Cyberspace Didn’t Stay Free
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 8 May 2019
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode April Glaser is joined once again by guest co-host Meredith Broussard, a data journalism professor at NYU and author of Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World.
First, historian Mar Hicks joins the show to talk about the tech industry’s long-time aversion to organized labor and how that’s clashing with recent worker actions at major tech companies like Google and Uber.
Then Alexis Madrigal joins the hosts to talk about his recent piece in the Atlantic called “The End of Cyberspace” where he argues that the 90s dream of an unregulated internet is starting to fade. According to Madrigal, it’s time to create a new alluring vision for what cyberspace should be.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:04.8 | I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:06.2 | And I'm Meredith Broussard. |
| 0:10.3 | Hey, everyone. Welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, |
| 0:18.0 | a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:21.8 | We're recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 7th. |
| 0:25.7 | And first of all, I'd like to once again welcome my co-host for the second week in a row, Meredith Roussard. |
| 0:31.1 | Meredith is a data journalism professor at New York University, where she studies the many ways artificial intelligence is seeping into our world, |
| 0:38.1 | good and bad, and how we can do a better job of explaining how AI works. She's the author of a |
| 0:43.9 | book called Artificial on Intelligence, How Computers Misunderstand the World. Meredith, thanks for co-hosting |
| 0:49.8 | again. April, it is so great to be here. And we have such an exciting show lined up for today. |
| 0:55.4 | Yes, so many stars on today's show. We'll talk to historian Mar Hicks about the tech sector's |
| 1:01.3 | long time aversion to organize labor and what it means for current worker disputes at places like Google and Uber. |
| 1:08.2 | And then we'll talk about early imaginings of what the internet should be or could be, |
| 1:13.6 | the most successful which envisioned a digital world that is free from government oversight and |
| 1:18.7 | regulation. Alexis Madrigal from the Atlantic will join our show in order to talk about why that |
| 1:23.8 | vision is starting to fade. And as always, we'll end with Don't Close My Tabs, |
| 1:28.5 | some of the best things we saw on the web this week. That's all coming up on if then. |
| 1:34.4 | Uber and lift drivers across the U.S. are planning a strike on Wednesday ahead of Uber's |
| 1:39.1 | upcoming IPO, which is projected to land the ride hail giant evaluation that tops $90 billion. |
| 1:45.8 | That's just the latest chapter in a recent trend where people who work in the tech industry |
| 1:49.8 | are starting to organize. Historically, the tech sector hasn't been very friendly to organize labor. |
... |
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