Looks Like New

On this episode of Looks Like New, MEDLab's Stephanie Abdalla speaks with Dr. Naim Aburaddi, artist, journalist, and PhD graduate whose work explores how immersive tech can document destruction. Aburaddi is the co-founder and co-director of the Phoenix of Gaza XR Project, an interactive virtual reality experience that documents life in Gaza through its culture, history and decades of subjugation b...

MEDLab research fellow Kadallah Burrowes speaks with Lauren Gardner, Executive Director of Open Source Collective, about what it means to build infrastructure for the commons and why the lessons of grassroots arts spaces might hold the key to the future of collective digital life. Gardner stewards a network of over 2,500 open-source and community-driven projects, providing fiscal sponsorship and s...

In this month's episode, in conversation with MEDLab fellow Stephanie Abdalla, Dr. Gebru discusses AI ethics research, the history of the AGI movement, and movements of resistance that can lead us to alternative AI futures. Dr. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR for short), an independent organization of academics, activists, and engin...

In this episode of Looks Like New , MEDLab's Kadallah Burrowes sits down with political economist Nick Srnicek to examine the rise of platform capitalism and the forces shaping today’s digital economy. The conversation moves beyond technological hype to focus on labor, automation, and political possibility. Rather than framing automation as a simple story of job replacement, Srnicek argues that di...

Recently on Looks Like New, host Kadallah Burrowes is joined by Ytasha Womack, an author, filmmaker, and independent scholar whose work has been foundational to how we understand Afrofuturism as both a cultural movement and a philosophical practice. Best known for Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, Womack has spent decades exploring the intersections of Black culture, tec...

On this month's episode of Looks Like New, MEDLab’s Stephanie Abdalla speaks with Dr. Nesrine Mansour about rethinking architecture in the age of digital media and artificial intelligence. Their conversation explores how sacred spaces are being reimagined amid rapid technological change, alongside broader questions of authorship, agency, and bias in architectural imagination. They also discuss AI...

In this month’s episode, MEDLab’s Stephanie Abdalla interviews Dr. Nick Couldry about the intricate relationship between media, power, and societal structures. Their conversation touches on data colonialism, the importance of building solidarities within and beyond academia, and the need to analyze emerging technologies through a critical lens. Dr. Couldry is Professor Emeritus of Media, Communica...

In this month’s episode of Looks Like New , hosted by MEDLab’s associate director Júlia Martins Rodrigues, we speak with Camila Galaz, an interdisciplinary artist, editor, and researcher whose work explores the intersections of technology, memory, and historical storytelling. Galaz is the founder of Structured Knowledge, a nonfiction narrative consultancy helping creatives and thinkers translate c...

Who will own the future of gig work? In this month's episode of Looks Like New, MEDlab Associate Director Júlia Martins speaks with Minsun Ji, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, about empowering workers to reclaim control over their economic futures. Minsun and her team are pioneering efforts to democratize work ownership, including the launch of Colorado's first d...

In this episode of Looks Like New, host Júlia Martins Rodrigues speaks with Warren Liu, a Media Studies doctoral student. Liu examines how video games shape culture—both by reflecting colonial legacies and by offering space to challenge them. Their conversation explores how games can spark decolonial thinking and open new paths for cultural exchange. From reclaiming narratives and traditions to re...

Who gets to participate in society—and how do we build systems that serve everyone, not just the privileged few? In this episode of Looks Like New , MEDLab's Júlia Martins Rodrigues speaks with Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, a leading expert at the intersection of technology and social justice, about what happens when entire communities are left behind in our rapidly digitizing world. As Director of the Ce...

AI is advancing at lightning speed—so fast that questions of ownership and data use often get left behind. What control do we really have over our data in these massive language models? And how can we rethink governance for AI? On this episode of Looks Like New , MEDLab fellow Andy DiLallo speaks with Berlin-based artist, musician, and technologist Mat Dryhurst. Known for his work on collective ow...

