The Technically Human Podcast

In this episode, I sit down with Rob Rastovich, CTO of ThingLogix to talk about the Internet of Things. We discuss the problem of privacy in an age where all of our things talk to one another--and where tech companies are listening in to our conversations with our devices. Rob addresses some of the ethical critiques that have emerged about IoT, and I ask him about how he understands the relationship between his work as a technologist, anchored in the digital world of tech, and his work as a rancher, anchored in the very physical world of non-human animals, plants, and land. Rob Rastovich is the Chief Technology Officer of ThingLogix, and an expert on the Internet of Things, or IoT. He has been actively involved in technology for nearly 30 years, from building a top 10 e-commerce site in a time when e-commerce was still in its infancy to establishing Amazon’s AWS IoT. ThingLogix was awarded the 2018 IoT Platforms Leadership Award, and has become an advanced tier technology partner for Amazon Web Services. When he’s not at the forefront of IoT, Rob can be found maintaining his cattle ranch in Central Oregon. Episode produced by Ana Marsh and Matt Perry. Artwork by Desi Aleman.

In this series, we talk about adaptive technologies and physical disability. In this episode of the series, Paralympian Ezra Frech joins us to discuss the disability community at the intersection of technology. We discuss disability in the space of intersectionality, the significance of sports for the disability community, and why designing for a diversity of bodies, with equity and empathy, makes a difference. Ezra Frech is an American Paralympian Athlete who competes in high jump, long jump, and sprinting events in international level events. Ezra was born with congenital limb differences, missing his left knee, left shin bone, and fingers on his left hand, and has used a running blade since he was 4 years old.  In 2019 Ezra made the US Paralympic Track and Field Team and, as the youngest athlete on the team at 14 year’s old, competed in three international events, including the Junior World Para-Para-Athletics Championships, where he won three medals, the Parapan American Games where he won two silver medals, and the World Para-Athletics Championships, where he placed in the top 8 in all three of his events and was the youngest athlete out of 1,400 competitors. He’s slated to compete for Team USA in the upcoming 2021 Tokyo Paralympic Games. He is an advocate for disability rights, and the inspiration behind and co-founder of Angel City Sports, a high-growth, high-impact non-profit organization dedicated to providing the joy of sports to children and adults with physical disabilities.  Episode produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

In this series, we talk about adaptive technologies and physical disability. Clayton Frech, the founder and CEO of Angel City Sports, joins us to discuss the disability community at the intersection of technology. We discuss disability in the space of intersectionality, the significance of sports for the disability community, and why designing for a diversity of bodies, with equity and empathy, makes a difference. Over the last twenty-five years, Clayton Frech has held leadership roles in the business, government, and non-profit sectors. He became involved in the disability community when his first son, Ezra, was born missing his left knee and left fibula and with only one finger on his left hand.  Following Ezra’s passion for sports, Mr. Frech identified major gaps in access to sports programming for athletes with physical disabilities in the U.S.  In 2013, with the help of friends and family, he set out to address these gaps, and in 2015, he produced the first Angel City Games, which is now the largest Paralympic competition in the country, and the West Coast’s most prestigious Paralympic event.   In 2015, Mr. Frech started Angel City Sports to address inequities in access to sport for kids and adults living with physical disabilities. In addition to serving as a strategic advisor to a number of small and mid-sized companies, he recently launched Ampla Institute, a career development and planning firm dedicated to helping people find their purpose and optimize their career potential. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we talk to Ezra Frech about running on a blade as a US Paralympian athlete, headed to Tokyo for the International Paralympic Games in Tokyo. Episode produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

When Haley Pavone proposed a convertible high heel to flat shoe, industry experts told her it was impossible. When she successfully engineered a shoe that could convert from a flat to a heel, venture capitalists often couldn't see the value--or even the problem. Fashion footwear for women is an industry-developed by and run by men. In the episode, Haley talks about equity and inclusion in fashion and explains how she engineered the first convertible flat to heel shoe. We talk about empathic and humane design, feminism and entrepreneurship, and why ethical technology requires us to think about how we'd walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Haley Pavone is the Founder & CEO of Pashion Footwear. She is a Cal Poly graduate in Business and Entrepreneurship, and an alumnus of the University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She has appeared been profiled by Forbes, Businesswire, and she recently appeared on the critically acclaimed and multi-Emmy® Award-winning entrepreneurial-themed ABC reality show “Shark Tank.” She’s passionate about empathic and humane design, and building collectively and collaboratively, with insight, inclusion, and compassion.   Art by Desi Aleman Produced by Matt Perry

