The Anti-Dystopians

Astronauts on Strike! Spaceports, Colonial Telescopes and Labor Unions in the Stars

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 06:00:00 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Kate Sammler, a geographer who looks at the intersection of science and politics in the oceans, atmospheres, and outer space. They discussed how colonialism and scientific exploration have long been entangled, from building telescopes on sacred indigenous land in Hawaii to James Cook claiming islands in the Pacific while following a star. They also talked about the little known construction of “SpacePorts,” or public transport hubs preparing the public for future travel in the stars—and why they’ve only been used as filming sets. Finally, they explain who exactly are the Autonomous Astronauts and why might the first labor strike in space already have happened.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"We Cannot Rely on Five Nerds": AI Urbanism from Amazon Go to Tech Sovereignty

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 11:05:16 GMT

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Casey Lynch, the Ramon y Cajal researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Girona. Casey is a human geographer with interests in digital, political, urban, and labour geographies, as well as geographic thought and critical theory. They discussed that SNL skit about “Just Walk Out” Amazon Go stores, and why automated shopping never got off the ground; what iBuyer programmes are and if an AI can replace your real estate agent; and promising ideas about technological sovereignty and local community in Barcelona, so that we don’t just have to rely on “five nerds” all the time.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A World of VCs in Miniature: Silicon Valley's Ideology

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 06:00:00 GMT

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Olivier Jutel, a lecturer at the University of Otago and an expert in cyberlibertarianism. They discuss the ideology of many technology industry elites and the strange political ideas permeating through Silicon Valley. What makes these Sand Hill Road venture capitalists different from the East Coast banking establishment? Why are they imagining a world of venture capitalists in miniature? How does this relate to the Network State treatisie? Can you really “exit” or “LARP” a country into existence? And is this all just capitalism, or something else?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

But Daddy, I Love Him (My ChatGPT Boyfriend): Robots and Loveability

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 07:23:00 GMT

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Jenny Carla Moran, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow based at the Trinity Long Room Hub and a faculty member at TCD-TU Dublin Joint Centre for the Sociology of Humans and Machines. They discuss Jenny's research about robots and loveability. Why are so many people falling in love with ChatGPT partners? What does the trope of "true love's first kiss" show us about which robots are considered human? How does society proscribe the acceptable limits of love in both gendered and racial ways (or why men can only cry at football games)? What's the problem with apologizing to your hairbrush when you drop it? And, most importantly, do you remember Spongebob Square Pants's underwater computer robot wife?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

FROM THE ARCHIVE: The eye of the tiger: conservation tech, rural surveillance & the patriarchy in Indian wildlife reserves

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 06:00:00 GMT

FROM THE ARCHIVE: 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.

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/3AApPN4

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why Finance Guys Are Trying to Offshore the Planet

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Connor O'Brien, a PhD Candidate at University of Cambridge researching a conceptual history of good governance and sovereign debt. They discussed a little-known tool for climate finance called "debt for nature swaps". While they might sound nice, they're actually an insidious tactic of finance guys taking control of government policies amidst the green energy transition. But also they discussed how these financial tools also show more broadly the power of international financial regimes and their relationship to state sovereignty, local power and control and authoritarian or private power.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Archive: Nationalize Gmail!!!

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 06:00:00 GMT

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Alina Utrata talks with Josh Lappen, a fellow Californian and environmental historian researching at Oxford University, who studies some of the most important technology there is: critical infrastructure. They discuss why hundreds of Elon Musks can’t (and won’t) solve climate change, the government funding and politics behind many technology entrepreneurs’ businesses, why low-tech solutions and indigenous practices are critical sources of knowledge, and the surprising number of technological innovations enabled by the US Postal Service (including Amazon’s e-commerce business and commercial flight). Plus, is PG&E really the worst company, what’s going on with the Texas blackouts, and should the government give you an email (and a bank account)?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On Dystopia, Fearing the Future and Political Imagination

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 04:00:00 GMT

This week, the Anti-Dystopians talks to an expert in dystopia! Matthew Cole is a scholar of political theory and an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences Binghamton University. His book “Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the 20th century” explores the history of dystopian thinking and why so many dystopian books have captured our political imagination (or indeed, accurately predicted our political future). We discuss the history of utopianism and dystopianism, whyy the emerged so prominently in the 20th century, and how dystopian literature and slogans (from “Make Atwood Fiction Again” to “1984 Was Not an Instruction Manual”) have come to characterize today’s political resistance movements.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An Intellectual History of LLMs

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 07:32:53 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata interviews Amira Moeding, a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Cambridge where they held fellowships with Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. They talked all about Amira’s research on the intellectual history of Large Language Models, and other types of AI. They began by asking: why is it so shocking to begin with a history and philosophy of linguistics when talking about LLMs? Why did IBM want these natural language processors to be so energy intensive (hint: to make money)? What is machine empiricism, how does it relate to the invention of Big Data, and why does it limit the way we see and understand the world around us?

Amira has worked on critical theory, philosophy of science, feminist philosophy, post-colonial theory and the history of law in settler colonial contexts before turning to data and Big Data, and their paper “Machine Empiricism” together with Professor Tobias Matzner is forthcoming. Until June they were employed as an Research Assistant at the Computer Science Department (Computerlab) at the University of Cambridge in this project.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Abolish AI!!: Decomputing with Dan McQuillan

Mon, 12 May 2025 08:08:06 GMT

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a senior lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths University and the author of "Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They talk about the state of AI adoption in the UK since our last conversation (spoiler alert: it’s bad), why the Starmer government so obsessed with AI, how AI is harming the environment and the planet and papering over the degradation of public services, infrastructure and community. Most notably, they discuss Dan’s concept of ‘decomputing’ and how communities can resist the adoption of AI to build communities of care — and why we should just abolish AI.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Public, Private and DOGE - Hybrid Sovereignty with Swati Srivastava

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 03:00:00 GMT

This week, Alina Utrata talks to Swati Srivastava, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. They discussed Swati’s work on hybrid sovereignty, private actors in global governance — and, yes, of course, Elon Musk. Listen to hear about why the classic distinctions between public and private power is much messier than we think, what discussions of sovereignty can tell us about corporate power, and what might be new about these new technology companies and algorithmic governance.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From DOGE to Subsea Cables: Global Infrastructures and Corporate Control

