27 episodes
Synthetic Society Tom Ascott
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Synthetic Society explores our future technological society, with each episode featuring interviews with leading experts, political figures, and entrepreneurs, discussing and teaching us about complex issues. Hosted by disinformation researcher Tom Ascott.
With a focus on AI, technology and the internet, the show gives insight into many of the legal, social and regulatory problems that we are all facing together. Synthetic Society is part of the #Ai2021 campaign, a public engagement campaign to get the general public learning, thinking, and talking about AI. Contact us at www.ai2021.org. Produced by AI expert Marcus Storm on behalf of the #Ai2021 campaign.
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The Open Internet Closes
This week Tom Ascott talks to Max Beverton-Palmer,
Director at the Internet Policy Unit at Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The pair discuss the idea of an open internet and how cooperation can secure its future as well as how tech companies should regulate hostile governments and organisations online and finally end up discussing is Twitter should be subsidised!
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Toxic Femininity
Welcome back to Season Two of Synthetic Society! To kick us off host Tom Ascott speaks with Nona Willis Aronowitz about femcels.
FemCels, short for female incels, are women unable or unwilling to have relationships due to a mix of societal pressures and misogyny.
The conversation draws on Nona's article 'The Femcel Revolution'. -
Colonialism, Connected
Kerryn Gammie and Tom Ascott discuss how archaic, colonial power structures have survived and turned into neo-colonialism, and how those structures continue to be pervasive online.
The pair reflect on ideas of justice, identity and equality and how we can bring these ideas to the world of business to make our work lives more equitable. -
Instagram Insurrection
Ben Decker, Founder and CEO of Memetica, talks to host Tom Ascott about the perils of misinformation on social media, if the Taliban should be allowed to have a Twitter account, and what the future of content moderation looks like.
Episode Resources:
https://www.twitterandteargas.org/ -
Diversity Equals Resilience For NATO
Tom Ascott speaks to Giedrimas Jeglinskas, NATO Assistant Secretary General, and former Vice-Minister of Defence of Lithuania.
The pair discuss what role NATO plays in information ecosystems and how NATO can help combat disinformation, as well as how diversity and inclusion can generate new and creative solutions and the importance of diversity in supply chains. -
India's Innovative Data Unions
Can we make our data stronger, safer, and more secure by pooling it together? This week Tom Ascott speaks to Astha Kapoor, Co-Founder and Director of the AAPTI Institute in India.
They discuss how new ideas of data unions, data co-ops and data stewardship are providing a model for how citizens can come together and collectively bargain with the state and with private companies in order to get better services.