Show Notes We pause from issue-focused episodes and try to pull together the threads of the season so far to take a step toward our ethic of technology. Stephen imitating Lewis Mumford saying “I said that!!!” Links Donald Trump cannot block critical Twitter users, court rules The Lindy effect – John D. Cook on the expected lifetimes of technology: …if all you know is that a technology has survived a certain amount of time, you can estimate that it will survive about that much longer. President B...
Aug 08, 2019•38 min•Season 7Ep. 8
Data privacy, just war, the sovereignty of God… there’s a lot here! Show Notes We dig into the rest of the ERLC’s statement on AI—everything from security and privacy to just war and the sovereignty of God. Links Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles In Search of the Common Good, Jake Meador Minority Report Deepfakes Fake ‘drunk’ Nancy Pelosi video goes viral, and it wasn’t even that hard to make (Mashable) 6.06: A Kind of Blindness —Smart cities, “big data”, and the me...
Jul 19, 2019•46 min•Season 7Ep. 7
People reflecting proactively on ethics? Sold! …mostly. Mostly! Show Notes The ERLC published a statement on artificial intelligence and ethics. We give them an ‘A’ but have some substantive disagreements. Links Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles Mass Effect - Mass Affection I, Robot Ray Kurzweil The Singularity Newton’s Wake, Ken Macleod 6.03: I’m Not Puttin’ That Chip in My Cheek—Bodily modification, from hip replacement to magnets in your fingers. 6.05: Crispr—Set...
Jul 03, 2019•43 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Localism is great! …but it is no panacea. Show Notes We look at everything from American racial history to the differences between Chattanooga’s and China’s “local” internets. Stephen gesticulating wildly! Links The New Sewer Socialists , Evan Malmgren, Logic An alternate ending to the tragedy of the commons , Nadia Eghbal, on Elinor Ostrom’s Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action Ostrom noticed there are many situations where common resources are allocated ef...
May 23, 2019•35 min•Season 7Ep. 5
Rejecting solutionism, the problems of the humane, and wise change. Show Notes We dig into the challenge of taking a non-solutionist approach and rejecting a technocratic view of the world… while not rejecting “interventions” and making real progress along the way. Corrections Stephen accidentally referred to Chris’ reference in his newsletter to C. S. Lewis’ foreword to St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation as “On the Annunciation”—the annunciation is a related but distinct bit of Christian doctri...
May 09, 2019•39 min•Season 7Ep. 4
An interview with the founder of Longpath about his vision for the future and trans-generational ethics. Show Notes We chat with Ari Wallach of Longpath about his vision for the future and the importance of trans-generational ethics. (There’s obviously a lot we both find valuable and disagree with here… keep your ears open for reflection on some of those differences in the future!) Corrigenda Buckminster Fuller didn’t invent the trimtab —but he did invent the metaphor of the social aspects of tr...
Apr 25, 2019•49 min•Season 7Ep. 3
Any positive vision of the future must contend with people who like the current way of doing things. We discuss personal and communal liturgies as potential ways to address the issue. Show Notes John Deere discussion in 6.13 $200M lobbying from oil companies 43 Democrats not even voting on a thing they support $200M in lobbying from oil companies Jake Meador’s articles: “Whose Reaganism? Which Republicanism?” (Mere Orthodoxy) “America’s Farming Crisis, Laid Bare by Midwest Floods” (Christianity ...
Apr 10, 2019•42 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Season 7’s charter—by way of a rollicking argument about Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943 and Tolkien’s idea of eucatastrophe. Show Notes Major figures we discuss in this episode: Alan Jacobs’ recent work The Year of Our Lord 1943: Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisi Jacques Ellul C. S. Lewis T. S. Eliot Jacques Mauritain Simone Weil J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion eucatastrophe : from “On Fairy Stories” (published in The Monsters and the Critics ) Other topics/figu...
Mar 27, 2019•39 min•Season 7Ep. 1
7.01 will be in your ears tomorrow. For today: how Stephen copes with Twitter.
Mar 27, 2019•1 min
Documentary theater and the power of storytelling for social change. Show Notes An interview with writer, director, and actor Jessica C. Blank , focusing on her approach to using writing and acting as a means of accomplishing social change. We talk about her work on The Exonerated and How To Be a Rock Critic, as well as her theory of story and the way it can help create common ground even when people have deep disagreements. Links Most importantly: Jessica’s website her Instagram All the things ...
