Plutopia News Network

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...

Don Norman has been a professor, industry executive, consultant, keynote speaker, and author. He’s worked in electrical engineering, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, computer science, and design. He’s the author of several books, among them Design for a Better World, his latest; also including The Design of Everyday Things, Living with Complexity, , Emotional Design and The Des...

Conceptual media artist, activist and educator Patrick Lichty joined the Plutopia Live show for a wide-ranging discussion of current events and the future. We explored migration and borders, climate change, AI and art, and the techno-tsunami of new ideas. Patrick Lichty: When we think of the idea of the future, I think something that’s a relatively new thing I think is really, really interes...

Cory Doctorow has a problem with corporate bullies. In his latest book, The Internet Con, How to Seize the Means of Computation, Cory details how monopolies have taken control of much of the tech sector and are unlikely to give it back without a fight. Cory Doctorow: Corruption arises out of monopoly, so we know what our marching orders should be, and obviously it’s much harder under monopol...

Journalist John Schwartz joins Plutopians to discuss journalism and climate science. After two decades at the New York Times, John has joined the faculty at the University of Texas School of Journalism as a professor of practice concentrating on climate science. UT has been very good to me and it turns out that I love teaching, and the students are great. And it’s also not a bad thing to be...

Karen Levy is an author, associate professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University and associated faculty at Cornell Law School. Her research focuses on the legal, organizational, social and ethical aspects of data-intensive technologies, particularly in contexts that are marked by conditions of inequality. In her book, Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workpl...

Technologist, thought leader and podcaster Tom Parish joins the Plutopia Podcast as we explore developments in artificial intelligence, privacy, the Internet of Things, and job security. Tom Parish: The difference about AI is there’s so much Hollywood myth associated with gloom and doom and what’s going to come in – the end of the world and all that. And a lot of worry about how...

Journalist and educator Jeff Jarvis, who believes we have entered the post-print age of communication, joins Plutopians to discuss his book The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet. Jeff created and edited Entertainment Weekly and wrote about media for TV Guide, People Magazine, and The Guardian. He’s a blogger at buzzmachine.com. He holds the L...

Marjorie Ingall and Susan McCarthy are co-authors of the book Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, The Case for Good Apologies, where they draw on a deep well of research in psychology, sociology, law, and medicine to explain why a good apology is hard to find and why it doesn’t have to be. They also have a website called SorryWatch, where they track bad apologies and occasionally good apologies as well. In...

Plutopia Live was on vacation hiding from the heat – but last week the weather was lowered from molten lava to merely hellish so we resumed our regular Thursday show on YouTube (9/21/2023). Join us now for a rebroadcast of that show where we discuss the former president who shall not be named, fascist takeovers, social media, brain implants, and much more. And we’re not mentioning Dona...

December 8th…1980 A deranged young man assassinated John Lennon. That same day an RKO Radio crew recorded what would prove to be Lennon’s final interview. RKO’s Dave Sholin and Laurie Kaye interviewed John Lennon and Yoko Ono in their apartment at the Dakota in New York. On December 8th 2023, Laurie Kaye’s memoir Confessions of a Rock N Roll Name Dropper is set for release. Laurie joins the...

Educator and author Amy Bruckman joins the Plutopia podcast this time. Amy is Regents’ Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Contributing Editor Wendy Grossman joins Jon and Scoop as we discuss Amy’s book “Should You Believe Wikipedia? Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge.” We also explo...

Rob van Eijk, the Future of Privacy Forum’s Managing Director for Europe, joins Contributing Editor Wendy Grossman, Jon, and Scoop in this wide-ranging discussion about data privacy and advertising technology. We explore digital advertising, cookies, ad blockers, privacy law, AI and ads, and we ask the question, “What the heck is hyper-nudging?” Rob van Eijk: The fact that you in...

Hugo Campos’ efforts to liberate health data from implantable medical devices has drawn widespread praise and recognition. He joins e-Patient Dave deBronkart, a cancer survivor and an international keynote speaker on healthcare, on the Plutopia podcast. Hugo Campos: I think the trend has been from being passive patients to become engaged in participatory medicine, and the more, I think, tool...

Wagner James Au thinks there may be a metaverse in your future! He joins the Plutopia podcast as we explore the various incarnations of the metaverse, including Second Life and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta. We also discuss the birth of the metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s novel Snow Crash, and its appearance in many sci-fi books and movies. Wagner James Au: Military veterans started meeting wi...

Climate scientist Michael Tobis returns to join Plutopians as the planet continues to bake and burn. We discuss the Canadian wildfires, climate change, and political roadblocks to finding a solution. I think most of the members of the so-called conservative party here are going to be climate deniers, too. Especially since many of them – the bulk of them – are from Alberta, which is the...

Geologist and geoscience writer Andrew Alden joins Plutopians to discuss his book Deep Oakland, inspired by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Andrew gives us a guided tour of Oakland’s history and geology. Andrew Alden: It’s a new kind of book. Any of you, if you wanted to, you could write a book like that for your own city. I’m not declaring a franchise, but I’m saying Deep...