit in with racialized notions of crime and policing? And what happens when Amazon Ring is hacked?You can follow Lauren Bridges on Twitter @Laurenebridges, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Articles by Lauren:Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen (Guardian Op-ed)Infrastructural obfuscation: unpacking the carceral logics of the Ring surveillant assemblage (Academic Article)Other articles:Who is Amazon? (Anti-Dystopians Podcast)A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong? By Chris Gilliard (Wired)The IRS Should Stop Using Facial Recognition by Joy Buolamwini (The Atlantic)For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XNowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Siân Brooke, a Leverhulme Fellow in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and an associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute. They discuss gender, memes and hackathons: What exactly is a meme? Do geeks have toxic masculinity? How does gender and femininity get marginalized in tech spaces? And how do fedoras lead down the road to incels?You can follow Siân Brooke on Twitter @SianJMBrooke, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Other articles by Siân:Siân's Website: https://www.sianbrooke.com/Siân's Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:76f836bf-880b-4902-9226-8d668726f4cfTrouble in Programmers Paradise: gender-biases in sharing and recognising technical knowledge on Stack Overflow: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1962943“There are no girls on the Internet”: Gender performances in Advice Animal memes: https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9593Further ReadingOII's Anti-Racists Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/146XaYuhUAng6rGV9mChDkvWdYIfwpSXlle1RUxUaBUE/edit?usp=sharingHacking Diversity by Dunbar Hester: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182070/hacking-diversityProgrammed Inequality by Mar Hicks: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequalityNowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Trishant Simlai, a conservation researcher studying the politics and geographies of wildlife conservation in India, who just received his PhD in the Department of Geography at Cambridge. They discuss wildlife surveillance in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, as well as conservation’s colonial origins, how camera traps can be used to uphold the patriarchy, and when workplace surveillance technologies literally lead to tiger attacks.You can follow Trishant Simlai on Twitter @trishantsimlai Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Further Reading: Negotiating the Gaze. Sanctuary Asia, December 2019Are Conservation Organizations Complicit in Ethnic Discrimination? The Wire 2017Grasslands of Grey: How the BBC's flawed Kaziranga muckraker has done harm. The Wire 2017:Are Treacherous Links and Claims an Illusion? Sanctuary Asia 2016Conservation 'Wars': The global rise of green militarization and trends in India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol L No 50. 2015.Digital Surveillance Tech in Conservation and their social implicationsWhy we must question the militarisation of conservationHow does Conservation Tech Cause Harm?Conservation Surveillance as a means for state repression?Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Rowena Squires, an ancient historian, asks Alina Utrata everything you ever wanted to know about Amazon. How did Amazon go from online bookstore to commercial empire? Is Amazon Alexa really recording everything you say? How was AWS cloud computing invented? And why is the Library of Alexandria such a good origin story for the Amazon Alexa?You can follow Rowena Squires on Twitter @RowenaSquires, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Articles mentioned in this episode:Business reporter Brad Stone's 2013 book “The Everything Store” and the 2020 follow-up “Amazon Unbound”Alec MacGillis’s book “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America” The US House Judiciary Report on Monopolies Franklin Foer’s deep-dive into Jeff Bezos’s brain in the AtlanticCharles Duhigg’s “Is Amazon Unstoppable?” For the rest of the articles mentioned in this episode, visit bit.ly/3kuGM5XNowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD in Gender Studies at Cambridge University, and Muskan Shafat, an MS in Data and Society at the London School of Economics, about gender and technology. They discuss the myth of neutral tech, how technology is embedded in systems of oppression, why using a dishwasher isn’t considered “technological innovation” and whether some AI is just machine learning for eugenics. You can follow Stefanie Felsberger on Twitter @Flsbrgr, Muskan Shafat @muskanmaraz, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians. Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Books mentioned in the podcast:Race After Technology by Ruha BenjaminAlgorithms of Oppression by Safiya NobleProgrammed Inequality by Mar HicksWeapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’NeillWhat Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian DaubNowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Maha Atal, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow who studies the political economy of corporate power and was previously an award-winning journalist reporting on the tech industry. They discuss how the history of company-rule and colonization relates to the tech industry, how tech companies exert power in the Global South, why Silicon Valley’s “Janus faces” allows it to escape state regulation, and whether the perception of technology corporations has changed, from the tech-utopian days of the Obama administration to now. Selected articles by Maha AtalThe Janus faces of Silicon Valley http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/247127/Is Google evil? http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2009/08/online-search-google-datakYou can follow Maha Atal on Twitter @MahaRafiAtalAlina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrataAnd the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopiansOr sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Corinne Cath-Speth, a recent graduate from the doctoral program at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Internet infrastructure politics, engineering cultures, and technology policy and governance. They discuss the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): What is it? What are internet protocols? And how can infrastructure uphold or harm human rights?You can follow Corinne Cath-Speth on Twitter @C___CSAlina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrataAnd the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopiansOr sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5XAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Selected Reading and Articles by Corinne Cath-Speth:Corinne Cath on Internet governance cultures: https://hackcur.io/whats-wrong-with-loud-men-talking-loudly-the-ietfs-culture-wars/Suzanne van Geuns and Corinne Cath, article for the Brookings Institute: https://www.brookings.edu/techstream/how-hate-speech-reveals-the-invisible-politics-of-internet-infrastructure/Report workshop organized by Beatrice Martini, Niels ten Oever, Corinne Cath: https://data-activism.net/2019/12/off-the-beaten-path-human-rights-advocacy-to-change-the-internet-infrastructure/ 'Changing minds and machines: a case study of human rights advocacy in the Internet Engineering Task Force'. PhD Thesis University of Oxford. https://corinnecath.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/CathCorinne-Thesis-DphilInformationCommunicationSocialSciences.pdfThe Technology We Choose to Create: Human Rights Advocacy in the Internet Engineering Task Force’. Telecommunications Policy 45, no. 6 (1 July 2021): 102144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.telpol.2021.102144.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Josh Lappen, an environmental historian studying at Oxford University, returns to discuss the climate crisis and tech companies ahead of COP26. Are tech companies’ promises of technological innovation really going to save Earth? Do we need AI for the environment? What does the German government have to do with the adoption of solar panels? And who really are the biggest impediments to stopping climate change? (Hint: it’s not China.) Josh discusses the snake oil and substance at COP26, and how tech companies use the promise of the future to influence the politics of the present.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4To follow the Anti-Dystopians new Twitter account, go to:https://twitter.com/AntiDystopiansTo follow Alina Utrata on Twitter, go to:https://twitter.com/AlinaUtrataTo follow Josh Lappen on Twitter, go to:https://twitter.com/jlappen1Articles Mentioned:Past Anti Dystopians episode with Josh—Nationalize Gmail! https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Aayx7p8uYdKcDeyEvwuzJ?si=48fF-8p7R2KgVPHZ2O-7RwDo Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon? https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9368.pdfBiden’s First Climate Actions Are Missing Coal’s Long Tail https://www.thenation.com/article/environment/biden-climate-executive-orders-coal/How Germany helped bring down the cost of PV https://energytransition.org/2016/01/how-germany-helped-bring-down-the-cost-of-pv/The Dream of Scooping Plastic From the Ocean Is Still Alive—and Problematic https://gizmodo.com/the-dream-of-scooping-plastic-from-the-ocean-is-still-a-1847890573Outer space and climate solutionism https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/alina-utrata-lost-spaceNowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alina Utrata is joined by Mallika Balakrishnan to talk about the protests over the adoption of bitcoin in El Salvador. What exactly is bitcoin (and what's the difference between Bitcoin and other digital currencies)? Why has President Nayib Bukele implemented it as legal tender in El Salvador? And, most importantly, how will this impact the people in El Salvador? All your questions on the blockchain answered by the Anti-Dystopians! All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4Articles mentioned in this podcastEl Salvador’s Bitcoin Law Is a FarceFor Latin American politicians, Bitcoin is a PR goldmineJorge E. Cuéllar, Bitcoin Sanctuaries — Sidecar (New Left Review)USAID, Bitcoin and the Long Fight over El Salvador’s Sovereignty -- Daniel Alvarenga -- El FaroLeft Out of Bukele’s Bitcoin Decision, Salvadorans Face Deepening InequalityThere Is No Democratic Tradition in El Salvador In Central America, Rule of Law Is Under Attack. El Salvador Is the Latest Victim.In El Salvador, Broken Promises Have Forced the Establishment OutCISPES https://www.cispes.org/ Books mentioned in this podcastBlockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei WangBlockchain Democracy by William Magnuson Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.