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 06:00:00 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Andrew Dougall, a departmental lecturer in international relations at DPIR and associate member at St Antony’s college at Oxford University. They discuss Andrew’s work on global infrastructures and corporate control in the international system, from DOGE to subsea cables. What are global infrastructures? Who, historically, has built them? Are platform companies like Meta and Twitter really so unique, or do builders and controlled of networked infrastructure always have political power? And do states or empires really have the ability to control them?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Final Fun-Tier: WALL-E, Treasure Planet and Disney’s Nazi Rocket Scientist

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 03:00:41 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Rowena Squires, a PhD Candidate in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University. They discuss the strange legacy of the depiction of outer space in children’s animation. From the (not-so-cute-after-all) robot and the consumerist environmental collapse of Earth in WALL-E, the re-telling of colonial narratives of the frontier in Treasure Planet and Lightyear, to Walt Disney’s relationship with the former rocket scientist Werner von Braun in selling the American public on space and Space Mountain. They ask what are better ways of imagining outer space, and the human relationship to nature on Earth and in the stars (and viewing recommendations for your holiday break this year)?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

South Africa and Silicon Valley: From Gold Mines to Elon Musk

Sun, 01 Dec 2024 21:39:43 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr. Tim Karayiannides, a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College, about his recent article about the similarities and connections between South Africa and Silicon Valley. While Elon Musk’s childhood in apartheid in South Africa is sometimes cited as an explanation for his far-right views, there is in fact a much deeper history of connection between Californian and South Africa — from exporting gold mining engineers, to the establishment of technical universities, computer engineers who joined finance, to the histories of eugenics and racial capitalism.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX: Experts, Expertise, Science in the Political

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 01:00:51 GMT

On this week’s podcast, Alina Utrata talks to Jan Eijking, a William Golding Junior Research Fellow and Martin Fellow at Oxford University. Jan’s work is based in international relations, and focuses on expertise, empire, capitalism and the history and theory of international organizations. They talked about everything from the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX — and how thinking about “experts,” expertise in politics can have a lot to say about the recent elections, the Silicon Valley engineers plans, but also the wider history of these infrastructural projects in empire.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social and Jan Eijking at @janeijking.bsky.social.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Engineering Territory: Silicon Valley in Space

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 08:00:07 GMT

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, your usual host is in the hot seat! Guest host Benjamin Tan, PhD Candidate at Cambridge, asks Alina Utrata about her recent publication in the American Political Science Review about Silicon Valley's outer space colonization projects. They discuss what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as different as they may seem, what the history of the British East India Company can tell us about SpaceX and Blue Origin, and why indigenous conceptions of property can problematize sovereignty and territoriality and the way we think about political power and rule today.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Digital Misogynoir

Mon, 18 Sep 2023 06:53:55 GMT

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata speaks with Julia Slupska, Olivia Andrews and Hilary Watson about a recent report by Glitch UK entitled "Digital Misogynoir: Ending the dehumanising of Black women on social media." They discuss why Black women are uniquely targeted and harmed online, the importance of centering intersectionality in discussing digital harms, the difficulties of conducting (and finding funding) for this kind of research and why Glitch is calling on tech companies, governments and civil societies to address these issues.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Political Economy, AI and the Politics of Knowledge

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 07:01:23 GMT

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke with Catriona Gray, a PhD at the University of Bath working at the intersection of sociology, politics, and law on the adoption of AI technologies. They discussed the political economy of data and whether frameworks like ‘data is the new oil’ are helpful to understanding these relationships; what is new about the technological structures or dynamics that have been created today; thinking about the inequities between the Global North and the Global South, and how these relates to existing and historical relationships; and the implementation and conceptualization of AI regulation in governments and beyond.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Automating Apartheid": Facial Recognition Tech in Palestine

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 07:01:25 GMT

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Matt Mahmoudi, the lead researcher on the Amnesty International report "Automating Apartheid" examining the deployment of facial recognition technology in Palestine. They discuss the report's findings, including how this facial recognition technology is being deployed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and consolidates existing practices of discriminatory policing; why these systems have been 'gamified' and how they connect to other infrastructures and databases; how this is affecting Palestinians’ lives; and whether existing CCTV systems in other settings — including London — could be repurposed for similar kinds of militarized policing.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Data colonialism and its discontents

Mon, 10 Apr 2023 07:02:03 GMT

On this week’s episode of The Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke to Paola Ricurate, an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Tierra Comun Network, and Sebastián Leheude, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre of Governance and Human Rights and a Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University. They discussed Paola and Sebastian’s work on data colonialism, decoloniality and feminism and Latin America. What is the connection between historic forms of colonialism and what technology infrastructures are being built now? Why are tech companies building data centers (and swimming pools) in the desert? How are local communities resisting these infrastructures and what are alternative ways of imagining our future?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Feminism, Reproductive Rights and Tech

Mon, 03 Apr 2023 07:00:00 GMT

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Maha Atal is back to discuss feminism, reproductive rights and technology. Host Alina Utrata asks her: how has the legal landscape of abortion and reproductive rights changed since the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what are technology companies doing about it? Does your GP know who their cloud computing provider is (and do they have access to your sensitive health data)? How do the US and UK feminist movements differ? And why is feminism, gender and the right to bodily autonomy on the frontline against fighting fascism today?

