Can Technology Be Stopped?
Analysis25 Jun 2018

Can Technology Be Stopped?

Can the Big Four - Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple - be reined in and forced to play by the rules society sets, rather than imposing their own standards on society? It seems like news breaks every few weeks that reveal how the technology on which we increasingly depend - smartphones, search engines, social media - is not as passive as many of us thought. Big data, fake news, extremism, Russian trolls: with little or no regulatory supervision, the big tech companies are changing the world and disrupting our lives. Yet governments seem to have little power to respond. The tech giants look too big, too international and too hard to pin down.

So is it time to disrupt the disrupters? Journalist and writer Jamie Bartlett asks how we can regulate big tech. He meets the regulators who are daring to reclaim power, and assesses the challenges involved in imposing rules on an industry which is deeply complicated, ever changing and supranational. Do governments have the resources to reassert sovereignty over something which has become so embedded in our culture? And how would society change if they did?

Producer: Gemma Newby.

Episoder(389)

Inheritance

Inheritance

Why does inheritance arouse such powerful emotions? Family, death and money make for gripping stories - just ask Tolstoy, Austen or Dickens - but our attitudes also reflect the way we feel about socie...

15 Feb 201627min

Brexit: The Irish Question

Brexit: The Irish Question

If the UK leaves the EU, what happens on the island of Ireland? Its people would be living on either side of an EU border. In this edition of Analysis, Edward Stourton explores an aspect of the Brexit...

8 Feb 201627min

Space Wars, Space Peace

Space Wars, Space Peace

Chris Bowlby explores the shifting balance between two visions of outer space - as a place of harmony and as a zone of growing international tension. We may think war in space is a scenario dreamed up...

1 Feb 201628min

Tomas Sedlacek: The Economics of Good and Evil

Tomas Sedlacek: The Economics of Good and Evil

What have the Book of Genesis and the movie Fight Club got to do with GDP? According to the radical Czech economist, Tomas Sedlacek, quite a lot. He believes notions of sin and belief recorded in anci...

25 Jan 201627min

Correspondents' Look Ahead: 2016

Correspondents' Look Ahead: 2016

Who and what will be making the global headlines in 2016? Owen Bennett-Jones and leading BBC correspondents discuss and give their predictions about what will shape the world in the year ahead and ass...

1 Jan 201647min

Will They Always Hate Us?

Will They Always Hate Us?

The Middle East conflict and other long-running international disputes have so far proved incapable of resolution by war or traditional diplomacy. So are the parties fated always to hate each other? O...

9 Nov 201528min

Currencies and Countries

Currencies and Countries

Looking at the UK, reunified Germany and the European Union, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister John Redwood MP asks how successful a currency union can be without political union behind it. Aft...

2 Nov 201528min

Killing Cows

Killing Cows

Carnivore and steak-lover Jo Fidgen attempts to work out whether killing cows for food can be morally justifiedMany meat eaters believe animal suffering should be avoided. They buy higher welfare prod...

26 Okt 201528min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden-usa
aftenpodden
stopp-verden
forklart
i-retten
popradet
det-store-bildet
fotballpodden-2
nokon-ma-ga
dine-penger-pengeradet
rss-gukild-johaug
bt-dokumentar-2
aftenbla-bla
hanna-de-heldige
rss-ness
frokostshowet-pa-p5
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk
rss-dannet-uten-piano
e24-podden