Constellation: Making the Graphic Novel

In this week’s episode, we wonder if it’s technologically possible to create eternal suffering and torture someone forever in a digital hell. We cover the question of why someone might torture a digital being or nano-enabled Prometheus. Punishment? Spying? Research? Is the persuasive power of hell justification enough? Is it unethical to cause pain to simulated people? Is a […]

We’re back with a new podcast about the growing challenge of digital curation. Every day we digitize more content. As the pile of data grows ever larger, how are we going to find the stuff we actually want? What is it going to take for recommendation algorithms to actually get good? In the future will there be ratings […]

Now that we’ve completed 33 episodes, it’s time for us to take a short break. But don’t worry – we’ll be back in early September with new episodes, new discussion topics, and possibly a few surprises. If you only started tuning in recently, now might be a good time to go back and catch up on […]

Everyone knows by now that self driving cars are coming soon. Somewhere in the next 3-20 years, the human driver will become a thing of the past. What will happen when these capabilities come online? We talk through the obvious and not so obvious consequences of self driving car technology, from unemployment of taxi drivers […]

In this more conversational episode, we discuss the abstract dichotomy of wielding technology rather than yielding to it. We discuss this wielding/yielding metaphor with regard to form factors, for example how is using a smart phone different from augmented reality glasses, or what’s the fundamental difference between a high functioning AI assistant that can act […]

In this week’s podcast we list the top ten living futurists. These are people who are highly influential in the area of futurology, either for being skillful popularizers or originators of major new ideas. Listen and find out if you agree with our choices. And if you think we made any major mistakes (either misguided inclusions or omissions) please […]

In this week’s podcast we tackle Emotional (sometimes called Affective) Computing — when computers read and respond to human emotions. We discuss the types of sensory data computers can read, like faces and inflection but also heat-mapping and pupil dilation. We also discuss how this capability might lead to a future that’s worse for liars […]

In today’s podcast, we discuss the possibility of “mind uploading,” or emulating a human brain inside a computer. We begin with a survey history of the concept, and then transition into a discussion of the sea of philosophical and ethical questions that uploading inevitably raises. Is whole brain emulation a realistic path to personal immortality […]

In this second part of our review of Capital in the 21st Century, we look at Thomas Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of the criticisms of the book. Last week in Part 1, we covered the book’s basic ideas about how to measure and talk about […]

In this part one of our review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, we cover the book in detail and summarize its arguments and conclusions. In the next part, to be released next week, we will look at Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of […]

In today’s podcast, we discuss Buckminster Fuller’s term ephemeralization. Many people today are searching for words to describe the tremendous power of technologies to do more with less. Modern expressions like “dematerialization,” “software is eating the world,” and “digitization of everything” can in many ways be subsumed by Fuller’s original term. Relevant Links: Video on […]

We’d all like to live in a better future, and for ages men have imagined what a theoretical best future might be like. What would a utopian society truly look like? Does the answer lie in external approaches like abundance, decentralization and transparency, or internal approaches like drugs, wireheading and genetic engineering? Is it even […]

In this podcast we examine the issue of inequality from the point of view of game design and ask whether a variety of resources are likely to become more or less unequal in the future. In addition to the obvious monetary dimension, we also discuss inequality as it relates to fame, user base, creativity tools, […]

In this week’s podcast we talk about the big topic of Network Neutrality. We define the term and talk about the differences between neutral and biased (or ‘diverse’) networks. We cover the history of the phone network, the Carterfone, and neutrality regulations in the U.S. We also cover the two major reasons to prefer a […]

On this podcast, we talk about games and the future. Eric Zimmerman has pronounced this the “Ludic Century” and has said the 21st century will be defined by games. We approach this idea from three points of view: first we talk about games as an entertainment medium and whether they might grow relative to passive entertainment […]

In this very short episode we do a simple thought experiment set at a mathematics competition. Three characters, each with a very different apparatus of enhanced intelligence, compete. One is highly educated, one is enhanced to be able to learn more quickly, and one offloads the complex tasks to an AI or crowd-sourced network. We […]

What is the future of television? Will today’s golden age continue? We discuss the current television model and why TV hasn’t been disrupted to the degree film and other media have, the real scarcity and artificial limits that are keeping it there, and make a prediction about the next ten years of television content. We […]

There is no doubt  decentralized powerful technologies are coming, and the conventional wisdom is that you cannot control these things easily. In this episode, we discuss drugs, security, and general purpose computing as decentralized technologies that resist control. Will it be possible to control nearly invisible life-logging technologies of the future? What about gun control […]

In this week’s podcast we discuss money as a technology that has progressed through several versions. What’s wrong with our current version of money, and what might we do better in a future version? What are the pros and cons of modern day cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Freicoin? Is the uncertain nature of future […]

Today’s episode focuses on a thought experiment — assuming technological unemployment happens and capitalism continues in its current form, what new platforms might allow average folks to monetize the remaining scarce resources? What kind of jobs and economic platforms might arise in a future of automated labor? We discuss current platforms like Kickstarter and Etsy […]

Today on the podcast we talk about a simple way to predict the future — simply exaggerate current trends. But this doesn’t lead to accurate prediction, it leads to “Super-Now” predictions where everything is shinier, faster, or on steroids, but nothing is actually new. We cover a lot of classic and modern Sci Fi that […]

In this episode, we ask how culture would be impacted by radically increased lifespans. We go over the main arguments made by longevity research experts like Aubrey De Grey and Ray Kurzweil, and we discuss Sonia Arrison’s book 100+. We discuss expanded health spans and acknowledge that a right to die would be even more […]

In this podcast we return to the idea of technological unemployment: if it’s happening, what should we do? We consider three ways technological unemployment might be defeated: rising standards of living might outrun inequality, education and cognitive enhancement might solve our retraining problems, or new platforms and needs might emerge and create new demands. But […]

In this week’s podcast, we discuss common communications and computer interfaces in science fiction and ask whether those AI assistants and videophones really make sense. We retell David Foster Wallace’s story about the failure of the videophone from Infinite Jest, and we argue that Samantha from Her would be just as annoying as Microsoft Clippy. […]

In this week’s podcast we evaluate the relative plausibility of four dystopias commonly seen in science fiction: Post-Apocalypse, Alien/AI Oppression, Boot-in-the-Face, and Brave New World. These are all fun settings for exciting stories, but which makes the most sense from the perspective of speculation? Relevant Links Aldous Huxley’s Letter to George Orwell Decline of Scarcity […]