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 01:00:24 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University and the author of the new book Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. They discuss whether Elon Musk acts like a religious leader, how imperial Christianity set the stage for capitalism, the ways science fiction has acted as a mythology for space expansionists, and the history of a Nazi rocket scientist turned Christian evangelical partnered with Disney to promote the new Manifest Destiny of the stars.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A History of Libertarian Exit

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 01:00:23 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Raymond Craib, professor of American History and a Latin Americanist at Cornell University, about his most recent book Adventure Capitalism, A History of Libertarian Exit from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age.They discuss the history of libertarian exit and the case of Michael Oliver's Republic of Minerva, why these exit projects seem to have found a new life among tech elites and if Silicon Valley will really be able to cede from the nation-state, whether libertarian exit resembles classic colonialism and the impacts these projects have on the places they attempt to build their new nations.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Raymond Craib on Twitter @raycraib, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elon Musk’s favorite philosophy: the perils of longtermism

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 01:00:49 GMT

On this episode of the podcast, Alina Utrata speaks with Emile Torres, a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A history of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. They discuss their research into Elon Musk’s favorite philosophy, longtermism, and answer all your questions about the philosophy like: do longtermists really want to colonize space and create trillions of digital people? How does effective altruism, transhumanism and utilitarianism relate? Why do longtermists obsession with future people resemble the anti-abortion campaign? And are they related to the eugenicists? For all the reasons why you should be skeptical of What We Owe the Future, listen to this week’s episode of the Anti-Dystopians!

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Emile Torres on Twitter @xriskology, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Period-Tracking Post-Roe: Reproductive Justice, Eugenics & Feminist Cybersecurity

Thu, 27 Oct 2022 07:00:34 GMT

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Julia Slupska, a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute researching feminist approaches to cybersecurity, and Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at Cambridge University studying surveillance, data capitalism and period tracking apps. They discuss whether you should be worried about your period tracking apps, how reproductive justice, eugenics and the carceral state intersect and what a feminist approach to cyber-security might look like.

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Julia Slupska on Twitter @jayslups and Stefanie Felseberger @Flsbrgr, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Anti-Fascist Approach to AI

Wed, 19 Oct 2022 07:00:39 GMT

The Anti-Dystopians is back from its summer hiatus! In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths University of London, about his new book “Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They discuss how the dangers of automated bureaucracy and algorithmic cruelty, what Max Weber and Hannah Arendt can tell us about AI, whether AI might bring back eugenics in a new coat and how to resist AI and fascism across the world.

You can order Dan's book here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai

For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Dan McQuillan on Twitter @danmcquillan, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Social media and political publics in Kenya

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 08:32:21 GMT

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Steph Diepeveen, a senior research associate at Cambridge University, research fellow in digitalization at ODI and the author of the book “Searching for a New Kenya: Politics and Social Media on the Streets of Mombasa.” They discuss the way social media use operates in Kenya, the difference between physical and digital public spaces, how Big Tech corporations’ designs affects political discourse and what we can learn about social media by looking outside the Western context.

You can order Steph's book here. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

You can follow Steph on Twitter @sdiep, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.

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 our patreon at bit.ly/3mQFByq.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Platform Socialism

Sun, 10 Jul 2022 23:02:51 GMT

Alina Utrata talks to James Muldoon, a senior lecturer at Exeter University and the author of “Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech.” They discuss how GDH Cole’s guild socialism can be applied to tech corporations, what platforms mean for the future of capitalism, whether we should implement local and democratic control of associations and some real ideas for how to avoid dystopia.

You can order Platform Socialism here http://www.plutobooks.com/9780745346977/platform-socialism/

You can follow James Muldoon on Twitter at @james_muldoon_, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

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 our patreon at bit.ly/3mQFByq.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Road to Nowhere: Paris Marx on the automobile, Silicon Valley and the future of transportation

Mon, 04 Jul 2022 08:19:19 GMT

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Paris Marx, host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, about their upcoming book “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.” They discuss the history of the automobile industry, how Tesla is not a “green company,” why Silicon Valley is lying to you about the self-driving car and their vision for the future of public transport.

You can order Paris’s book here.

You can follow Paris Marx on Twitter @parismarx, the Tech Won't Save Us at @techwontsaveus, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

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 our patreon at bit.ly/3mQFByq.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Time, Space and Social Media: The Politics of Technology and Temporality

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 07:00:45 GMT

Alina Utrata chats with Nanna Saeten, a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge about her research on time, temporality and technology. They discuss how technologies of time have been used as tools of nation-building, why high-frequency trading and blockchain depend on human understandings of time as well as algorithms, whether technology is really “speeding up” or changing our experience of time and how social media has changed the way we experience political events across time and space.

You can follow Nanna on Twitter @NannaLS, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.

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 our patreon at bit.ly/3mQFByq.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How (Not) To Regulate Big Tech (Europe’s version)

Mon, 23 May 2022 08:27:20 GMT

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Jennifer Cobbe, a senior research associate in the computer science department at Cambridge University. They discuss everything that’s wrong with surveillance capitalism, what the Tesco club card has to do with the surveillance state, the incoherent approach of the EU to regulating tech, how Brexit affected the UK’s ability of to control technology corporations, and how the law got us to where we are now.

You can follow Jennifer on Twitter @jennifercobbe, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Articles Mentioned in this Podcast:

Jennifer Cobbe, Algorithmic Censorship by Social Platforms: Power and Resistance

Julie Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism

Evgeny Morozov, Capitalism’s New Clothes (critique of Shoshana Zuboff)

Vice, Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elon Musk, Twitter and the ‘Great Men’ of Social Media

Sun, 24 Apr 2022 10:47:06 GMT

Alina Utrata sits down with John Naughton, a technology columnist at the Observer, senior research fellow in CRASSH and co-founder of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge, and Josh Simmons, a postdoc in technology and democracy at Harvard University. They discuss Elon Musk’s recent bid for Twitter, what it shows about the power of digital platforms and wealthy men, and how to think about the challenges of reigning in Big Tech.