In this episode, I give my mic over to Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, two producers on the show, for an interview with John Maeda. Dr. John Maeda is an American technologist and product experience leader who is known around the world for building bridges between business, engineering, and design—and his dedication to working inclusively. He is the SVP Chief Customer Experience Officer at Everbridge, where he works on the future of Critical Event Management technologies for saving lives and keeping businesses and society running. He is an MIT-trained computer scientist, who blends his training as a computer scientist with an MBA. He is the author of five books including the new How To Speak Machine and the bestselling Laws of Simplicity. Among his MANY leadership positions, he serves on the board of Directors at Sonos and the Smithsonian Design Museum, he is the former President/CEO of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and he is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins venture capital in Silicon Valley. During his early career, Dr. Maeda was an MIT research professor in computational design,  represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He is also a recipient of the White House’s National Design Award. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his TED talks have received millions of views.  To quote WIRED Magazine, “Maeda is to design what Warren Buffett is to finance.” Today’s hosts, Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, are producers on the Technically Human podcast. Ana Marsh is a fourth-year computer science student at Cal Poly. She is graduating in the Spring of 2021 and plans to start full-time at Microsoft in the Fall. She has a deep interest in ethical technology, cultivated through her coursework in computer science and the University’s new technically human course, part of the Cal Poly ethical technology initiative. Matt Perry is a fifth-year architecture student at Cal Poly from Las Vegas, NV. Now in the final year of his degree, he is doing research on ephemeral architecture and designing for the human experience, while exploring the future of architecture. He hopes to spend his time designing architecture with the human experience at the forefront of design. Ana and Matt talk about what it means to blend tech and art, how we can think about the future of humane design, and how we can make tech great again. Art by Desi Aleman Produced by Matt Perry

In this episode of "Technically Human," I sit down with Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson, one of the world's leading experts in climate science.  We talk about the technologies that can prevent environmental destruction, and how tech innovation can drive a clean energy vision for the future. Mark explains why we already have the science and tech to build this future, and how--with the political and social will--we can create a world powered by renewable energy--not in a distant future, but NOW.  Mark Z. Jacobson is Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program and Professor of Civil and Environmental  Engineering at Stanford University. He seeks to understand air pollution and global warming problems, and to develop large-scale clean, renewable energy solutions to these major and urgent problems. His most recent book, published by Cambridge University Press, is titled 100 Percent Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything. The book is the culmination of Dr. Jacobson’s life's work on  transitioning the world to 100% clean, renewable energy, and it examines the  technologies, economics, and social/political aspects of that transition. On February 9, as part of the Joint Declaration of the Global 100% Renewable Energy Strategy Group, Dr. Jacobson joined other leading climate scientists and experts to propose a 10 point declaration to transform the world’s energy supply to 100% renewable energy. This statement will be specifically published in support of President Biden’s United States climate change agenda. To support the transformation to renewable energy by signing your name to the declaration, please visit www.global100restrategygroup.org. This episode was produced by Matt Perry. Podcast art by Desi Aleman

In this episode of the “Technically Human” podcast, I sit down with Jaron Lanier, the creator of virtual reality. Jaron and I discuss the meaning, and the future, of reality in an increasingly virtual world, and we talk about what virtual reality was in its early stages. Jaron outlines his concerns and critique of technological culture, and he explains why the kind of behavior modification and manipulation engineered by social media platforms has become, in his mind, a “Behaviours of Users Modified, and Made into an Empire for Rent," or a BUMMER. Jaron Lanier is the founder of the field of virtual reality. From 2009, he has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist in a role called “The Octopus,” (which stands for Office of the Chief Technology Officer Prime Unifying Scientist). In 2010, Lanier was named to the Time 100 list of most influential people. In 2018, Lanier was named one of the 25 most influential people in the previous 25 years of tech history by Wired Magazine, and one of the 100 top public intellectuals by Foreign Policy Magazine. His books include the bestsellers “You Are Not a Gadget, A Manifesto,” “Who Owns the Future?,” and “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.” His writing appears in The New York Times, Discover, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Harpers Magazine, Atlantic, Wired Magazine (where he was a founding contributing editor), and Scientific American. He has appeared on TV shows such as The View, PBS NewsHour, The Colbert Report, Nightline and Charlie Rose, and has been profiled on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times multiple times. He regularly serves as a creative consultant for movies, including Minority Report and The Circle. He has received honorary doctorates from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Franklin and Marshall College, was the recipient of CMU's Watson award in 2001, was a finalist for the first Edge of Computation Award in 2005, and received a Lifetime Career Award from the IEEE in 2009 for contributions to Virtual Reality. Jaron Lanier is also a musician and artist. He has been active in the world of new "classical" music since the late '70s and writes chamber and orchestral works. He is a pianist and a specialist in unusual and historical musical instruments; he maintains one of the largest and most varied collections of actively played instruments in the world. Produced by Matt Perry Art by Desi Aleman