It’s easy to look at today’s pop culture and advertising and feel nostalgic for earlier generations—but were those eras really so different? What trends have remained consistent throughout our history? In this month’s episode of Looks Like New , hosted by MEDlab’s associate director Júlia Martins Rodrigues, we hear from Art Bamford, Ph. D., lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Colorado B...

In the digital age, it's hard to resist free conveniences—but are they really free? So much of our data is constantly being bought and sold without our knowledge, making it crucial to find safe alternatives to keep our private information truly private. On this month's episode of Looks Like New, hosted by MEDlab fellow Stephanie Abdalla, Anna Muller joins us all the way from Brazil to discuss the...

Writing code can be like casting a spell: magic words, written in a special language, bring new worlds into existence. But spells can have consequences. Who is responsible for how technology impacts society? This month on Looks Like New, MEDlab research fellow Adina Glickstein talked to Coraline Ada Ehmke. Who is dedicated to helping technologists make sense of – and take accountability for – the...

Political discourse around social media has become increasingly significant, particularly during the recent presidential transition. Debates about TikTok’s viability, new censorship policies on Meta platforms, and the ongoing turbulence on X underscore the growing importance of decentralized media development. On this month's episode of Looks Like New, we're bringing you a conversation between gue...

How connected is the struggle for racial justice and the fight for a democratic economy? How has racism hindered the fight, and how can activists work together for a better future on both fronts? This month on, Looks Like New , MEDlab director Nathan Schneider hosted a group conversation of 100+ guests to understand these questions. This event hosted Jason Spicer, an assistant professor at Baruch...

In an ever more messy online media environment, it can be hard to know where to let ourselves be truly creative. This month on Looks Like New , MEDLab community fellow Andy DiLallo spoke with Yancey Stricker, best known as a co-founder and former CEO of Kickstarter. Strickler's story started on a farm in Virginia before he became a music journalist and founder of a leading tech company. Most recen...

Whether or not we have children of our own, many of us have wondered how we approach their privacy in the digital world. What's the best way we can approach this increasingly important question? In this episode, MEDLab research fellow Antoinette Kendrick speaks with danah boyd, a leading researcher, scholar, and thought leader in the fields of technology, social media, and youth culture. She is a...

Every one of us has felt the impact of the shortcomings within our current economic system. Where did this system go wrong? More importantly, what can we do to make it right?  To answer these questions we spoke to Marjorie Kelly, a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Democracy Collaborative, author of The Making of a Democratic Economy (co-authored with Ted Howard), Owning our Future: The Em...

Within a rapidly evolving digital landscape, it can be difficult to identify the more harmful effects of digital media use on children. This month we interviewed Antoinette Kendrick, a second-year doctoral student and Instructor in CU Boulder’s department of Media Studies. She received her bachelor's degree in psychology and her master's degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma. Her r...

This month we interviewed Dr. Shamika Klassen, a User Interface Scientist and recent graduate of C.U. Boulder’s Department of Information Science. Dr. Klassen is interested in creating technologies that put humans first, particularly those who are traditionally marginalized. On this episode, Dr. Klassen discusses with us her how she arrived at her dissertation research topic and process of conduct...

Dr. Christopher Bell is a culture consultant at Skydance, Disney, and Pixar as well as a Associate Professor of Media Studies at C.U. Boulder, "Harry Potter" scholar, and all around nerd. His TED Talk, "Bring on the female superheroes," asked where were all the strong women in modern media? And where were all the toys, games, and costumes to accompany such characters? In this episode of "Looks Lik...

Online technologies have often taken on a life of their own when a community forms around them. Users put their tools to use in ways the designers never expected. What would it mean to truly hand ownership and control of tools to the people who rely on them most? This month, we turn to Anjali and James Young, the founders of Collab. Land, a piece of software used by thousands of online communities...

A new kind of social media is emerging that is open, interoperable, and not controlled by any one company. One iteration of it is called Bluesky. Bluesky lets you follow feeds specific to your interests, and each feed is created, curated, and run by individuals or groups. Rather than relying on corporate engineers, this is everyone's opportunity to try their hand in building their own algorithm an...