Today‘s guest in the End of Spring Series 2020 is Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist who’s trying to create a whole new field of engineering. She’s a geek.
We talk about many, many things at very high speed including robots, American culture, artificial intelligence, conspiracies, wombat warrens, telegraphs, rugged individualism, science fiction, coffee, elevators, and Isaac Asimov.
And of course the coronavirus, because that’s the thing that’s dominated 2020.
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CONVERSATION TOPICS: David King, Phillip Merrick, and Tim Holland.
THREE TRIGGER WORDS: Christopher Neal, John Lindsay, Joop de Wit, Rami, Wyld, and two people who choose to remain anonymous.
ONE TRIGGER WORD: Andrew Groom, Benno Rice, Crispin Harris, Edward Thompson, Frank Filippone, John Twyman, Jon Eaves, Jonathan Ferguson, Karl Sinclair, Mark Newton, Matthew Moyle-Croft, Michael Cowley, Mick Fong, Paul Williams, Peter Blakeley, Peter Sandilands, Scott Reeves, Wade Bowmer, and four people who choose to remain anonymous.
FOOT SOLDIERS FOR MEDIA FREEDOM who gave a SLIGHTLY LESS BASIC TIP: Andrew Kennedy, Bob Ogden, Chris Lawrence, Coralie Naumann, David Heath, deejbah, dfk, Drew Mayo, Emma Cooper, Garth Kidd, Katie McLaughlin, Karloscar Hall, Leanne O’Donnell, Mathew McBride, Matthew Hall, Michael Harris, Michael Keating, Michael Rowe, Paris Lord, Peter McCrudden, Ric Hayman, Rohan Pearce, Smurfingbeer, Stacey Ryan, Stu Annels, Susan Rankin, Syl Mobile, Tim Bell, and seven people who choose to remain anonymous.
MEDIA FREEDOM CITIZENS who contributed a BASIC TIP: Anthony Agius, Daniel O’Connor, Errol Cavit, Greg Randolph, Jason Anderson, Kate Carruthers, Lucas James, Peter Viertel, Raena Jackson Armitage, and five people who choose to remain anonymous.
And another 11 people chose to have no reward, even though some of them were the most generous of all.
Episode Links
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Genevieve Bell AO FTSE is an Australian anthropologist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technological development. Professor Bell is the Director of the Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute (3Ai), which was co-founded by the Australian National University (ANU) and CSIRO’s Data61, and a Distinguished Professor of the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science.
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Anthropologist, technologist, futurist, Prof, & Intel Sr Fellow. intersection of tech & culture. Dir @3AInstitute #anthrogeek #bookfairy always my views.
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Genevieve Bell is a Distinguished Professor, Director of the 3A Institute (3Ai), Florence Violet McKenzie Chair,at the Australian National University (ANU), as well as a Vice President and a Senior Fellow at Intel Corporation. Genevieve completed her PhD in cultural anthropology at Stanford University in 1998. She is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development and widely recognised as an influential voice within academia, industry and government.
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Morse Code Sound Effect for a History Lesson on Samuel Morse.
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The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was a 3,200 km (2,000 mi) telegraph line that connected Darwin with Port Augusta in South Australia. Completed in 1872, the Overland Telegraph Line allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world.
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Australia's first telegraph had commenced operation in 1854, linking Melbourne with the port at Williamstown, 17 kilometres in distance. That was a mere 10 years after Samuel Morse opened the world's first public telegraph, from Baltimore to Washington DC. By 1870 Melbourne had been linked to Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane for a decade or so, and an extensive network had fanned out across Victoria. But there were still no links to the world. News from London and, perhaps more importantly, commercial information still took 60 to 80 days each way.
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Sir Charles Todd KCMG FRS FRAS FRMS FIEE (7 July 1826 – 29 January 1910) worked at the Royal Greenwich Observatory 1841–1847 and the Cambridge University observatory from 1847 to 1854. He then worked on telegraphy and undersea cables until engaged by the government of South Australia as astronomical and meteorological observer, and head of the electric telegraph department.
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The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers is a 1998 book by Tom Standage.
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Telegraphy in the nineteenth century approximated the internet in our own day. Historian and electrical engineer David Hochfelder offers readers a comprehensive history of this groundbreaking technology, which employs breaks in an electrical current to send code along miles of wire.
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[Amazon listing, book out of print.]
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[Amazon listing, out of print.]
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[5 Dec 2020] A key model forecasts 539K Americans dead by April. Unless somebody you know has died, that number may not feel real to you — but the situation is dire. So dire that California imposed its strictest guidelines since the spring.
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Who is building, managing and decommissioning our Ai-enabled future?
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"We're all victims. Everybody here. All these thousands of people here tonight. They're all victims. Every one of you." -- Trump
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"I have always felt I have an obligation to build the future I want to see. We know that AI-powered cyber-physical systems (CPS) will scale in society. The challenge we face now is how we do that responsibly and sustainably? If we act proactively, we can avoid some of the negative impacts we have seen during other technological leaps."
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If you'd like to hear six hours of Genevieve Bell expanding on so many of the themes discussed in this podcast, I can highly recommend there 2017 Boyer Lectures for the ABC. If you prefer to read rather than listen, there are transcripts.
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After weeks of surging infections and rising levels of virus hospitalizations, the United States recorded more than 3,000 covid-19 deaths in a single day, a pandemic record.
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Each state's progress towards a new normal.
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‘Bye, Karen’ — Passengers cheered when a woman who refused to wear a mask was escorted off of a plane.
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In a complaint unsealed on Friday [4 Dec 2020], whistle-blowers working on President Trump’s wall said that contractors were illegally bringing in Mexican guards to protect construction sites.
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There’s a couple of old blokes at this bar who are way drunk on bourbon and coke. One of them is about 70yo and would be played by Richard Roxburgh if he were 20 years older. They are rolling in mirth at introducing a friend as “Ben Dover”.
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This is a clip of Isaac Asimov from 1975.
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Sy Bourgin Interviews Isaac Asimov, Biochemist And Science Fiction Writer. Mr. Asimov May Be The Most Widely Read Of All Science Fiction Writers, Having Written 155 Books And Hundreds Of Magazine Articles And Short Stories. A Clip Of "Fantastic Voyage," Based On His Book, Is Inserted In The Program. Viewers Will Find This Interview Provocative In Regard To What Mr. Asimov Has To Say About Writing And The Future Of This Earth.
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R.U.R. is a 1920 science fiction play by the Czech writer Karel ?apek. R.U.R. stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum's Universal Robots). The English phrase "Rossum's Universal Robots" has been used as a subtitle. It premiered on 25 January 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.
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Elektro is the nickname of a robot built by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in its Mansfield, Ohio facility between 1937 and 1938. Seven feet tall (2.1 m), weighing 265 pounds (120.2 kg), humanoid in appearance, he could walk by voice command, speak about 700 words (using a 78-rpm record player), smoke cigarettes, blow up balloons, and move his head and arms. He was on exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair and reappeared at that fair in 1940, with "Sparko", a robot dog that could bark, sit, and beg to humans.
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This drama illustrates the contribution of free enterprise, technology, and Westinghouse products to the American way of life. The Middleton Family at the New York World's Fair pits an anti-capitalist bohemian artist boyfriend against an all-American electrical engineer who believes in improving society by working through corporations. The Middletons experience Westinghouse's technological marvels at the Fair and win back their daughter from her leftist boyfriend.
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Sex Kittens Go to College (a.k.a. Beauty and the Robot) is a 1960 American comedy film from Allied Artists Pictures, produced and directed by Albert Zugsmith, that stars Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, and Mijanou Bardot. The film was also released in adult theaters with an additional 9-minute dream sequence added showcasing the robot Sam Thinko with striptease dancers.
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A formula for assessing the gravity of kidney disease is one of many that is adjusted for race. The practice can exacerbate health disparities.
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Now it’s possible for HR-managers and recruiters all over the world to perform English unbiased job interviews with automated interview robot Tengai. The new release has been scientifically validated*, has an automated personality scoring, as well as an interview analytics audio scoring - which gives hiring managers deeper insights of jobseekers profiles, without human interference.
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An internal report claims the face-scanning system could trigger a ‘Uighur alarm,’ sparking concerns that the software could help fuel China’s crackdown on the mostly Muslim minority group
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A rare leak of a prisoner list from a Chinese internment camp shows how a government data programme targets Muslim minorities for detention over transgressions that include simply being young, or speaking to a sibling living abroad.
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Safe, responsible, and diverse are her three wishes
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Series Credits
- The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian via The Freesound Project.
- Edict fanfare by neonaeon, via The Freesound Project.
- Elephant Stamp theme by Joshua Mehlman.