The Anti-Dystopians

Latest Episodes:

How (Not) To Regulate Big Tech (Europe’s version) May 23, 2022

Show notes

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Jennifer Cobbe, a senior research associate in the computer science department at Cambridge University. They discuss everything that’s wrong with surveillance capitalism, what the Tesco club card has to do with the surveillance state, the incoherent approach of the EU to regulating tech, how Brexit affected the UK’s ability of to control technology corporations, and how the law got us to where we are now.

You can follow Jennifer on Twitter @jennifercobbe, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Articles Mentioned in this Podcast:

Jennifer Cobbe, Algorithmic Censorship by Social Platforms: Power and Resistance

Julie Cohen, Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism

Evgeny Morozov, Capitalism’s New Clothes (critique of Shoshana Zuboff)

Vice, Facebook Doesn’t Know What It Does With Your Data, Or Where It Goes: Leaked Document

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Elon Musk, Twitter and the ‘Great Men’ of Social Media Apr 24, 2022

Show notes

Alina Utrata sits down with John Naughton, a technology columnist at the Observer, senior research fellow in CRASSH and co-founder of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge, and Josh Simmons, a postdoc in technology and democracy at Harvard University. They discuss Elon Musk’s recent bid for Twitter, what it shows about the power of digital platforms and wealthy men, and how to think about the challenges of reigning in Big Tech.

You can follow, John Naughton on Twitter @jjn1, Josh Simons @joshsimonlabour, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

‘Corporations are Robots’: David Runciman on AI, states and the first singularity Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

David Runciman is a professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the host of the critically acclaimed podcast Talking Politics. In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, he speaks to Alina Utrata about why corporations are robots, how singularity might have already come about, why we should think seriously about the political philosophy of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, and what technologies he worries about in the future.

You can follow, Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Articles mentioned in this podcast

Silicon Valley’s Vampire: David Runciman on Peter Thiel

I read Dominic Cummings blog so you don’t have to: David Runciman on Dominic Cummings

Elon Musk, Sea Turtles and the dangers of long-termism

Dangerous ideas of longtermism

Nick Clegg in profile in Politico

The Evening Rocket: Jill Lepore’s podcast series on Elon Musk’s ideology

A long-read in the FT about how the US shut down Facebook’s crypto-currency

Books mentioned in this podcast:

The Subprime Attention Crisis by Tim Hwang

The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Return of (Amazon) Ring Feb 21, 2022

Show notes

Alina Utrata speaks with Lauren Bridges, a PhD candidate at the the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania who studies big data infrastructures and surveillance regimes. They talk all about Amazon Ring: Why does Amazon want footage of your front door anyways? How is this surveillance shared with law enforcement agencies across the country? Where does this surveillance fit in with racialized notions of crime and policing? And what happens when Amazon Ring is hacked?

You can follow Lauren Bridges on Twitter @Laurenebridges, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Articles by Lauren:

Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen (Guardian Op-ed)

Infrastructural obfuscation: unpacking the carceral logics of the Ring surveillant assemblage (Academic Article)

Other articles:

Who is Amazon? (Anti-Dystopians Podcast)

A Black Woman Invented Home Security. Why Did It Go So Wrong? By Chris Gilliard (Wired)

The IRS Should Stop Using Facial Recognition by Joy Buolamwini (The Atlantic)

For more articles, sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Feminine Meme: Geeks, memes, incels and toxic masculinity at tech hackathons Feb 14, 2022

Show notes

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Siân Brooke, a Leverhulme Fellow in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and an associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute. They discuss gender, memes and hackathons: What exactly is a meme? Do geeks have toxic masculinity? How does gender and femininity get marginalized in tech spaces? And how do fedoras lead down the road to incels?

