You Are Not So Smart27 Jan 2020

172 - Team Human - Douglas Rushkoff (rebroadcast)

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast we sit down with one of the original cyberpunks, the famed journalist, documentarian, media theorist, all-around technology superstar and weirdo, Douglas Rushkoff.

MIT considers Rushkoff one of the "world's ten most influential thinkers," and in the episode we talk about his latest (and 20th) book, Team Human.

The book is a bit of a manifesto in which he imagines a new counterculture that would revolt against the algorithms that are slowly altering our collective behavior for the benefit of shareholders. Instead, he implores us, we should curate a digital, psychedelic substrate that embraces the messiness of human beings: our unpredictability, our pursuit of novelty and innovation, and our primate/animal/social connectedness.

The book is presented in a series of aphorisms that add up to a rallying cry for building communities outside of what the machines that tend our walled gardens might suggest we build. As the title suggests, he would prefer that we turned our technological attention to encouraging and facilitating teamwork.

In the book, he says that any technology whose initial purpose is to connect people will eventually become colonized and repurposed to repress and isolate them. But, the good news is that we’ve seen this pattern so often that we can now stop it in its tracks and choose to build something else. In the interview, you’ll hear what his thoughts are on all this -- and much more.

- Show notes at: www.youarenotsosmart.com
- Become a patron at: www.patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

SPONSORS

• The Great Courses: www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/smart

Patreon: http://patreon.com/youarenotsosmart

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(336)

299 - Debunkbot

Our guests in this episode are Thomas H. Costello at American University, Gordon Pennycook at Cornell University, and David G. Rand at MIT who created Debunkbot, a GPT-powered, large language model, c...

28 Okt 20241h 9min

298 - Tribal - Michael Morris

In this episode we sit down with renowned cultural psychologist Michael Morris to discuss his new book, Tribal, in which he makes the case for seeing humans as an "us" species, not a "them" species. M...

14 Okt 20241h 33min

297 - Project Alpha - Brian Brushwood (rebroadcast)

Brian Brushwood tells us how he put together the most recent season of The World's Greatest Con, his podcast about incredible scams and over the top chicanery. This season is all about how two teenage...

30 Sep 20241h 10min

296 - Job Therapy - Tessa West

Are you unhappy at your job? Are you starting to consider a change of career because of how your current work makes you feel? Do you know why? According to our guest in this episode, Dr. Tessa West, a...

16 Sep 202455min

295 - Easy Crafts for the Insane - Kelly Williams Brown

In this episode we sit down with author Kelly Williams Brown, an old friend who (I recently learned) had attempted suicide, which is the subject of this episode – suicide prevention and awareness. In ...

2 Sep 20241h 15min

294 - Living Constitutionally - A.J. Jacobs

In this episode we sit down with A.J. Jacobs, a journalist who noticed some striking similarities between Biblical fundamentalism and constitutional originalism, and since he once wrote a NYT bestsell...

19 Aug 20241h 28min

293 - Do Your Own Research - Sedona Chinn (rebroadcast)

Sedona Chinn, who studies how people make sense of competing claims – scientific, environmental, health-related – joins us to discuss her latest research into doing your own research. Her research has...

5 Aug 202445min

292 - The Society Library - Jamie Joyce

Our guest in this episode is Jamie Joyce who is the president and executive director of The Society Library, an organization that extracts arguments, claims, and evidence from various forms of media t...

22 Juli 20241h 23min