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robert d.j. smith

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99% Invisible: 496- The Rights of Rice and Future of Nature (44m)
99% invisible does it again - a story about people representing wild rice in the US legal system.
Posted: 19 July, 2022
Longform: Episode 486: Vauhini Vara (54m)
Interview with Vauhini Vauna who is a tech writer. She wrote an essay collaboratively with the open AIs GPT3. End of the interview touches on this, and particularly the affective dimensions of working with AI. It would be a good unexpected teaching case.
Posted: 9 May, 2022
Grouse
Sensitive podcast on American's relationship with an endangered species. Takes a kind of socio-technical systems / actor-centred approach to Grouse as an issue.
Posted: 2 May, 2022
The Technium: Ideas Want to be Shared
The default metaphor for intellectual property in modern times is “ownership.” In this model of ownership, all ideas, stories, inventions, characters, product names, techniques are understood to be inherently born as the property of their creator. These thoughts-made-real are seen to be owned by the mind that births them. You think them, you own them. With this status of ownership, intangible creations such as a novel, a musical melody, a plot, a phrase, formula, etc — all things created by a mind — are given a monopoly of rights in order to encourage further creations by the same creator. And to spur others to create. This lawful monopoly — such as copyright, patents, trademarks — protects the creation from being used by others for gain. By current law, this inherent monopolistic ownership is held strongly for long periods of time, ranging from decades to a century, depending on the conceptual type (patents may be 17 years while copyright may exceed lifetimes). This awarded monopoly has a few exceptions for very limited special cases, such as “fair use” and public domain. In these modes anyone can fairly use the invention for their own purposes. Certain restrictions may apply, like if the use might need to be for education, or for parody, or so used in a transformative way, or bettered by the use. These exceptions were to be kept to an absolute minimum in order to maximize the monopoly of the hard working creator. This framing plays into both the modern idea of ownership as the sacred foundation of wealth and prosperity, but it also plays into the idea of creator as a hero, or at least as the bedrock of progress.
Posted: 4 February, 2022
What America’s largest technology firms are investing in
Big tech companies' research budgets are massive
Posted: 24 January, 2022
On "inventing NFTs" and how we don't have any good way to talk about tech
An inventor finally offers an interesting take on responsibility, centring on narratives and the ability to talk about the ambivalences of NFTs.
Posted: 15 November, 2021
Academic Politics of Silencing – Public Anthropologist
Posted: 13 November, 2021
Beishan Broadcast Wall: Taiwan’s eerie sonic weapon - BBC Culture
Posted: 27 October, 2021
The Reunion - The GM Crops Debate - BBC Sounds
Posted: 25 October, 2021
A fabrication lab in Japan hopes to rejuvenate the local cedar industry
Posted: 25 October, 2021
Do Cyborgs Have Politics? — Pax Solaria
Posted: 19 October, 2021
Longform: Episode 458: Max Chafkin (49m)
Podcast with Max Chafkin, author of a book on Peter Thiel. Has a really nice bit of emerging tech disassembly on a scary technology (Palantir) and an example of how the wrong assessment of some tech visionaries about a problem (9/11 - failure of surveillance) led to its development.
Posted: 6 October, 2021
Scientists use AI to create drug regime for rare form of brain cancer in children
Posted: 23 September, 2021
The Great Auk: A lesson in history on biological diversity - UNRIC
Posted: 10 September, 2021
I Feel Better Now | Jake Bittle
Surreptitious data sharing mental health apps
Posted: 8 August, 2021
How yellowcake shaped the West — High Country News – Know the West
Uranium mining in the USA
Posted: 3 August, 2021
Remarkable progress has been made in understanding the folding of proteins
Economist article on Google releasing petition folding predictions
Posted: 29 July, 2021
Sir Patrick Vallance handed tech role to build on vaccine success
Government creates a new science and technology council, chaired by the prime minister, to make decisions about research to address societal challenges.
Posted: 21 June, 2021
Congress is set to make a down-payment on innovation in America
Posted: 6 June, 2021
The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins | Vanity Fair
Posted: 5 June, 2021
In Our Time: Longitude (50m)
Great case study of funding and technological change and its imbrication in politics (it made Britain better at being Imperialistic)
Posted: 22 May, 2021
Is Bioelectricity the Key to Limb Regeneration? | The New Yorker
Profile of a bioengineering person who doesn't think in terms of genes and is trying to drive regeneration using bioelectrical signals. Very reminiscent of Karen barads talks
Posted: 5 May, 2021
Diplomacy has changed more than most professions during the pandemic
Academic title = The role of digital technologies in changing international politics: the case of diplomacy
Posted: 3 May, 2021
It's time to decolonise science and end another imperial era | The Independent | The Independent
How collaboration shapes knowledge production: "A 2009 study showed that about 80 per cent of Central Africa’s research papers were produced with collaborators based outside the region. With the exception of Rwanda, each of the African countries principally collaborated with its former coloniser. As a result, these dominant collaborators shaped scientific work in the region. They prioritised research on immediate local health-related issues, particularly infectious and tropical diseases, rather than encouraging local scientists to also pursue the fuller range of topics pursued in the West."
