The Hype Machine: The Promise and the Peril of Social Media | Sinan Aral
Hidden Forces
Demetri Kofinas
4.8 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2020
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 154 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Sinan Aral, MIT Professor and author of "The Hype Machine," about the promise and the peril of social media.
Is social media a force for meaningful connection, collaboration, social support, and access to life-saving information? Or is it a propaganda machine that, left unchecked, will destroy democracy, civil society, and our health? Can the promise of social media be realized without the peril? Or are they inexorably linked?
This episode is the latest in a series of thoughtful conversations that we have hosted on Hidden Forces dealing with some of the more problematic issues surrounding social media and its influence on politics & society. Demetri's conversations with Shoshana Zuboff and Rana Faroohar come most immediately to mind, but my episodes with Cal Newport on digital minimalism, Hanna Fry on artificial intelligence, and John Borthwick with whom we have explored numerous interesting philosophical questions are also very much worth revisiting for anyone interested in further exploring the topics discussed today.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
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Episode Recorded on 09/04/2020
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today's episode of Hidden Forces is made possible by listeners like you. |
| 0:04.4 | For more information about this week's episode or for easy access to related programming |
| 0:09.7 | visit our website at hidden Forces. I.O. and subscribe to our free email list. |
| 0:16.4 | If you listen to the show on your Apple Podcast app, remember, you can give us a review. |
| 0:21.5 | Each review helps more people find the show and join our |
| 0:24.9 | amazing community. And with that, please enjoy this week's episode. And the What's up everybody? My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is Sinan Aral. |
| 0:54.1 | Sinan is the David Austin Professor of Management at MIT, |
| 0:58.5 | Professor of IT and Marketing, and Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, where he co-leads MIT's initiative |
| 1:06.5 | on the digital economy. |
| 1:08.8 | Sinad was the chief scientist at Social Land, |
| 1:13.0 | Commerce Analytics Companies, |
| 1:14.0 | is currently a founding partner |
| 1:16.0 | at Manifest Capital, |
| 1:17.0 | and has worked closely with Facebook, |
| 1:20.0 | Twitter, Snap, Microsoft, |
| 1:22.0 | and many other leading Fortune 500 firms to help them derive value from big data analytics, social media, and IT investments. |
| 1:31.0 | He is here today to discuss the subject of his book, The Hype Machine, The |
| 1:36.6 | Promise, and the Parrel of Social Media. This episode is the latest in a series of thoughtful conversations that I've hosted on this |
| 1:46.1 | podcast dealing with some of the more problematic issues surrounding social media and its influence on politics and society. |
| 1:55.1 | My conversations with Shoshana Zuboff and Rana Ferruhar come most immediately to mind, |
| 2:00.7 | but my episodes with Cal Newport on digital minimalism, Hannah Fry on artificial intelligence, |
| 2:07.0 | and John Borthwick, with whom I explored a number of interesting philosophical questions related to the future of humanity and machine intelligence |
... |
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