You can follow, John Naughton on Twitter @jjn1, Josh Simons @joshsimonlabour, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Corporations are Robots’: David Runciman on AI, states and the first singularity

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 00:00:33 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Articles mentioned in this podcast

Silicon Valley’s Vampire: David Runciman on Peter Thiel

I read Dominic Cummings blog so you don’t have to: David Runciman on Dominic Cummings

Elon Musk, Sea Turtles and the dangers of long-termism

Dangerous ideas of longtermism

Nick Clegg in profile in Politico

The Evening Rocket: Jill Lepore’s podcast series on Elon Musk’s ideology

A long-read in the FT about how the US shut down Facebook’s crypto-currency

Books mentioned in this podcast:

The Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang

The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Return of (Amazon) Ring

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 09:18:32 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Articles 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/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Feminine Meme: Geeks, memes, incels and toxic masculinity at tech hackathons

Mon, 14 Feb 2022 00:00:39 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Other articles by Siân:

Siân's Website: https://www.sianbrooke.com/
Siân's Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:76f836bf-880b-4902-9226-8d668726f4cf
Trouble 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/9593

Further Reading

OII's Anti-Racists Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/146XaYuhUAng6rGV9mChDkvWdYIfwpSXlle1RUxUaBUE/edit?usp=sharing
Hacking Diversity by Dunbar Hester: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182070/hacking-diversity
Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The eye of the tiger: conservation technology, rural surveillance and the patriarchy in Indian wildlife reserves

Sun, 06 Feb 2022 15:40:04 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Further Reading:

Negotiating the Gaze. Sanctuary Asia, December 2019
Are Conservation Organizations Complicit in Ethnic Discrimination? The Wire 2017
Grasslands of Grey: How the BBC's flawed Kaziranga muckraker has done harm. The Wire 2017:
Are Treacherous Links and Claims an Illusion? Sanctuary Asia 2016
Conservation '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 implications
Why we must question the militarisation of conservation
How does Conservation Tech Cause Harm?
Conservation Surveillance as a means for state repression?

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who is Amazon?

Sun, 30 Jan 2022 12:52:39 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Articles 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 Atlantic
Charles Duhigg’s “Is Amazon Unstoppable?”

For the rest of the articles mentioned in this episode, visit bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grab ‘em by the data: gender, technology and systems of oppression

Sat, 22 Jan 2022 12:07:45 GMT

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/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Books mentioned in the podcast:

Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin

Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble

Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks

Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neill

What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(Tech) Company Rule

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 19:19:14 GMT

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 Atal

The Janus faces of Silicon Valley http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/247127/

Is Google evil? http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2009/08/online-search-google-datak

You can follow Maha Atal on Twitter @MahaRafiAtal

Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata

And the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians

Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Human rights and internet infrastructure

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 10:45:22 GMT

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___CS

Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata

And the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians

Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5X

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/3AApPN4

Selected 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.pdf
The 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 MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Snake oil or substance? Tech companies talk climate at COP26

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 14:24:02 GMT

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/3AApPN4

To follow the Anti-Dystopians new Twitter account, go to:

https://twitter.com/AntiDystopians

To follow Alina Utrata on Twitter, go to:

https://twitter.com/AlinaUtrata

To follow Josh Lappen on Twitter, go to:

https://twitter.com/jlappen1

Articles Mentioned:

Past Anti Dystopians episode with Josh—Nationalize Gmail! https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Aayx7p8uYdKcDeyEvwuzJ?si=48fF-8p7R2KgVPHZ2O-7Rw

Do Carbon Offsets Offset Carbon? https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9368.pdf

Biden’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-1847890573

Outer space and climate solutionism https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/alina-utrata-lost-space

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Financial imperialism on the blockchain: Bitcoin in El Salvador

Sun, 26 Sep 2021 19:41:48 GMT

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/3AApPN4

Articles mentioned in this podcast

El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law Is a Farce

For Latin American politicians, Bitcoin is a PR goldmine

Jorge E. Cuéllar, Bitcoin Sanctuaries — Sidecar (New Left Review)

USAID, Bitcoin and the Long Fight over El Salvador’s Sovereignty -- Daniel Alvarenga -- El Faro

Left Out of Bukele’s Bitcoin Decision, Salvadorans Face Deepening Inequality

There 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 Out

CISPES https://www.cispes.org/

Books mentioned in this podcast

Blockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei Wang

Blockchain Democracy by William Magnuson

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Digital Landscape of Southeast Asia: From Fake News to 5G

Sun, 19 Sep 2021 16:25:18 GMT

We’re back from our summer holiday! To kick off season 2 of the Anti-Dystopians, we’re zeroing in on some of the global aspects of technology—this time in Southeast Asia. Alina Utrata talks to Kyra Jasper and Andreyka Natalegawa about the digital landscape of the region, from Facebook’s relationship with the junta in Myanmar, from fake news laws in Indonesia to Huwaei’s plans for 5g to ASEAN Smart Cities.

To follow the Anti-Dystopians new Twitter account, go to:

https://twitter.com/AntiDystopians

To follow Alina Utrata on Twitter, go to:

https://twitter.com/AlinaUtrata

To follow Kyra Jasper on Twitter, go to:

https://twitter.com/kj_spade

To follow Andreyka Natalegawa on Twitter, go to:

https://twitter.com/a_natalegawa

The Anti-Dystopians is hosted and produced by Alina Utrata. All episodes are freely available, wherever you get your podcasts.

To support the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Articles by Kyra and Andreyka

Controlling the Information Space: Big Tech and Free Speech in Southeast Asia

https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/controlling-information-space-big-tech-and-free-speech-southeast-asia

Mitigating Cybersecurity Risks for ASEAN Smart Cities

http://www.cogitasia.com/mitigating-cybersecurity-risks-for-asean-smart-cities/

Articles on SE Asia region

Digital trade deal ripe for the Indo-Pacific

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/digital-trade-deal-ripe-for-the-indo-pacific/

The e-Conomy SEA 2020 report by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company

https://economysea.withgoogle.com

On Myanmar

Months After Coup, Myanmar Accelerates Toward Surveillance State

https://www.csis.org/blogs/new-perspectives-asia/months-after-coup-myanmar-accelerates-toward-surveillance-state

Myanmar junta blocks Facebook to quell dissent

https://www.ft.com/content/65c3f19d-2d54-4f32-9b96-7114d8416e26

On Indonesia

Seeking a Viable Alternative to Indonesia’s Blasphemy Laws

https://thediplomat.com/2020/09/seeking-a-viable-alternative-to-indonesias-blasphemy-laws/

InterpretatIons of artIcle 156a of the IndonesIan CrImInal Code on Blasphemy and relIgIous defamatIon (a legal and human rIghts analysIs)

https://leip.or.id/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/LeIP-Interpretations-of-Article-156A-of-The-Indonesian-Criminal-Code-On-Blasphemy-and-Religious-Defamation-a-Legal-and-Human-Right-Analysis.pdf

