Building Tomorrow

We return to part two of our interview with John Aristotle Phillips, who is the founder of the political prediction market PredictIt. Instead of trading corporate stocks or pork bellies, PredictIt allows you to trade in political futures. Put your own money on the line when it comes to who will win an election or the next time a politician will say something stupid on social media. While it’s part...

We’ve all heard the talking heads on cable news declare that this or that election was the year of the “suburban soccer mom voter” or the year for voters who prefer Heineken beer and so on and so forth. Have you ever wondered who decides that these small voter niches have outsized importance in any given election? If so, then you’re in luck! This week, Building Tomorrow interviews John Aristotle P...

Are you tired of the usual Black Friday listicles telling you which gifts to buy for your tech-obsessed friends and family? Do you suspect that the authors are really just recycling the same basic gadgets over and over again that seem like something out of an old Sharper Image catalogue? Then we have the show for you! This week, the guys conduct a single-elimination competition for the Ultimate Te...

Peter Van Doren and Will Duffield join us today to discuss a variety of topics including; designer babies, driverless cars, and “non-slaughter meat”. It may seem as though that these topics are not obviously related, but with any new or emerging technology there is a blowback response from potential users or consumers. In these three very different fields, reactions have been mixed. More important...

The presence of a gender gap in the tech industry is indisputable, but the causes and solutions for the gap are still up for debate. Ashkhen Kazaryan from TechFreedom joins Paul and Matthew to discuss several theories for the origins of the gap, ranging from overt discrimination to the insidious unintended consequences of the invention of the nerd archetype in the 1980s. Ashkhen compares her exper...

It’s something of a cliche to note that higher education is in need of disruption. A decade ago, Massive Open Online Courses promised to make college more affordable and accessible, yet MOOC-based degree programs don’t carry the social signal that a traditional program does. We talk about a new startup called BitDegree that isn’t trying to compete with traditional higher education, instead promisi...

5G not only offers exponentially faster wireless downloads, but it is the key to unlocking a number of other emerging technologies like the internet of things, smart cities, and fleets of self-driving cars. Yet 5G is fantastically expensive and so has incentivized a controversial corporate merger between Sprint and T-Mobile in an attempt to keep pace with AT&T and Verizon. This week, Paul is joine...

In a previous episode, we covered the transformation of China, which is adopting new tech like delivery drones and digital payment years in advance of the US. But being in the forefront of tech adoption has a darker side when it comes to modern surveillance techniques. In this episode we parse what is hyperbole and what is reality when it comes to the Chinese surveillance state. That includes soci...

President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela was giving a speech during a military parade when a drone exploded not far away. This marks the first recorded attempted- assassination of a head of state carried out via drone. The rapid development of drone technology can seem concerning to many individuals who are worried about security and privacy. Even though drones can present a danger to society or a vi...

There is a built-in wariness in Silicon Valley when the subject of regulation comes up. It is never in a startup’s best interests to complain about the regulator that has the power to change the rules in ways that can substantially help or hurt the industry. At the same time, it pays to pay attention to the latest pronouncements out of Washington, DC or Sacramento. This week, we discuss several co...

The distinction between hearing aids as a medical device and wireless earbuds as mass consumer product is vanishing. Starkey Hearing Technologies is bridging that divide with a new hearing aid that doubles as a fitness tracker, high quality headphones, and a language translator. That’s right: we’ve got Babble fish now! Then, Paul talks with the founder of Pinpoint Pharma about their efforts to pri...

The last wave of automation in the 1970s-80s was industrial as robots replaced manufacturing line workers. The economic dislocation fell hardest on those least able to afford it, blue collar workers without formal education and comparable alternate career paths. But today, automation is coming for white collar workers as well. There are jobs, that despite requiring education and advanced training,...

WARNING: Listening to this episode may result in a future hyper-intelligent artificial intelligence deciding to kill you. Or so says a theory / logical exercise popular among artificial intelligence researchers called Roko’s Basilisk. But if you are willing to assume that risk, listen to our show as we discuss the present and the future of artificial intelligence with special guest host Caleb Watn...

Augur represents a new type of prediction market. It’s decentralized nature allows users to stay anonymous, which may be troubling for law enforcement or other state agents if the bets placed are threatening in nature. Right now, it only has a small number of users, but it has the potential to gain traction. In these prediction markets you have the ability to place a bet, using a type of cryptocur...

What if there was a way your family doctor could provide you with better care for less money and do it without using health insurance at all? Dr. Ryan Neuhofel joins us to discuss what direct primary care is and how it might benefit you. Doctors offices spend an inordinate amount of time and expense filing paperwork with health insurance companies. By not taking health insurance, direct primary ca...

China’s old reputation when it came to tech was that of being the premier global manufacturer of knockoffs, not a site for innovative development. But China today is adopting new tech at truly incredible rates that surpasses most other countries. Rather than just talking about drone delivery, companies like JD are actually doing it. More people in China use mobile payments and participate in one-s...

DNA databases, which have long been used by amateur genealogists, have burst into the headlines as law enforcement uses them to solve cold case murders. For instance, detectives used an open source database called GEDmatch to catch the Golden State Killer, who murdered and raped dozens of women during the 1970s-80s. Yet while solving crimes is obviously good, there are concerns about violations of...

Phil Haunschild joins us this week to discuss how blockchain technology could potentially eliminate the governments’ presence in welfare and charity. Among the uninitiated, ‘blockchain’ is often treated as a synonym for ‘cryptocurrency.’ But blockchain technology has many other potential applications, including ways of improving the efficiency and transparency of good governance. For example, Phil...

Mark McDaniel from Reason Magazine joins us to discuss homemade gun technology in response to a recent court case involving gun ownership activist, Cody Wilson, and his group, Defense Distributed, who were the minds behind the “Wiki Weapon Project”. Cody Wilson and his group went unnoticed until they actually tried to build a weapon, specifically named the “Liberator”. However, when the printer co...

The parliament of the European Union narrowly voted down legislation intended to control copyright violations on the internet. The sponsors of the legislation argued that multinational internet companies like Google were essentially stealing content from newspapers and publishers. Their proposed fix would have levied what critics called a “link tax” on hyperlinked content, making it prohibitively...

New technologies have made it possible for us to monetize more and more of our daily lives. First, we discuss the third party marketers who are using devices (eg cellphones, smart speakers) connected to smart tvs to compile data on consumers. While these companies are guilty of deceptive practices, there is the future potential for consumers to profit from that data themselves. Likewise, we cover...

This week Kate Sills joins us to respond to several recent articles criticizing smart contracts. One of the issues we cover is the “Oracle problem,” which is how a self-enforcing digital contract can know whether terms have been met in the physical world. Also, we discusses how smart contracts cannot be mere transactional documents but also need to facilitate relationships, something that has led...

This week, we discuss cryptocurrency and security. There was a hack recently of a digital currency storage site. We’ll talk a little bit about what that means, what cryptocurrency ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ wallets are, what happens if you lose your password, and the sometimes surprising lengths to which major cryptocurrency owners have gone to secure their holdings. (Warning: Severed fingers make an a...

Building Tomorrow explores the ways technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship are creating a freer, wealthier, and more peaceful world. In our first episode, we survey how major recent advances in tech have made it harder for the State to “read” citizens, deepened networks of trust between activists, expanded ownership of our bodies, and created new sharing economies. Further Readings/Reference...