Posted: 25 April, 2021
AirPods Are a Tragedy
Amazing article about how AirPods are evil
Posted: 19 April, 2021
Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus - The New York Times
Not synthetic biology
Posted: 9 April, 2021
Why the finest minds in 1930s Europe believed in public engagement | Aeon Essays
Posted: 18 March, 2021
On the Search for the Origins of COVID-19: A Forum | Somatosphere
Somatosphere forum on the origins of the coronavirus responsible for this pandemic.
Posted: 6 March, 2021
The Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) Bill | Wonkhe
Posted: 3 March, 2021
Tensions rise as GM mosquito release nears | County | keysnews.com
Posted: 3 March, 2021
First vaccine to fully immunize against malaria builds on pandemic-driven RNA tech - The Academic Times
You could imagine a future in which the pandemic drives vaccine development which negates the need for eradicating mosquitoes from the world.
Posted: 1 March, 2021
Strange evolution: The weird future of life on Earth - BBC Future
More future organisms from the BBC
Posted: 23 February, 2021
Top ten future organisms | Dazed
Dazed and confused is a cool magazine. This is from 2013 and is basically all arty tropes.
Posted: 23 February, 2021
Composition 1.01: How Email Can Change the Way Professors Teach - The Atlantic
James Somers on how an English professor in the US (10 years ago) dealt with student feedback - by emailing with students as they go through the course.
Posted: 18 February, 2021
The Gene Gap: what makes us human? - Science Weekly podcast | Science | The Guardian
Posted: 21 April, 2020
The WHO v coronavirus: why it can't handle the pandemic
Posted: 10 April, 2020
New Zealand Vets saving a species at risk of extinction
Posted: 15 March, 2020
Report by Diane Coyle (from Cambridge)
Posted: 3 March, 2020
Research on research
Posted: 3 March, 2020
Apple - Thoughts on Music
Steve Jobs
February 6, 2007
Posted: 27 January, 2020
Thoughts on Flash - Apple
Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage.
Posted: 27 January, 2020
NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein
Posted: 11 January, 2020
Map revealing the dark side of Amazon Echo wins Designs of the Year 2019 | It's Nice That
Posted: 11 January, 2020
Opinion | Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy - The New York Times
Journalists doing stuff that academics haven't with data and tracking, again.
Posted: 19 December, 2019
British Academy & Royal Society Report on Data Management
Aside from the fact that this is a really nice policy report between science and the humanities, it contains this quote for anyone following new / emerging / novel things: “Professor Agar explains how data-driven decisions are older than commonly thought, and how concerns about privacy and automation go back much longer than any data revolution. He emphasises that policymakers focus too much on governing new technologies, when it is often the older ones that really matter.”
Posted: 12 October, 2017
Water-repellent coatings could make de-icing a breeze : Nature News & Comment
Anti Ice-9!
Posted: 11 October, 2017
'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia | Technology | The Guardian
Contra this, ‘the people tend to be one or two rings down, who have actually spent the time creating technologies and now find themselves trying to extract themselves from it’. > “It may or may not be relevant that Rosenstein, Pearlman and most of the tech insiders questioning today’s attention economy are in their 30s, members of the last generation that can remember a world in which telephones were plugged into walls. It is revealing that many of these younger technologists are weaning themselves off their own products, sending their children to elite Silicon Valley schools where iPhones, iPads and even laptops are banned. They appear to be abiding by a Biggie Smalls lyric from their own youth about the perils of dealing crack cocaine: never get high on your own supply.”
Posted: 7 October, 2017
Google CEO Sundar Pichai: 'I don't know whether humans want change that fast' | Technology | The Guardian
A couple of things interesting to STS: 1. The question about ethics and political power of the technology he builds becomes one of whether people are comfortable about acceleration. 2. ‘Democratise’ here means spread as far as possible. Of course they’re just snippets of an interview transcript but they seem familiar patterns. And of course, he is the CEO. It would be unprecedented if he acknowledged what a lot of people see as a critical position had any validity.