We are back with our third and final episode in the “Changing Minds” series! Across the 3 episodes, we focus on civil discourse, and we ask what it means to engage in dialogue with people with whom we disagree, sometimes deeply.  In the first two episodes, I spoke with Daryl Davis about racism, and how he envisions the possibility of changing the minds of those who believe, and participate in, white supremacist and separatist movements. In our third and final episode of the “changing minds” series, I sit down with Bill Ottman. Bill Ottman is the founder of Minds.com, a new community-owned, “open source” social media network that prizes privacy, transparency, and open exchange. We explore the advantages, and the challenges, of unfettered free speech, we talk about relationship between tech and civil discourse, and Bill talks about his vision of a social media ecosystem that can help pave the way toward creating a healthier and more vibrant national conversation—not in spite of our differences and distances, but because of them. In thinking about the ethics of technology, and in particular, its relationship to our moment of political, cultural, and ideological polarization, the ethics of technology extend far beyond how we use tech. Social media offers the potential for new connections, or new levels of disconnect and partisanship. The ethics and intentions we bring to social media matter, and our approach starts far before we ever sit down at our computer to respond to a Facebook post, or broadcast our views on Twitter. They start with how we imagine, and practice, civil discourse, how we think about meeting other folks where they are, considering the journey that led them to believe as they do. Here's part 3, with Bill Ottman Produced by Matt Perry Artwork by Desi Aleman

Welcome back to part 2 of our 3-episode series on Changing Minds. In this series, we’re doing something a little bit different. The three episodes of the series focus on the theme of changing minds: what it means to engage in dialogue with people with whom we disagree, sometimes deeply, and the importance of civil discourse, particularly in this deeply polarized national moment. In the first episode, I spoke with Daryl Davis about racism, and how he envisions the possibility of changing the minds of those who believe, and participate in, white supremacist and separatist movements. He talked to me about his work and his views on navigating this particularly fraught moment. Daryl Davis is a Black singer and author who has facilitated over 200 members of the KKK to leave the organization, simply by befriending them and letting them know who he is. He's big on simply reaching out rather than censorship and has created a deradicalization movement at change.minds.com to help people connect in a civil way online.     In thinking about the ethics of technology, and in particular, its relationship to our moment of political, cultural, and ideological polarization, the ethics of technology extend far beyond how we use tech. Social media offers the potential for new connections, or new levels of disconnect and partisanship. The ethics and intentions we bring to social media matter, and our approach starts far before we ever sit down at our computer to respond to a Facebook post, or broadcast our views on Twitter. They start with how we imagine, and practice, civil discourse, how we think about meeting other folks where they are, considering the journey that led them to believe as they do. In my conversations with Daryl, we explore what those ethics can look like, and how they can come to transform our approach to engaging in dialogue with distant others. Distant others can mean geographical distance. It can also mean political distance, ideological distance, or cultural difference. Daryl’s work, and his activism, shows an important alternative to the discord that dominates our current conversation and points us to the possibility of ethical engagement across that distance. Next week, I sit down with Bill Ottman, the CEO of Minds.com, a social media platform that provides an alternative to Facebook, and that seeks to prioritize privacy, transparency, and open exchange. Building on my conversations with Daryl in the first two episodes, Bill and I explore the relationship between tech and civil discourse, and ways that we all can be part of creating a healthier and more vibrant national conversation—not in spite of our differences and distances, but because of them.  Here's part 2 of my conversation with Daryl.   Produced by Matt Perry Artwork by Desi Aleman

For the next few weeks, we’re going to be doing something a little bit different. The next three episodes of the series focus on the theme of changing minds: what it means to engage in dialogue with people with whom we disagree, sometimes deeply, and the importance of civil discourse, particularly in this deeply polarized national moment. In the first two episodes, I speak with Daryl Davis about racism, and how he envisions the possibility of changing the minds of those who believe, and participate in, white supremacist and separatist movements. Daryl Davis is an Black singer and author who has facilitated over 200 members of the KKK to leave the organization, simply by befriending them and letting them know who he is. He's big on simply reaching out rather than censorship and has created a deradicalization movement at change.minds.com to help people connect in a civil way online.     Across these two episodes, I talk to Daryl about his work and his views on navigating this particularly fraught moment. In thinking about the ethics of technology, and in particular, its relationship to our moment of political, cultural, and ideological polarization, the ethics of technology extend far beyond how we use tech. Those ethics start far before we ever sit down at our computer to respond to a Facebook post, or broadcast our views on Twitter. They start with how we imagine, and practice, civil discourse. In my conversations with Daryl, we explore what those ethics can look like, and how they can come to transform our approach to engaging in dialogue with distant others. Distant others can mean geographical distance. It can also mean political distance, ideological distance, or cultural difference. Daryl’s work, and his activism, shows an important alternative to the discord that dominates our current conversation, and points us to the possibility of ethical engagement across that distance. In the third of these episodes, I speak to Bill Otman, the CEO of Minds.com, a social media platform that provides an alternative to Facebook, and that seeks to prioritize privacy, transparency, and open exchange. Between these conversations, and across these 3 episodes, we explore the relationship between tech and civil discourse, and ways that we all can be part of creating a healthier and more vibrant national conversation—not in spite of our differences and distances, but because of them.   Produced by Matt Perry Artwork by Desi Aleman