Jakarta governor Ahok found guilty of blasphemy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-39853280

Buni Yani gets 1.5 years in jail for hate speech after selectively edited a video in which former Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama warned Thousand Islands regency residents about people using Quranic verses for political gain.

https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2017/11/14/buni-yani-gets-1-5-years-in-jail.html

Privacy alarm in Indonesia over president's leaked vaccine certificate

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/privacy-alarm-indonesia-over-presidents-leaked-vaccine-certificate-2021-09-03/

On Thailand

Lèse-majesté epidemic in Thailand reaches new milestone

https://www.fidh.org/en/region/asia/thailand/lese-majeste-epidemic-reaches-new-milestone

Thailand government files lese-majesty suit against banned opposition leader

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/21/thailand-government-files-lese-majesty-suit-against-banned-opposition-leader

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lost in Space: Audio Reading

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 22:51:41 GMT

In this special episode, an audio recording of Alina Utrata's recent article in the Boston Review "Lost in Space" about the tech billionaires attempting to colonize space.

https://bostonreview.net/science-nature/alina-utrata-lost-space

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the Colonization of Outer Space

Sun, 16 May 2021 23:38:23 GMT

To kick off the new season of the podcast, Alina Utrata and Shikha Srinivas discuss space colonization and the tech billionaires in outer space. Why are Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk obsessed with getting to the moon and Mars? How are climate change and the quest to become an interplanetary species related? Who will unaccountable private corporations in space ultimately harm? Should we be afraid of cascading satellites and colliding space junk? And how can indigenous principles and knowledge-holders lead us in understanding our obligations to earth and space, and caring for our shared celestial commons?

Since we talked a lot about indigenous communities on this episode, we want to highlight the work and knowledge of indigenous scholars, activists and communities:

Sense of Place Series: Indigenous Perspectives on Earth and Sky

All My Relations: a podcast by three native women, as well as the specific episode about the fight to protect Mauna Kea

The Polynesian Voyaging Society, Hokule’a and more on Polynesian navigation practices.

Native Appropriations, a blog by Dr. Adrienne Keene

More Indigenous Scholars and Scholarly Work

Dr Mark Rifkin

Elizabeth Reese

Professor Linda Smith

Dr. Sarah Deer

Native science : natural laws of interdependence

More about indigenous communities, colonialism and space:

The impact of satellite constellations on space as an ancestral global commons

Anger after Indonesia offers Elon Musk Papuan island for SpaceX launchpad

Astronomers May Not Like It but Astronomy and Colonialism Have a Shared History

The legacy of colonialism on public lands created the Mauna Kea conflict

Other articles:

Mars is a hellhole.

New York Times article about the social life of forests

The myth of the tragedy of the commons

What if Space Junk and Climate Change Become the Same Problem?

A rough sketch on some advanced carbon capture technology

Astronomers are very frustrated with Elon Musk’s satellites

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos’s space ideology:

Billionaire battles are shaping our future in space

Elon Musk, once again the world's richest person, is selling all his possessions so people know he's serious about colonizing Mars

Elon Musk’s Satellite Internet Project Is Too Risky, Rivals Say

Elon Musk’s War on Regulators:The Tesla and SpaceX chief courts conflict with an alphabet soup of government agencies—and generally gets away with it

Elon Musk’s SpaceX violated its launch license in explosive Starship test, triggering an FAA probe

Jeff Bezos’ Rocket Company Challenges NASA Over SpaceX Moon Lander Deal

Jeff Bezos Lifts Veil on His Rocket Company, Blue Origin

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can your computer see you?: A history of the screen, from radar to AR.

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 22:20:50 GMT

This week, the Anti-Dystopians hosts Louisa Shen, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University who has written about the history of the screen. Louisa explains how the screen began as military technology in WWII, how the Cold War overlapped with the mass production of screens (and spying), and how interactive screens now make it seem as if we can see our computers—or maybe that our computers can see us. Will the future of screens be the VR world of Facebook’s Oculus Rift or the AR overlaid life of Google glasses? Or will Amazon’s Alexa turned hologram become the next IoT “screen”?

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

State, corporation, people: the global dimensions of tech regulation

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 19:38:03 GMT

Kyra Jasper, Josh Simons and Alina Utrata discuss the global dimensions of tech regulation. In this episode, they examine three case studies: Google and Facebook’s reaction to Australia’s new media law, and whether these tech corporations really “faced down a nation-state”. Facebook’s role in Myanmar, where the platform is the de facto internet, and whether the new military junta can shut down Facebook, if Facebook can ban the new rulers, and why Facebook only took action after a coup, and not during the ongoing genocide against the Rohingya. Finally, Twitter and Facebook in India, where the platforms have struggled with how to respond to India’s censorship laws. What can these case studies tell us about the nexus between states, corporations and people across the world?

Mentioned in this podcast

Australia shows the way. It’s the job of governments not big tech to run democracies

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/21/australia-shows-the-way-its-the-job-of-governments-not-big-tech-to-run-democracies

Google threatens to shut down search in Australia

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/22/tech/google-threatens-australia-search-news-intl-hnk/index.html

Myanmar Blocks Facebook Access After Online Protests of Military Coup

https://www.wsj.com/articles/myanmar-blocks-facebook-access-after-coup-11612436184?reflink=desktopwebshare_twitter

Myanmar’s Military Deploys Digital Arsenal of Repression in Crackdown

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/world/asia/myanmar-coup-military-surveillance.html

'It's digital colonialism': how Facebook's free internet service has failed its users

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets

What a Facebook experiment did to news in Cambodia

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41801071

Twitter Unblocked Accounts That Criticized India’s Government. Now, Its Employees Are Being Threatened With Jail Time Unless It Blocks Them Again.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/india-threatens-twitter-jail

In India, Facebook Fears Crackdown on Hate Groups Could Backfire on Its Staff

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-india-facebook-fears-crackdown-on-hate-groups-could-backfire-on-its-staff-11607871600

India imposes new rules on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/25/tech/india-twitter-facebook-social-media-guidelines/index.html

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nationalize Gmail!: Climate Change, Critical Infrastructure, and the USPS

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 21:29:11 GMT

Alina Utrata talks with Josh Lappen, a fellow Californian and environmental historian researching at Oxford University, who studies some of the most important technology there is: critical infrastructure. They discuss why hundreds of Elon Musks can’t (and won’t) solve climate change, the government funding and politics behind many technology entrepreneurs’ businesses, why low-tech solutions and indigenous practices are critical sources of knowledge, and the surprising number of technological innovations enabled by the US Postal Service (including Amazon’s e-commerce business and commercial flight). Plus, is PG&E really the worst company, what’s going on with the Texas blackouts, and should the government give you an email (and a bank account)?