Posted: 7 October, 2017
Learning from Fukushima | Issues in Science and Technology
“This can be achieved by, for example, using open processes in the planning stage of power plants that allow the public to comment on and influence the terms and consequences of models, or by including forms of international peer review for national modeling assumptions.” This is one of my discomforts with my own work and others in the field. That we are essentially saying, when we make recommendations like this, that such processes are less likely to a) fail or b) produce catastrophic failure if they do. But this is even less testable than the accuracy of models and comes with a significant burden. The next sentence does suggest a way forward — finding ways to protect the poor — but this is not a technologically-specific solution but a question of equity.
Posted: 1 October, 2017
The Economist | Resistance is inevitable
Posted: 28 July, 2017
Governments have to invest in the fourth industrial revolution
"Now it is the turn of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, 3D printing and quantum computing to transform the global economy."
Posted: 16 July, 2017
Here’s how to civilise Uber, and make the other ‘death stars’ work for us too
A suggestion from a guardian columnist about how to deal with megacompanies. Note the reference to knowing the future in the Nature paper. Interesting.
Posted: 8 July, 2017
Donna Haraway, "Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene: Staying with the Trouble", 5/9/14 on Vimeo
This is the staying with the trouble lecture by Donna Haraway.
Posted: 16 April, 2017
It Takes 60,000 Rivets and Two Robots to Build a Boeing 777 Fuselage | WIRED
Posted: 21 March, 2017
Welcome to AirSpace | The Verge
Neat article about the relationship between modern preference-based and travel apps and their relationship to aesthetics.
Posted: 8 March, 2017
Minerals found in shipwreck and museum drawer 'show we are living in new epoch' | Science | The Guardian
Crystals! New Crystals!
Posted: 2 March, 2017
Human error in a nuclear facility nearly destroyed Arkansas - The Verge
Of course, it's human error! More machines please!
Posted: 12 February, 2017
Steven Shapin - on science producing useful goods
A historian talking about the idea of science producing goods, and the shifts that it entails.
Posted: 31 January, 2017
How a biotech startup rose, and then fell - The Boston Globe
Interesting because after the fall comes acquisition by Gingko.
Posted: 25 January, 2017
Rebuilding the Web We Lost - Anil Dash
An old piece of writing by Anil Dash about the internet and how it changed. It's a nice example of how to turn critique into something constructive. Reminders of normative turn in STS, particularly because he talks about alternatives and future apps and web services that will 'look different' (he uses this term).
Posted: 1 January, 2017
Gates Foundation head of global health talks WHO, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
At the Grand Challenges Annual Conference is a guy from the Gates foundation talking about how to fund global health challenges with a choice hyping quote about being able to treat all disease.
Posted: 30 November, 2016
After 10 years, few payoffs from Gates’ ‘Grand Challenges’ | The Seattle Times
A quietly depressing piece about the amount of money going into the Gates' foundation grand challenge scheme, name checking a person talking about global health and talking up the fact that what they fund are technological fixes.
Posted: 29 September, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn's Letter to the Guardian about energy and environmental policy
"To increase public understanding and energise the political debate, we need more than facts – we need a programme that resonates with people’s everyday experiences, offering not just warnings but opportunities and improvement." On first read, this seems like a weird conflict, between facts and people's experiences. On a second read, it seems much closer to STS.
Posted: 7 September, 2016
Total Synthesis of a Functional Designer Eukaryotic Chromosome | Science
The first complete chromosome to be published from the Synthetic Yeast 2.0 project. Interesting because it stands in contrast to many visions of synthetic biology: It employed a team of undergraduates instead of robots.
Posted: 18 August, 2016
Future Tense | Futurography
A website from ASU and other people about the future that looks good. Not sure what to do with it, other than remember it exists at the moment.
Posted: 16 May, 2016
UK research council budgets to 2019-20 revealed | Times Higher Education (THE)
Article that links to the release of the Research Council's budget new budget. The headline thing is the launch of the global challenges research fund.
Posted: 9 May, 2016
Bridging the biotic | abiotic divide
Amazing description of synthetic biology PhD from Alistair Elfick at Edinburgh
Posted: 7 April, 2016
The Economist | Preventing an extinction: Not an ex-parrot
Crazy case of humans intervening in bird breeding
Posted: 6 April, 2016
The Economist | Cryptography: Taking a bite at the Apple
iPhone and privacy is a neat example of how technology embeds political decisions - here regarding privacy
Posted: 3 March, 2016
Three ways synthetic biology could annihilate Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases
Neat little post about how the same knowledge can be used differently. Of course, he doesn't talk about how you could also use social changes to address it, and he doesn't talk about the contested links between the symptoms and the disease.
Posted: 26 February, 2016
Robert Smith | 2018 v3