Technoculture

Technoculture podcast explores how digital technology influences our lives, our experiences, and ultimately what it means to be human today. Now, if we agree that the social and technological environment influences or shapes who we are and how we interact with each other, what will it mean to be human in the metaverse? My guest Sam Vaknin has a very interesting theory about the transition from nar...

This episode is about collaborative couples in science, i.e. men and women who work in science and who are partners, husband and wife, sometimes lovers, etc. My guest, Annette Lykknes, is professor of chemistry education and historian of chemistry at NTNU, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Science as we know it today is an institutionalized social practice, with a mechanism designed to distribute trust and credibility. Trust IN science and trust WITHIN science are two dimentions of the same question that allow the process of investigation and discovery to keep moving forward. If you thought that science doesn't need trust, because it's all about the facts, think again.

Extending the human life with science and technology will re-shape society. It is not just a matter of living longer and healthier. We need to prepare for the consequences of longevity, from the job market to housing and banking, from politics to psychological well-being, Dmitry talks about his vision on the longevity that awatis humanity - very soon.

Space travel may not be an impossible dream anymore. Access to a diverse pool of talents is a great asset, and ESA's new cohort of astronauts reflects this, with the first parastronaut program. With this interview, I wanted to learn more about the selection process, how the requirements are evolving, but also to debunk some of the romanticized views that many of us may have of the astronaut's job.

Yaneer Bar-Yam is the founding president of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) in Cambridge, MA. An MIT-trained physicist, Yaneer combines quantitative foundation in physics, computer science and mathematics with computer simulations and high dimensional data analysis to study collective behaviors and social challenges, with the aim of informing better policies. In the past year and...

Mastering is a crucial step in the production of a music record, but not everybody knows what it is. What does a mastering engineer do? I asked the best of the best, in his studio in Hollywood. Peter explains what mastering entails and where it comes from. And we glance at the future of mastering, with Artificial Intelligence applications.

What does it mean to study the future? Nobody can predict the future. But we can look at emergent signals, signals of change, that reveal where we are today and enable us to be active creators of our collective future. Toshi Anders Hoo is the Director of the Emerging Media Lab (EML) at Institute for the Future (IFTF). The Institute for the Future is about empowering the world "to think more creati...

John Chowning means FM synthesis to everyone in the audio community worldwide. But the man is no less extraordinary than his discovery. Co-founder of one of the most important centres for music research in the world, CCRMA (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics) at Stanford University, John speaks about his approach to composition, and a lifelong quest for the "artistic gesture."

José V. Siles is a radio frequency engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. His research area is known as plantary science, i.e. the study of the celestial bodies that orbit stars, with a particular focus on our own solar system. José and his colleagues are trying to understand the life cycle of stars, how they form, how they die... because stars may hold the ans...

Robert Margouleff doesn't like to live in history, but "he knows he's made some." After a lifetime of achievements, he still looks ahead and experiments with audio spacialization, new artists, new sounds. An incredible privilege to hear Robert's opinion on technology, pop music, his collaborations, the industry, in his cozy studio on Hollywood.

Bonus content for episode #37 with Federico Faggin. After our regular interview in English, I decided to interview Federico Faggin again in Italian, as a tribute to our friends and colleagues in Italy. The questions are not the same, but on the podcast website and in the description of the YouTube video, you can find the list of questions (in English.) More info at: www.technoculture-podcast.com

It's hard to imagine the world without the microprocessor. And without the touchscreen. We owe both inventions to one man, Federico Faggin. An innovator all his life, he is currently devoting his efforts to the scientific study of consciousness, bringing spirituality and quantum physics together. In this interview, recorded at his house in the Silicon Valley, we talk about his latest work on consc...

Rick Ruth, Senior Advisor at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, talks about the importance of investing in face-to-face diplomacy today. "I have thought of everything I can think of, and the one thing that gives me some hope is the ethos that underlies the educational exchange program." This is Senator Fulbright speaking words of wisdom a couple of deca...

Bonus content for episode #35. I challenged Bibhushan to explain some complex concepts of physics in simple terms. The first concept is supersimmetry (at minute 00:53); the second is the cutest expression I've ever heard in physics: "a baby universe in a black hole" (well, the baby part is cute at least - at minute 6:47); and the third is "space can travel faster than light" and even more precisel...

When we ask questions about ourselves, our place in the universe... we are also asking questions about the universe: we are part of it and made of the same stuff. Conversely, to investigate the nature of the universe means also to ask questions about ourselves. That's why I went to CERN to talk to a particle physicist about life, research, and everything.

Technoculture inaugurates its second season with an episode that might seem outside the scope of the podcast. Why travel back in time? What do the Vikings have to do with Technoculture? Well, think about it this way: we are the Vikings of the people that will live on earth in a 1000 years. Technoculture is interested in this topic because Heidi's approach starts from the assumption that adopting a...

Do you know the difference between virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality? Hear Ward Peeters, pioneer of spatial computing, explain why he thinks we will soon no longer need street signs. (And how a cat can walk through a wall.)

Serge Lemouton is an expert in the preservation of the electroacoustic music produced at IRCAM, the renowned art and research center in Paris where he works as senior computer music designer. During this interview, he talks about the music repertoire at IRCAM since 1977 and how it is being documented in their Sidney system. He also shares no less than four excerpts from historical compositions pro...

Will robots steal our job? Seriously, come on. Sci-fi is cool, but unemployment affects real people. If you are a person, or know someone who is a person, you will love this episode. Andrea Glorioso is policy officer at the European Commission and an expert on the future of work, how it affects workers, training and retirement programs - and he has a very good answer to the question: will robots s...

Science is foremost a human activity. The celebration of "heroes" like Einstein and Marie Curie gives the false impression that scientific discoveries are done by isolated individuals. Brigitte van Tiggelen explains why science is a process in which every person counts. We need narratives about science, but we need to be careful what implications they have. Another brilliant conversation with this...

Maximilian Schich's research work combines hermeneutics, information visualization, computer science, and physics to understand art, history, and culture. Sounds complex? Hear him explain the ideas behind the achievement of a "systematic science of art and culture," and watch his amazing video featured on Nature. You will go "Wow!"  More info at: www.technoculture-podcast.com

Aleš Vaupotič is a literary comparatist and a curator. His work is in the Digital Humanities and is concerned with the building, managing, and studying digital collections of cultural data. Aleš is also a creative artist with a fascination for today's technology, and he experiments with data visualization techniques as well as electronic microscopy.  More info at: www.technoculture-podcast.com

Ubiquitous Music is a new area of research that encompasses ubiquitous computing, mobile and networked music, eco-composition and cooperative composition. Victor Lazzarini and Damián Keller are two of the fathers of this new movement, which has not only artistic and technological applications, but social implications, and educational ambitions.  More info at: www.technoculture-podcast.com

Cybersecurity is fascinating and scary at the same time. Right? Patrick Wheeler, expert in cybersecurity and technology, explains how cybersecurity is not only a concern of banks and hackers, but of every citizen like you and I. We have to be aware of the risks without getting paranoid, and we can exercise due diligence without being nerds. Cybersecurity is about data protection on social media an...