Addendum from Josh: "When recognizing the climate benefits of indigenous land management, we need to stress that a purely technical approach, which seeks to identify knowledge and incorporate it into existing management regimes, is simultaneously inadequate, amoral, and probably counterproductive. As we stressed during the interview, climate change is a political question which presents problems of distribution that run deeper than its problems of budgeting. In places like California, indigenous land management regimes ended due to enslavement, removal, and genocide of the state's native peoples, and modern land management practices have long depended on ignoring that fact, and the experiences of people who live on the land in general. Durably solving climate change is not just about assembling new tools; it requires rebuilding social and political systems to avoid new iterations of extractivism. In the case of cultural land management practices, that means restoring indigenous communities' role in shaping and caring for the land."

Mentioned in this podcast:

By Josh: How Climate-Driven Disasters Threaten Climate Progress
Bill Tripp, the director of natural resources and environmental policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources, in the Guardian: “Our land was taken. But we still hold the knowledge of how to stop mega-fires.” As well as Jared Dahl Alder, “Cultural Fire on the Mountain: An Introduction to Native Cultural Burning" and Indigenous Conservation Practices Are Not a Monolith: Western cultural biases and a lack of engagement with Indigenous experts undermine studies of land stewardship.
How California’s firefighters are made up of incarcerated people who are paid $1 a day,
An explainer on PG&E and California’s (basically, annual) rolling blackouts and the recent Texas energy grid failures.
If you’re wondering why California doesn’t have a train line between its two most populous cities, here’s a good explainer on the High Speed Rail (spoiler alert: its local politics), more long view coverage from Ralph Vartabedian at the LA Times. Plus, why Elon Musk’s Hyperloop literally won’t solve anything.
“It’s the government, stupid.” Elon Musk is a state-made man. In case you didn’t catch the number, Elon Musk ventures’ Telsa, Solar City and SpaceX have received a total of $4.9 billion dollars from the government in tax breaks, grants and subsidies, and Tesla literally was not profitable until this year.
For more on so-called libertarian tech entrepreneurs who make their fortunes contracting with Big Government, check out our previous Anti-Dystopians podcast about Peter Thiel with Andrew Granato (a mutual friend of me and Josh).
More on the climate impacts of AI language modeling in the memo that Google fired Dr Timnit Gebru over, plus the environmental toll of a Netflix binge.
For more on how Google buses and tech corporations are creating two-tier public/private infrastructure in the Bay, check out Inside a Secretive $250 Million Private Transit System Just for Techies.
And, how Congress is Sabotaging Your Post Office. Plus a really interesting argument about the benefit of state-issues crypto-currencies aka why doesn’t the Fed just give everyone a bank account?
Books:
Marianna Mazzucato’s The Entrepreneurial State
Winifred Gallagher’s How the Post Office Created America
Timothy Mitchell's Rule of Experts
Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space
Susan Leigh Star's Ecologies of Knowledge
Richard White's The Organic Machine

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is Facebook (and Google) a Public Utility?

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 10:53:58 GMT

For this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Josh Simons, a PhD candidate in Government at Harvard University and a Labour candidate for local office in the UK. They discuss Josh’s research — what is machine learning and why is it (always) political? As critical information infrastructure, should Google and Facebook be regulated as democratic utilities? And do we need a whole new understanding of corporations' role in society if we’re going to tackle the tech industry?

Tweet at Alina

Tweet at Josh

A transcript of this episode is available here.

Mentioned in this podcast

Josh Simons (co-authored by Dipayan Ghosh) on Brookings: Utilities for democracy: Why and how the algorithmic infrastructure of Facebook and Google must be regulated

Virginia Eubanks’s seminal work on Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. Plus a review on the LSE’s blog

Cory Doctorow, How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism

More on the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and Digital Markets Unit

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Digital Periphery: Technology, Migration and Racial Capitalism

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:23:02 GMT

On this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr. Matt Mahmoudi, who just completed his PhD in Development Studies at Cambridge University as a Jo Cox scholar of Refugee and Migration Studies. They talked about Matt’s research about how technology is affecting migrant and refugee communities in New York City and Berlin, how seemingly innocuous technology, like free WiFi kiosks, can become de facto digital borders, what racial capitalism can tell us about Shoshana Zuboff’s “surveillance capitalism”, and if a decolonial neo-Luddite approach to tech is possible. Plus, why New York City should ban police use of facial recognition scan.

A rough transcript of this episode is available here.

Articles and scholars mentioned in this podcast

A post by Matt on his research on The Sociological Review, Race in the Digital Periphery: The New (Old) Politics of Refugee Representation

Books:

On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance by Cedric J. Robinson

Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space by Keller Easterling

Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class by Robin Kelley

Notes Towards a Neo-Luddite Manifesto by Chellis Glendinning

The Invention of the Passport by John Torpey

Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman

Two Cheers for Anarchism by James Scott

Articles

Leaked Location Data Shows Another Muslim Prayer App Tracking Users

We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State (review by John Naughton)

The Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang (review by Alina Utrata)

Podcast

Previous Anti-Dystopians podcast on gender, colonization and the limits of surveillance capitalism

More information about Amnesty’s campaign to #BanTheScan

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Social Media and Social Movements: The Rise of the European Far-Right

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 13:03:26 GMT

For this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talked to Julia Rone, a post-doc at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge University. They discussed the rise of the European far-right online—what's the relationship between online disinformation and political mobilization? Why is the far-right so much better at mobilizing online than the far-left? Can platforms or content moderation policies really stop them? And is any of this about “social media” or is it just about social movements?

