Plutopia News Network

Contemporary media artist Patrick Lichty returns for another conversation with Plutopians Scoop and Jon. In this conversation, we discuss the current state of digital art. Pat is a Contemporary Media Artist, educator, professional writer/researcher, expert in Augmented/Virtual Reality/Drones, public speaker, and curator. He is a Herb Alpert/CalArts fellow, a TED Global exhibitor, and his writing o...

In this episode of the Plutopia Podcast, hosts Jon and Scoop engage in a wide-ranging discussion covering various topics, including the ongoing ransomware attack at Ascension Seton hospitals, solar flares, science fiction, billionaire bunkers, and QAnon conspiracy theories. They also touch on the upcoming debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, speculating on Trump’s debate tactics. The...

ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley joins the Plutopia podcast this time. Jay works with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, where he researches, writes, and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues. The ACLU is very involved in legislative advocacy. We have a team here in Washington of lobbyists who work with Capitol Hill and federal agencies to try to s...

Madeline Bocaro describes herself as a passionate fan of rock music. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, she explains her passion for all things rock and roll. We also explore her ultimate biography of Yoko Ono, In Your Mind: The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono. I just saw a picture of her in a magazine in 1967. It was a picture of her in front of a frame of one of her films. And I just thought...

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, hosts Jon Lebkowsky, Wendy Grossman, and Scoop Sweeney discuss with guest Mike Nelson, a senior fellow at Carnegie Asia, the evolution and impact of the internet and encryption policies. Mike shares his journey from being Al Gore’s science advisor, contributing to legislation that allowed public internet access, to his current focus on technology policy at...

This time on the Plutopia podcast, our evil alien overlords, Jon and Scoop, talk about their favorite science fiction films and TV series.

Filmmaker Friedrich Moser is on a crusade for truth. His new film “How to Build a Truth Engine” features investigators from the fields of technology, journalism, folklore and neuroscience who show that if you can hack the information feed, you can hack somebody’s mind. Friedrich Moser: Anything that happened in the world would become the cornerstone of a new conspiracy story, lik...

In her new book, Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care. , Susannah Fox focuses on the health care needs of patients and caregivers. She points out the need for better communication and networking for anyone who has difficulty navigating the American healthcare system. Susannah Fox: With all of the technology that we have now, at the base of it, it’s really...

On the March 21st Plutopia Livestream, woke Plutopians discussed the financial woes of that orange-haired politician, the Biden impeachment hearings, RFK Junior, student loans, the University of Austin, South by Southwest and much more. “I think it was a sock puppet…”

David Gans has a long history of making music, writing about music, and broadcasting music. He recently added a new entry to his musical résumé, teaching “Psychedelia and Groove: The Music and Culture of the Grateful Dead,” a continuing studies course at Stanford University. But what I proposed was a class that was going to be very, very loosely structured. And I said, “Here are...

Jen Persson is director of the UK Civil Liberties Group, Defend Digital Me. She campaigns for a safe, fair, and transparent collection of children’s data in education and elsewhere. What happens when you start collecting school records is that they’re about children, but those records age as the people do, and now we have a record of about a third of the UK population who have been in...

This time on the Plutopia Podcast, Jake Dunagan joins us as we explore the future of governance and democracy. This podcast is from the Plutopia Live webcast on 2/22/2024. Jake is Director of the Governance Futures Lab at the Institute for the Future. More information here: https://www.iftf.org/people/jake-dunagan/ Jake Dunagan: As much as it is anathema to my values, the MAGA wing has shaped the...

This time on the Plutopia podcast, we investigate Texans’ love affair with high school football. Football culture… Capture the energy of high school football in Texas, and you could power a planet. A view of Texas from space on any Friday night in-season could be blinding – those Friday night lights at football stadiums across the state. We talked about the game and the culture o...

Moira Meltzer-Cohen has provided legal services for persons arrested in the course of justice struggles, including Indigenous communities and social movement groups. Moira Meltzer-Cohen: I mean, it doesn’t just contribute to greenhouse gases, right? I think that might be sort of the thing that everyone is most aware of. But the pollution, the environmental degradation, the mutagenic potentia...

Dr Richard Bartle is Honorary Professor of Computer Game Design at the University of Essex, UK. He co-created the first virtual world, MUD or multi-user dungeon, a progenitor of the Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game industry. His 1996 Player Types model has seen widespread adoption by MMO developers and the games industry in general. He’s the author of Designing Virtual Worlds a...

Renshin Bunce is a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest who received Dharma transmission in 2013. She worked as a hospice chaplain from 2010 until she retired in 2022. Her latest book is Remembering Myogen Steve Stücky. Renshin Bunce: The impetus for the book was, I am, as you said, a Zen teacher. And Steve Stücky died ten years ago. At the time of his death he was one of the Abbots at San Francisco Zen Cente...

Brenda Laurel is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a pioneer in developing virtual reality, a public speaker, and an academic. She is known for her work on virtual reality and her advocacy for diversity and inclusiveness in video games. She founded Purple Moon, a company that created computer ga...

joey lopez phd loves media, all kinds of media. That love of media was confirmed at UT Austin’s ACTLab, where he was teaching assistant for Sandy Stone, the legendary academic and media theorist. In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we discuss ACTLab, high-end audio gear, and joey’s work at Texas A&M’s Media and Gaming Lab. joey lopez: When I took soundscapes Sandy was l...

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, we discuss the various technologies and sites that comprise the Fediverse. Johannes Ernst and Tom Brown have explored the Fediverse since the early days of the movement for an alternative to big social media. Johannes Ernst: Think of social media as this one linear feed that somehow streams by you. The best we can do, all we can do, can be to organize this...

Attorney Ed Cavazos specializes in technology and intellectual property law. He joins the Plutopia podcast this time as we explore artificial intelligence, content moderation, and telemedicine. Ed feels that lawsuits to stop AI programs like ChatGPT and open AI will likely fail. Ed Cavazos: There will be temptation to overreact. And we could lose some real valuable benefits of these technologies i...

Gus Hosein worries about data, everyone’s data. As executive director of Privacy International, Gus has a long history of fighting to protect people’s data from exploitation by companies and governments. When the Bush administration introduced the US-VISIT system, we were the only organization on the planet that opposed it, saying, this is ridiculous. You shouldn’t be fingerprint...

Science fiction author and undisputed Queen of Cyberpunk Pat Cadigan joins this episode of the Plutopia podcast. We explore cyberpunk, artificial intelligence, and her recent novelizations of classic sci-fi movies and Japanese anime. Pat tells us she has no plans to write her own movie scripts… I am probably the wrongest person in the whole world to ever consider writing a screenplay, becaus...

Andy Cohen is a blues musician who, when he’s not on the road touring, resides in Memphis Tennessee. He plays mostly southeastern music that he found on old 78 RPM records. Andy’s performances include blues, gospel, country dance music, fiddle tunes, ballads, classic rags, country songs, and boogies. If there’s one thing Andy loves as much as playing blues, that would be talking about...

Plutopia’s own Jon Lebkowsky was an early adopter of digital technology and the internet. On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Jon presents a personal history of digital tech, life online in the 1990s, the internet, and much more. Jon Lebkowsky: So I heard that you could get a pretty decent computer, personal computer, an IBM PC clone from a company that was called PC’s Limited. An...

In his 1941 short story, “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov created his three laws of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law, and A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection is not conflict with the...