Feb 04, 2019•55 min
Wrapping up Season 6 by covering the topics we intended to cover before Chris’ experience with burnout broke everything. Show Notes On burnout: Chris’ New Rustacean episode Chris’ blog posts Shannon Vallor and Technology and the Virtues “Why American Farmers Are Hacking Their Tractors With Ukrainian Firmware” Music “Tiananmen Square” by Cameron Blake “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This mon...
Jan 01, 2019•37 min•Season 6Ep. 13
Regulation as neither bogeyman nor panacea, but a way of protecting out the right spaces for genuine competition to emerge. Show Notes Back in September, we recorded this episode live, both of us in person, at Pikes Peak Brewing Company in Monument, Colorado—as Stephen was out visiting Chris and just hanging out for a weekend. We talk a bit about the history of the beer industry in the 20th and 21st century, with an eye to the way that government intervention can variously make things much worse...
Nov 08, 2018•41 min•Season 6Ep. 12
Reflecting on the limits of AI, and the limits we should put on AI. Show Notes AI is coming and it’s going to take all of our jobs! …or, not, depending on who you ask and how optimistic they are or aren’t about the limits of AI as we understand it today. Regardless: how should we think about roboticizing all the jobs? Links A telling quote: OH (from an awesome Lyft driver): “Today has been great. I’ve been blessed by the algorithm.” Immediately had an eerie feeling that this could become an incr...
Aug 31, 2018•37 min•Season 6Ep. 11
Our 100th episode spectacular – with a look at where we have come from and where we are going. Show Notes It’s been four and a half years and 100 episodes of Winning Slowly! We pause to take a bit to reflect on what we’ve done, what we’re about, and where we hope to go from here. We also reflect on some of our craziest titles along the way. (“Buying Me Off With Warm Fuzzies”? “Juice Up the Weird Edges of the Ecosystem”? These got wild at times.) Links Cameron Morgan Vallor’s book: Technology and...
Aug 16, 2018•40 min
The end of work, post-work, universal basic income—and a more hopeful frame than these. Show Notes Economists, guilt-ridden Silicon Valley inventors and investors, and others have been looking at the future of work. One possible conclusion? That it’s going away. We don’t think that’s quite right—and we don’t think it would be good if it did. Not exactly, anyway. Links current US unemployment rate Tolkien on subcreation: see his essay On Fairy-Stories notes on J. S. Bach’s reception over time Pre...
Jul 20, 2018•33 min•Season 6Ep. 10
Blockchain, the necessity of regulation, and the regulatory challenges posed by truly global technologies. Show Notes Blockchain and the associated currencies and techniques derived from it have been in the news a lot for the last few years. And it’s an incredibly interesting technology, which basically only has benefits for individual users – but has some profoundly distortive effects at scale, on everything from economics to energy consumption. So what do we do about it? Links Cryptokitties Ch...
Jul 07, 2018•35 min•Season 6Ep. 9
Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and how to argue well with intractable disagreements. Show Notes Sometimes, the rejection of a technology is far less clear cut than in last week’s discussion of Google Glass. With nuclear weapons (and nuclear waste), for example, decades of rejection by many people has not stepped further development and proliferation. What do we do when we face intractable disagreements, especially about things we think represent grave moral evils? Links Hiroshima and Nagasaki F...
Jun 22, 2018•37 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Google Glass, snap judgments, and how we form ourselves to make those snap judgments well. Show Notes Google Glass failed miserably. Why? Because people sometimes do reject technologies. But why ? People’s snap judgments are far from infallible, of course, but in this case they seem to have been correct. How can we train our snap judgments to be correct more often? And how can we interrogate and sharpen our own judgments? Links Google Glass background and commentary: Google X and the Science of ...
Jun 14, 2018•31 min•Season 6Ep. 7
Smart cities, “big data”, and the meaninglessness of mere information. Show Notes We attempt to take down the idea that more data is the solution to our problems. Without wisdom, and without an ethical frame, numbers mean nothing. Links The metadata of experience, the experience of metadata – Nick Carr China’s New Frontiers in Dystopian Tech – Rene Chun at The Atlantic “Smart” refigerators DDOS-ing things Massive Dyn DDOS Attack: Experts Blame Smart Fridges, DVRs And Other IoT Devices Why Your I...
May 16, 2018•31 min•Season 6Ep. 6
What are the limits on gene editing? Should we be doing it at all? If so, under what circumstances? Who determines where it's okay to use Crispr? Show Notes What are the limits on gene editing? Should we be doing it at all? If so, under what circumstances? Who determines where it’s okay to use Crispr? Links Crispr Makes It Clear: The US Needs a Biology Strategy, and Fast Human Embryo Editing Gets the Ok—But No Superbabies Music “Kept” by Jason Van Wyk “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Spon...