Tweet at Alina.

Tweet at Julia.

Articles mentioned in this podcast

Julia Rone’s publications:

On the Minderoo Centre’s blog Power-Switch:

Democratizing digital sovereignty: an impossible task?

Public networks instead of social networks?

On the London School of Economics blog:

Collateral Damage: How algorithms to counter “fake news” threaten citizen media in Bulgaria

Why talking about ‘disinformation’ misses the point when considering radical right ‘alternative’ media

Academic Articles:

Far right alternative news media as ‘indignation mobilization mechanisms’: how the far right opposed the Global Compact for Migration

The people formerly known as the oligarchy: the cooptation of citizen journalism

More from our colleagues at the Minderoo Centre:

Josh Simons on why Google and Facebook algorithms are political (and should be regulated as public utilities): Utilities for Democracy: Why the Algorithmic Infrastructure of Facebook and Google must be Regulated

Jennifer Cobbe on the issues surrounding algorithmic reach and recommendations: Regulating Recommending: Motivations, Considerations, and Principles

John Naughton’s excellent Observer column on why the Facebook Oversight Board is just some corporate theatre masquerading as political theatre

Alina Utrata (me!) on Should you have a right to a Facebook account?

Corporations, Content Moderation and Community-Centered Tech

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 19:03:22 GMT

2020 was one hell of a year (literally). Alina Utrata, Mallika Balakrishnan and Kyra Jasper break down some of the things that happened in 2020’s technology politics—from the Trump Twitter ban, to content moderation, contact tracing and conspiracy theories, to how we design digital spaces that empower communities and bottom-up approaches to digital justice.

Follow Alina Utrata on Twitter.

Follow Kyra Jasper on Twitter.

Articles mentioned in this podcast

Axios roundup of all of the digital platforms that have banned Trump or Trump-related content (so far).

An anarchist’s approach to social media, or how can we empower communities to shape their own digital spaces? Plus, some critiques of the Wikipedia model.

For how digital platforms have affected trans folks, the Guardian on Facebook’s authentic names policy and Ina Fried on Wikipedia’s gender identity style guide.

On the power of Facebook’s lookalike audience and group recommendations. Stop the Seal groups on Facebook, ads for military gear next to insurrection posts (is this a . . . feature, not a bug?), and racism in Facebook targeted housing ads

On WhatsApp’s new policy—why it’s bad (spoiler alert: it’s giving Facebook your data) and a nice New Yorker feature on Signal co-founder Moxie Marlinspike.

More on Maria Ressa and Facebook in the Philippines, Vietnam’s threat to shut down Facebook unless it agrees to censorship, and Singapore’s COVID-19 contact tracing app.

The SEC is investigating Zoom for complying with Chinese censorship requests over Tiananmen square commemorations—and more on Zoom’s censorship of Palestinan events.

Elon Musk saying that his goal is Mars indentured servitude. Also of note, the space battle shaking down between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos (it centers around satellite internet for rural communities). Plus, in more inspiring news, the Institute for Self Reliance on community-based broadband networks (they have a great podcast too).

And how Selena Gomez emailed Sheryl Sandberg about white supremacy on Facebook.

Plus, some lockdown reads! David Runciman’s How Democracy Ends (it’s actually more optimistic than the title would have you believe, I promise). And Ruha Benjamin’s absolutely brilliant book Race After Technology.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No Tech for Tyrants

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 08:00:39 GMT

Alina Utrata talks to Mallika Balakrishnan, one of the original founders of the collective No Tech for Tyrants. They discuss tech activism, problems with Palantir and how centering the conversation around the people and communities that tech and policies impact can help us frame discussions of technology and politics.

Tweet at Alina

Tweet at Mallika

Articles Mentioned In this Podcast

A report, co-authored by Mallika, by No Tech For Tyrants and Privacy International about UK government contracts with Palantir and associated Motherboard coverage. You can sign the NT4T petition here.

For more information about No Tech for Tyrants check out their website here and here.

More reporting on how Palantir’s technology was used by ICE and on trouble between the NYPD and Palantir.

Speaking of Palantir, you can check out our previous podcast episodes where we discuss the founder of Palantir Peter Thiel or Biden’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines, who used to work for Palantir.

More on the firing of Timnit Gebru, the prominent Black scientist studying the ethics of artificial intelligence at Google, and on the links between Big Tech and academic research.

What we can learn about Facebook by thinking like an anarchist, or at least by reading Yale professor James Scott’s work.

On Nicholas Kristof’s article about Pornhub, and reporting by Samantha Cole about how it has impacted performers on the site. Another interesting article about how GoFundMe said it would stop processing payments for militias.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Biden and Big Tech

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 01:21:25 GMT

Anjali Katta and Alina Utrata talk about the Big Tech issues a Biden Administration will inherit, from the FTC and DOJ anti-monopoly cases against Facebook and Google to the DoD’s cloud computing contract JEDI. They also discuss links between many Biden Administration officials and the tech industry. To sign up for the email newsletter of the Anti-Dystopians, click here.

CORRECTION: When talking about the Microsoft antitrust case, Alina meant to say "Netscape" instead of "Netflix."

Articles and books mentioned in this podcast.

The American Prospect’s big feature on “How Biden’s Foreign Policy Team Got Rich” focusing on Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken and Michele Flournoy. More on WestExec strategic consultants (including ODNI nominee Avril Haines and potential CIA nominee David Cohen) by Politico and the Revolving Door project. Plus some progressives wrote an article arguing against Michele Flournoy for Secretary of Defense in the Project On Government Oversight .

Director of National Intelligence nominee Avril Haines’ link to Palantir, along with reporting about NYPD and NHS contracts with Palantir.

Fantastic ProPublica reporting on the JEDI cloud computing contract and links between DoD and Amazon. Plus an excellent Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on Cloud Computing security, and a report by Rishi Sunak on how critical undersea cable networks are incredibly insecure.

The extraordinary amounts of money Uber &co spent to avoid giving benefits and protections to drivers, and how Jake Sullivan ended up (sort of) working for Uber. Plus Cory Doctorow on Saudi investment in Uber, and Vox on how Silicon Valley is awash with money from Saudi Arabia and China.