You can follow Siân Brooke on Twitter @SianJMBrooke, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Other articles by Siân:

Siân's Website: https://www.sianbrooke.com/
Siân's Thesis: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:76f836bf-880b-4902-9226-8d668726f4cf
Trouble in Programmers Paradise: gender-biases in sharing and recognising technical knowledge on Stack Overflow: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1962943
“There are no girls on the Internet”: Gender performances in Advice Animal memes: https://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/9593

Further Reading

OII's Anti-Racists Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/146XaYuhUAng6rGV9mChDkvWdYIfwpSXlle1RUxUaBUE/edit?usp=sharing
Hacking Diversity by Dunbar Hester: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182070/hacking-diversity
Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The eye of the tiger: conservation technology, rural surveillance and the patriarchy in Indian wildlife reserves Feb 06, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Trishant Simlai, a conservation researcher studying the politics and geographies of wildlife conservation in India, who just received his PhD in the Department of Geography at Cambridge. They discuss wildlife surveillance in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, as well as conservation’s colonial origins, how camera traps can be used to uphold the patriarchy, and when workplace surveillance technologies literally lead to tiger attacks.

You can follow Trishant Simlai on Twitter @trishantsimlai Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Further Reading:

Negotiating the Gaze. Sanctuary Asia, December 2019
Are Conservation Organizations Complicit in Ethnic Discrimination? The Wire 2017
Grasslands of Grey: How the BBC's flawed Kaziranga muckraker has done harm. The Wire 2017:
Are Treacherous Links and Claims an Illusion? Sanctuary Asia 2016
Conservation 'Wars': The global rise of green militarization and trends in India. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol L No 50. 2015.
Digital Surveillance Tech in Conservation and their social implications
Why we must question the militarisation of conservation
How does Conservation Tech Cause Harm?
Conservation Surveillance as a means for state repression?

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who is Amazon? Jan 30, 2022

Show notes

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Rowena Squires, an ancient historian, asks Alina Utrata everything you ever wanted to know about Amazon. How did Amazon go from online bookstore to commercial empire? Is Amazon Alexa really recording everything you say? How was AWS cloud computing invented? And why is the Library of Alexandria such a good origin story for the Amazon Alexa?

You can follow Rowena Squires on Twitter @RowenaSquires, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on @AntiDystopians. Sign up for the Anti-Dystopians email newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Articles mentioned in this episode:

Business reporter Brad Stone's 2013 book “The Everything Store” and the 2020 follow-up “Amazon Unbound”
Alec MacGillis’s book “Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America”
The US House Judiciary Report on Monopolies
Franklin Foer’s deep-dive into Jeff Bezos’s brain in the Atlantic
Charles Duhigg’s “Is Amazon Unstoppable?”

For the rest of the articles mentioned in this episode, visit bit.ly/3kuGM5X

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grab ‘em by the data: gender, technology and systems of oppression Jan 22, 2022

Show notes

On this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD in Gender Studies at Cambridge University, and Muskan Shafat, an MS in Data and Society at the London School of Economics, about gender and technology. They discuss the myth of neutral tech, how technology is embedded in systems of oppression, why using a dishwasher isn’t considered “technological innovation” and whether some AI is just machine learning for eugenics.

You can follow Stefanie Felsberger on Twitter @Flsbrgr, Muskan Shafat @muskanmaraz, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians. Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Books mentioned in the podcast:

Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin

Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble

Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks

Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neill

What Tech Calls Thinking by Adrian Daub

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(Tech) Company Rule Dec 13, 2021

Show notes

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Maha Atal, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow who studies the political economy of corporate power and was previously an award-winning journalist reporting on the tech industry. They discuss how the history of company-rule and colonization relates to the tech industry, how tech companies exert power in the Global South, why Silicon Valley’s “Janus faces” allows it to escape state regulation, and whether the perception of technology corporations has changed, from the tech-utopian days of the Obama administration to now.

Selected articles by Maha Atal

The Janus faces of Silicon Valley http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/247127/

Is Google evil? http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2009/08/online-search-google-datak

You can follow Maha Atal on Twitter @MahaRafiAtal

Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata

And the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians

Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-land

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Human rights and internet infrastructure Nov 29, 2021

Show notes

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Corinne Cath-Speth, a recent graduate from the doctoral program at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) and a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Internet infrastructure politics, engineering cultures, and technology policy and governance. They discuss the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): What is it? What are internet protocols? And how can infrastructure uphold or harm human rights?

You can follow Corinne Cath-Speth on Twitter @C___CS

Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata

And the Anti-Dystopians podcast on Twitter @AntiDystopians

Or sign up for the AD email newsletter: bit.ly/3kuGM5X

All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata, and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production to the show, visit: bit.ly/3AApPN4

Selected Reading and Articles by Corinne Cath-Speth: