Tech Policy Podcast

Brandon Kirk Williams (Lawrence Livermore) discusses quantum computing—the science behind it, its potential applications, the geopolitics surrounding it, and more.Links:The U.S. Must Win the Quantum Computing Race. History Shows How to Do ItThe U.S. Needs a Strategy for the Second Quantum Revolution

Alice Marwick from UNC-Chapel Hill discusses Child Online Safety Legislation, touching on moral panic, vague definitions of harmful content, and emphasizing centering kids over technology in policy. The conversation challenges misconceptions about online safety laws and advocates for empowering youth in addressing social media and mental health concerns.

Berin Szóka and James Dunstan from TechFreedom discuss FCC orders on Title II regulation and digital discrimination. Topics include telecom law history, FCC's internet regulation, net neutrality debate, and challenges for broadband providers. They also cover legal analysis, potential legislation, and concerns about government regulations on discrimination in the broadband sector.

Arnold Kling discusses his recent article in Reason magazine, “Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning Work.”Topics include:Why central planning is impossibleThe importance of pricesWhat is AI good for?Will AI know us better than we know ourselves?What markets will AI disrupt?Social media and tribal gang-sign flashingThe myopia of the revanchist rightLinks:Not Even Artificial Intelligence Can Make Central Planning WorkDavid Brin’s Transparent Society RevisitedMir McLuhanismThe Revanchist RightTech Policy Podcast 368: How the Government Gets Your Data

Renée DiResta (Stanford Internet Observatory) discusses her new book, Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality.Topics include:Social media influencers: the new media eliteHow do ideas take root?Influencers as exploiters of asymmetriesBullshit: an investigationCould platforms have stopped Stop the Steal?Fixing the expert classChomsky’s Manufacturing ConsentThe future of social mediaLinks:Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into RealityInfluencers, Bullshitters, and How We Lost a Shared RealityRenée DiResta at Politics and Prose (DC), June 13Renée DiResta at the Commonwealth Club (SF), June 17The New Media Goliaths (Noema)Agents of Influence newsletterTech Policy Podcast 293: The Supply of Renée DiResta Should Be Infinite

From January 10, 2022 (Episode 309): Joseph Uscinski (University of Miami) argues that the internet is not increasing the prevalence of conspiracy theories.Links:Don’t Blame Social Media for Conspiracy Theories—They Would Still Flourish Without It

Robert Atkinson is president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. He joins the show to discuss his new book, Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths About Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy, co-authored with David Moschella.Topics include:Tech panic: speeding-uppers vs. slowing-downersTech and privacy: try living in an analogue village!The wicked problem of content moderationIs tech progress bad for the middle class?Is tech driving market concentration?“Industrial planning”: dirty words?Links:Technology Fears and Scapegoats: 40 Myths about Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy

Richard Morrison (Competitive Enterprise Institute) joins the show, in a crossover episode with the Free the Economy podcast.Topics include:The history of podcastsThe rise of micro media (find a thousand true fans!)Performative tech doomerismThe idleness of romanticizing the pastThe quest for online communityConservatives in the TechniumLinks:Free the EconomyWhy Conservatism FailedThe Quest for a Better Online “Community”

It’s the episode you’ve been waiting for: TechFreedom’s Corbin Barthold and Ari Cohn talk about pornography and free expression.Topics include:The Founding Fathers: epic porn fiends (j/k)Obscenity law, a brief historyDo conservatives still want to ban James Joyce?“I know it when I see it”—Worst. Legal standard. Ever.Is there a moral case against porn? (Spoiler alert: No)The Fifth Circuit botches internet speech lawLinks:Tech Policy Podcast #360: Red States vs. Every SCOTUS Internet PrecedentA Reagan Judge, The First Amendment, And The Eternal War Against PornographyTexas Legislature Convinced First Amendment Simply Does Not ExistIs Porn Harmful? The Evidence, the Myths and the Unknowns

Ryan Scirocco is the spacesuit business development lead at Collins Aerospace. Collins, an RTX business, is, along with its partners ILC Dover and Oceaneering, developing a new generation of spacesuits for NASA. Ryan discusses everything that goes into keeping people alive in a freezing zero-gravity vacuum far outside the biosphere.Topics include:A spacesuit is a mini-spaceshipSpace: it wants to kill youSpacesuit historyWhat’s new? No more mirrors!Testing spacesuits on the vomit cometThe ISS, the Moon, and beyondLinks:Collins Aerospace Completes Key Spacesuit Testing MilestoneSpace SymposiumTech Policy Podcast #349: The State of Space Exploration