The FTC/AG suits against Facebook and their Mark Zuckerberg email quotes might explain why Google employees have been instructed not to talk about antitrust in their emails, or ever.

Public Citizen’s investigation into FTC’s revolving door problem with Big Tech, plus the FTC officials who work at Facebook now. And, of course, all the Facebook folks on the Biden transition team.

Biden’s new coronavirus czar Jeffrey Zients (who was acting director of Office of Management and Budget and a former Facebook Board member) Wikipedia page mysteriously deleted that he “fell in love with the culture at Bain & Co” after joining the Biden campaign.

Finally, the Biden agency review teams has lots of tech players, Kamala Harris’s campaigns’ links to big tech and Chiara Cordelli’s new book The Privatized State on how government contracting/outsourcing is not good for us.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Data flows: gender, colonization and the limits of surveillance capitalism

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:01:15 GMT

Alina Utrata talks to Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD candidate at Cambridge University, about her research on surveillance, data flows and mensuration tracking apps. They discuss how colonization impacted the development of surveillance technologies, why we think (or shouldn’t think) about data as a commodity instead of labor, and how the ownership of knowledge about female bodies has translated into power—from the witch burnings to period apps.

Tweet at Alina.

Tweet at Stefanie.

Articles mentioned in this podcast:

Stefanie Felsberger’s article “Colonial Cables – The Politics of Surveillance in the Middle East and North Africa.”

The woman who tried to hide her pregnancy from Big Data (and failed) and why pregnant women are such a high value target for advertisers. And if want to know more about the Smart Period Cup.

Amazon experimenting with paying some consumers for their data. They’ve also entered the healthcare market.

The US military is buying location data from every day apps, including a Muslim prayer app and Muslim dating site.

More on testing and importing technologies in low rights environments, or how colonization spurred the development of surveillance technologies. For some more contemporary examples, how technologies developed by US military contractors in Yemen were used to disburse G20 protesters in Pittsburgh in 2009.

More on surveillance tech used to target the Black Lives Matter protests here and here. And an ACLU overview on surveillance tech available in the US, as well as who has stingray tracking devices. And on the use of police drones to surveil protestors.

Virginia Eubanks on how marginalized groups are often governments' test subjects (her full book on the subject here or here.) Relatedly, how Baltimore became the US’s lab for developing surveillance tech.

How the UNHCR is collecting iris data from refugees in Jordan.

On Chinese companies role in Africa and the Middle East, watch part II of this documentary.

On the NSO Group and how their tech was linked to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the hacking of Jeff Bezos’s phone.

The Philosopher King of Silicon Valley

Mon, 16 Nov 2020 08:00:30 GMT

Alina Utrata talks with Andrew Granato about the so-called Philosopher King of Silicon Valley: Peter Thiel. Thiel is one of the original co-founders of Paypal, nicknamed the Paypal mafia, a co-founder of the data analytics firm Palantir, one of the first outside investors in Facebook, and the first high-level tech executive to come out in support of Donald Trump in 2016. Andrew’s research into Peter Thiel began as an undergraduate at Stanford University, when he conducted an eleven month long investigation into Peter Thiel’s influence and legacy at Stanford when, as an undergraduate, Thiel set up the highly controversial student publication the Stanford Review. We discuss Thiel’s politics, what they reveal about how he thinks about his businesses, and how he influences and shapes Silicon Valley politics and beyond.

Tweet at Alina Utrata

Tweet at Andrew Granato

Get in touch with the Anti-Dystopians

https://stanfordpolitics.org/2017/11/27/peter-thiel-cover-story/

https://medium.com/@agranato/thinking-about-the-rise-of-techs-founder-emperor-4f1fdb809d05

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/21/magazine/palantir-alex-karp.html

https://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-18-notes

https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/silicon-valley-s-political-endgame-summarized-1f395785f3c1

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-thiel-donald-trump-white-nationalist-support

https://www.scottlucas.me/peter-thiels-apocalypse

https://thenewinquiry.com/the-scapegoating-machine/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/11/28/no-death-no-taxes

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/09/mystic-mogg-jacob-rees-mogg-willam-predicts-brexit-plans

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand

https://www.seasteading.org/about/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/29/fintan-otoole-the-books-interview-brexit-english-nationalism

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Politics of Tech Monopolies

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 08:00:32 GMT

For the first episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Kyra Jasper and Alina Utrata discuss the politics of anti-monopoly in tackling technology companies, focusing on the United States. October turned out to be a very significant month for Big Tech in the US. First, the US House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee released a report on Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google that found those companies had monopoly power. And, about two weeks later, the Department of Justice launched an anti-monopoly suit against Google. Kyra and Alina discuss some of the political arguments around monopoly approaches.

Tweet at us

Mentioned in the episode:

https://powerswitchorg.wordpress.com/2020/11/16/the-political-arguments-against-digital-monopolies-in-the-house-judiciary-report/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/06/technology/house-antitrust-report-big-tech.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/20/us/doj-google-suit.html

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylj/vol126/iss3/3

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/digitaliberties/from-territorial-to-functional-sovereignty-case-of-amazon/

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjreg/vol33/iss2/5/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/d3akm7/how-facebook-bought-a-police-force

http://web.stanford.edu/group/reichresearch/cgi-bin/wordpress/just-giving/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/business/reactivate-facebook-account.html

https://gizmodo.com/i-cut-the-big-five-tech-giants-from-my-life-it-was-hel-1831304194

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/27/facebook-free-basics-developing-markets

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tiktok-india-ban

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2009.13676.pdf

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-internal-metric-violence-incitement-rising-vote

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/facebook-philippines-dutertes-drug-war

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-41801071

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Zeynep Tufekci on dystopia.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Trailer

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 19:15:05 GMT

The Anti-Dystopians is the politics podcast about tech. We'll be discussing questions, like: is social media really destroying democracy? Should Facebook be considered a public utility? How does crytpocurrency affect state sovereignty? And what exactly is surveillance capitalism? For all your political questions about tech, mark your calendars for the launch of the Anti-Dystopians.

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.