Latest Cigi Podcast Episodes
How Much Should We Worry about the Future of Tech Governance?
Big Tech - April 21, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsOn the season finale of Big Tech, host Taylor Owen discusses the future of tech governance with Azeem Azhar, author of The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics, and Society. In addition to his writing, Azeem hosts the Exponential View podcast, which, mu...
All Eyes on Crypto
Big Tech - April 14, 2022 08:00 - 37 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn this episode of Big Tech, host Taylor Owen speaks with Ephrat Livni, a lawyer and journalist who reports from Washington on the intersection of business and policy for DealBook at The New York Times. One of Livni’s focuses has been how cryptocurrencies have moved from the periphery of the fin...
Web3 — Technology of Control or Freedom?
Big Tech - April 07, 2022 08:00 - 31 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsThe internet is an ever-evolving thing, with new features and services popping up daily. But these innovations are happening in the current internet space, known as Web 2.0. The potential next big leap is to what is being called Web3 or Web 3.0. You have likely heard some of the terms associated...
What Happens If We Live Forever?
Big Tech - March 31, 2022 08:00 - 51 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsHumanity has long imagined a future where humans could live for hundreds of years, if not forever. But those ideas have been the stuff of science fiction, up until now. There’s growing interest and investment in the realm of biohacking and de-aging, and leading scientists such as Harvard’s David...
Borders Matter – Even in Cyberspace
Big Tech - March 24, 2022 08:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsA fundamental feature of the internet is its ability to transcend borders, connecting people to one another and all forms of information. The World Wide Web was heralded as a global village that would remove the traditional gatekeepers and allow anyone a platform to be heard. But the reality is ...
Inside the Russian Information War
Big Tech - March 17, 2022 08:00 - 40 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsThe speed at which the Russia-Ukraine war has played out across the internet has led to some interesting insights about how different groups have been experiencing and responding to information and misinformation about it. The West found unity across political divides, and the big tech platforms...
A History Lesson That Shatters the Mythology of Silicon Valley
Big Tech - March 10, 2022 09:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn this episode of Big Tech, host Taylor Owen speaks with Margaret O’Mara, a historian of modern America and author of The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America. Silicon Valley and the massive wealth it has generated have long symbolized the wonders of free market capitalism, viewed...
Johann Hari Knows You Won’t Be Able to Finish This Episode without Checking Your Phone
Big Tech - March 03, 2022 09:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsDo you feel as if you can’t get through a single task without distractions? Perhaps you are watching a movie and stop it to check social media or respond to a message. You aren’t alone; studies show that collectively our attention spans have been shrinking for decades. Many factors contribute to...
Early Women Innovators Offer Tech a Way Forward
Big Tech - February 24, 2022 09:00 - 45 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn the history of computers and the internet, a few names likely come to mind: Alan Turing, Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Undoubtedly, these men’s contributions to computer sciences have shaped much of our modern life. In the case of Jobs and Gates, their financial success shifted ...
Nicholas Carr Is Silicon Valley’s Most Prescient Tech Critic
Big Tech - February 17, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsNicholas Carr is a prolific blogger, author and critic of technology since the early days of the social web. Carr began his blog Rough Type in 2005, at a time when some of today’s biggest companies where still start-ups operating out of college dorms. In 2010, he wrote the Pulitzer Prize for Non...
Your Facts Aren’t My Facts — Joe Rogan and Our Infodemic Age
Big Tech - February 10, 2022 09:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsPeople are divided: you are either pro-vaccination or against it, and there seems to be no middle ground. Whether around the dinner table or on social media, people are entrenched in their positions. A deep-seated mistrust in science, despite its contributions to the flourishing of human life, i...
The Entrenched Colonialism of Tech
Big Tech - February 03, 2022 09:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsTime and time again, we see the billionaire tech founder or CEO take the stage to present the latest innovation meant to make people’s lives better, revolutionize industries and glorify the power of technology to save the world. While these promises are dressed up in fancy new clothes, in realit...
How Europe Is Trying to Rein in Big Tech
Big Tech - January 27, 2022 09:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsGovernments around the world are looking at their legal frameworks and how they apply to the digital technologies and platforms that have brought widespread disruptive change to their economies, societies and politics. Most governments are aware that their regulations are inadequate to address t...
The Brain Is Not a Computer
Big Tech - January 20, 2022 09:00 - 57 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsMany unlocked mysteries remain about the workings of the human brain. Neuroscientists are making discoveries that are helping us to better understand the brain and correct preconceived notions about how it works. With the dawn of the information age, the brain’s processing was often compared to ...
What Does Real Democracy Look Like?
Big Tech - January 13, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsDemocracy is in decline globally. It’s one year since the Capitol Hill insurrection, and many worry that the United States’ democratic system is continuing to crumble. Freedom House, an America think tank, says that nearly three-quarters of the world’s population lives in a country that experien...
From the Beginnings of Fake News to the Capitol Riots
Big Tech - January 06, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsOn the first anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol, Big Tech host Taylor Owen sits down with Craig Silverman to discuss how the rise of false facts led us to that moment. Silverman is a journalist for ProPublica and previously worked at Buzzfeed News, and is the ...
Best of: Nicole Perlroth on the Cyber Weapons Arms Race
Big Tech - December 30, 2021 09:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Nicole Perlroth, New York Times cybersecurity journalist and author of This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. Nicole and Taylor discuss how that the way in which nation-states go about acquiring cyber weapons thr...
Best of: Bishop Steven Croft on Keeping Humanity at the Centre of New Technology
Big Tech - December 23, 2021 09:00 - 39 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn the early days of the internet, information technology could be viewed as morally neutral. It was simply a means of passing data from one point to another. But, as communications technology has advanced by using algorithms, tracking and identifiers to shape the flow of information, we are bei...
Cutting through Online Hate to Have Meaningful Discussions on Climate Change
Big Tech - December 16, 2021 09:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsSocial media has become an essential tool for sharing information and reaching audiences. In the political realm, it provides access to constituents in a way that going door to door can’t. It also provides a platform for direct access to citizens without paying for advertising or relying on news...
Catherine McKenna on Cutting through Online Hate to Have Meaningful Discussions on Climate Change
Big Tech - December 16, 2021 09:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsSocial media has become an essential tool for sharing information and reaching audiences. In the political realm, it provides access to constituents in a way that going door to door can’t. It also provides a platform for direct access to citizens without paying for advertising or relying on news...
Carissa Véliz on Why We Need to Take Back Control of Our Data
Big Tech - December 09, 2021 09:00 - 33 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsHumans need privacy — the United Nations long ago declared it an inalienable and universal human right. Yet technology is making privacy increasingly difficult to preserve, as we spend fewer and fewer moments of time disconnected from our computers, smartphones and wearable tech. Edward Snowden’...
How Peter Thiel’s Contrarianism Shaped Silicon Valley — and America
Big Tech - December 02, 2021 09:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsTech billionaire Peter Thiel is an enigmatic, controversial and hugely influential power broker in both Silicon Valley and the political arena. He is often seen as a libertarian, who at one point was exploring the idea of building floating stateless cities in international waters. But at the sam...
C. Brandon Ogbunu on Afrofuturism as a Tech Framework
Big Tech - November 25, 2021 09:00 - 41 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsScience fiction has long been a medium for bringing light to societal issues, including religion, culture and race. It helps us imagine futures of hope and prosperity or warns of dystopian nightmares. And our experience of race plays a central role in our understanding of science fiction. “There...
Season 4 Begins Thursday, November 25
Big Tech - November 12, 2021 09:00 - 40 seconds ★★★★ - 9 ratingsSince concluding the last season this past August, a lot has happened in the big tech governance and regulation space. Whistle-blower Frances Haugen and the Facebook Papers shone light on social media’s harmful impacts on our society and reignited the debate over how we regulate platforms. There ...
Taylor Owen on Six Insights from Season Three
Big Tech - August 19, 2021 08:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsThis season of Big Tech has featured conversations with experts across many fields —law makers, academics, journalists, authors, activists and a bishop — who are working to address technologies’ impact on our lives. In this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen looks back on those conversations and h...
Jameel Jaffer on Free Speech in the Digital Era
Big Tech - August 05, 2021 08:00 - 41 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsLiberal democracies around the world have protections for free speech, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or, more famously, the US First Amendment. Many of the free speech activities that are protected by law, such as the right to organize and protest, have moved onto social me...
Geoffrey Cain on China’s Dystopian Surveillance State
Big Tech - July 22, 2021 08:00 - 43 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsIn this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Geoffrey Cain, author of The Perfect Police State, about the technology enabled in China’s Xinjiang region to oppress its Uighur population. Through a network of surveillance systems, social credit scores, algorithm-driven pre-crime computer s...
Hong Shen on How Tech Really Works behind the Great Firewall
Big Tech - July 08, 2021 08:00 - 31 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsWestern democracies and tech companies have long painted the Chinese tech sector as not only a threat to the US sector but also as operating in direct conflict with American companies. They say that China is walled off from the rest of the world, that these tech companies are just an extension o...
Victor Pickard on the Future of Journalism
Big Tech - June 24, 2021 08:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsThe journalism industry in America has grown and adapted over its 300-year history. Different business models and ownership schemes have been tried, mostly in an attempt to establish an independent free press. Social media platforms have contributed to both the decline in revenue for news outlet...
Pranav Dixit on Modi’s Moves to Manipulate Platforms
Big Tech - June 10, 2021 08:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★ - 9 ratingsTech platforms from around the world have turned their attention to the India as a new area for user growth. These tech giants are keen to see mass adoption of their products and services by the one-billion-strong Indian market. At the same time, politicians in India have leveraged the platforms...
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