How your behavior became the world's biggest resource

How has our data become the world’s most valuable resource? What privacy tradeoffs are we making when we engage with personalized apps, recommendations, and always-connected smart devices? Is our personal data being used to make things better, or to make tech giants even more powerful? And what do “cookies” have to do with all this?  Host Raffi Krikorian chats with experts about data’s role in AI, “big data” and the data economy, surveillance capitalism, and much more. Guests include AI researcher Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute; data scientist Chris Wiggins, co-author of How Data Happened; media scholar, tech writer, and internet activist Ethan Zuckerman; engineer and inventor of the cookie Lou Montulli; and Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain. To learn more about Technically Optimistic and to read the transcript for this episode: emersoncollective.com/technically-optimistic-podcast For more on Emerson Collective: emersoncollective.com Learn more about our host, Raffi Krikorian: emersoncollective.com/raffi Technically Optimistic is produced by Emerson Collective with music by Mattie Safer. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: technicallyoptimistic.substack.com Follow on social media @emersoncollective and @emcollectivepodcasts Email us with questions and feedback at us@technicallyoptimistic.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Om Podcasten

Data is the most valuable resource on our planet, and the data economy impacts everything from mental health to human rights. On Season 2 of Technically Optimistic, host Raffi Krikorian engages engineers, activists, professors, and more to ask big questions about our data-driven era. How and why is our data being collected? How is it affecting our daily lives, our decision-making, our political systems? Perhaps most importantly, what does the future of data look like, and what can we do to help shape it? This season of Technically Optimistic is all about your data, and how you can gain back some control.