May 15, 2018•35 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Why is Silicon Valley so broken? Show Notes We dig into the reasons why so many Silicon Valley companies go so wrong. We talk about Chesterton's fence. We manage to agree with each other by arguing about Apple. We talk about everything from community practices to antitrust. Links Chris’ earlier podcast failure Chesterton’s Fence Biblical notes on greed on the desire to become rich on the love of money #DeleteFacebook Music “Tamu” , by I Am Sonic Rain – used by permission. “Winning Slowly Theme” ...
Apr 23, 2018•39 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Bodily modification, from hip replacement to magnets in your fingers. Show Notes How should we think about bodily modification, on the range from replacing a hip joint or a heart valve to enhancing people well beyond normal human capabilities, to adding entirely new capabilities to the human body? Links The Olympics and body modification: Oscar Pistorius is an amputee with artificial legs Tiamat Dragon Lady Cambridge Analytica and #DeleteFacebook On the question of whether we’re already past “pe...
Apr 06, 2018•35 min•Season 6Ep. 3
A Christian view of ethics and technology - or, how we think about everything from Uber and Facebook to dealing with poverty. Show Notes We talk about out explicitly Christian ethics - including our ethics of technology. How do we reason about technologies as individuals and communities? What is human flourishing? Links Our previous discussion of self-driving cars (and note the title we picked two and a half years ago): 3.13: Inevitable Articles on the self-driving car crash: “A self-driving Ube...
Mar 22, 2018•33 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Introducing a season focused on one theme: rejecting technology. Show Notes Introducing a season focused on one theme: rejecting technology . Or rather, as you’ll hear us trace out in more detail in the episode: rejecting some technologies at some times, and thinking harder about them in general. Links L. M. Sacasas “Why the Luddites Matter” “What Technology Do We Really Need? A Critique of the 2016 Personal Democracy Forum Music “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Sponsors Many thanks to th...
Mar 08, 2018•31 min•Season 6Ep. 1
The latest Star Wars movie: the good, the bad, and the astounding. Show Notes You knew this was coming! We talk our likes, dislikes, deep loves, and both hopes and concerns for the future of Star Wars . Links The Incomparable on The Empire Strikes Back Music “Main Title and Escape,” from The Last Jedi by John Williams . Fair use. “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho. Sponsors Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors: Andrew...
Jan 11, 2018•36 min
Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem and the strengths and weaknesses of literature as a window into other cultures. Show Notes We chat about a Chinese novel with an American translation, our love of sci-fi and fantasy, and the ways different cultures tackle the same kinds of underlying problems through fiction. We also talk about the beauty, and the limitations, of thinking about different cultures through their art. (Including what might happen if you tried to understand American culture through...
Dec 03, 2017•32 min
Reflections on what we said in Season 5 and where we're going in Season 6. (Buckle up!) Show Notes Wrapping up Season 5! We take a look at the things that worked well, summarize some of the big things we learned (or learned how to say more clearly), and give a bit of a preview of where we're going in Season 6! Links More __ in your __ Previous episodes we specifically called out during the show: 0.01: We Need Some Context! 2.13: A Disputation of Theses 5.03: It's Not Like Uber 5.04: Stuffy, Bori...
Sep 27, 2017•31 min•Season 5Ep. 12
Positive / Visible / Legal: Vaccinations and the application of force Show Notes It's one thing to be pro-vaccination. It's another to mandate vaccinations for everyone on the same schedule without any exceptions. It's one thing to be an anti-vaxxer. It's something else entirely to have reservations about the particular schedule a government mandates. How do we defend great common goods when they pose small, but real, individual risks? Carefully. Links "Measles outbreak grows in L.A.'s Orthodox ...
Sep 13, 2017•36 min•Season 5Ep. 11
Negative / Visible / Social: Sexism in the tech industry Show Notes We look at the tech industry’s persistent habit of treating women badly – both overtly, in terms of sexual harassment, and less overtly, in terms of simply hiring and mentoring fewer women. What can we do to improve matters? What is the responsibility of individuals? Of companies? Of culture at large? Of the government? Links Recent examples of sexism in the tech industry: “Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber” – Su...
Aug 02, 2017•31 min•Season 5Ep. 10
Stephen gave his students a change of pace by having Chris deliver a guest lecture on podcasting. This lecture was recorded immediately before delivering 5.07: Books, the Internet, and Homeless People (Live at N.C. State) .
Dec 28, 2016•42 min
