Explore every episode of the podcast The Data Fix with Dr. Mél Hogan
| Title | Pub. Date | Duration | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simulation, with Dan McQuillan | 27 Apr 2026 | 01:00:28 | |
In this episode with Dan McQuillan, we discussed the current AI moment as/within the polycrisis, and also as a temporary period between illusion and simulation. Dan proposes a series of countermeasures to AI under the umbrella of 'decomputing'. We also spend some time talking about illusion, shame, authenticity, and a slew of other contradictions that are important to note in relation to this AI moment. Recorded Apr 7, 2026. Released Apr 27, 2026. Preprint: AI, Decomputing and the Interregnum https://www.danmcquillan.org/ai_decomputing_interregnum.html Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence (2022) https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai Meta Security Researcher's AI Agent Accidentally Deleted Her Emails Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Offloading, with [Anonymous] | 13 Apr 2026 | 01:09:14 | |
For this episode, I interviewed someone who asked to be made anonymous (and voice altered) in order to openly discuss their complicated feelings of regularly offloading work tasks to an AI chatbot. Is there any shame is using AI? Isn’t everyone doing it? Why would people pretend not to? Does it change you? Is it bad for the brain? Recorded Mar 22, 2026. Released Apr 13, 2026. How I Realized AI Was Making Me Stupid—and What I Do Now https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/how-i-realized-ai-was-making-me-stupidand-what-i-do-now-5862ac4d Study Finds That People Who Entrust Tasks to AI Are Losing Critical Thinking Skills https://futurism.com/study-ai-critical-thinking Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Tracking, with Stefanie Felsberger | 24 Nov 2025 | 00:54:30 | |
In this episode, I got to walk through a recent report called “the high stakes of tracking menstruation” with its author, Stefanie Felsberger, a sociologist of tech & gender. I cannot express enough how much there is to learn from this topic that can help us understand the bigger landscape of tech promises and harms. Recorded Oct 23, 2025. Released Nov 24, 2025. The High Stakes of Tracking Menstruation - MCTD Cambridge https://www.mctd.ac.uk/femtech-high-stakes-tracking-menstruation/ Menstrual apps harvest data that ‘puts women’s safety at risk’ Period: The Real Story of Menstruation (by Kate Clancy) https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691191317/period? Website https://www.stefaniefelsberger.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Surveillance, with Justin Hendrix | 10 Nov 2025 | 00:52:28 | |
In this episode, I speak with Justin Hendrix, the CEO and Editor of Tech Policy Press, a nonprofit media venture concerned with the intersection of technology and democracy. We talk about ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement), surveillance, and AI. Recorded Oct 21, 2025. Released Nov 10, 2025. Republican Budget Bill Signals New Era in Federal Surveillance DEAN JACKSON, JUSTIN HENDRIX / JUL 2, 2025 https://www.techpolicy.press/republican-budget-bill-signals-new-era-in-federal-surveillance/ Amidst Violent Immigration Raids, DHS Turns to Big Tech to Silence Dissent JENNA RUDDOCK / OCT 3, 2025 AI Surveillance on the Rise in US, but Tactics of Repression Not New DIA KAYYALI / MAR 26, 2025 https://www.techpolicy.press/ai-surveillance-on-the-rise-in-us-but-tactics-of-repression-not-new/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Sovereign, with Paris Marx | 20 Oct 2025 | 00:53:58 | |
Host of Tech Won't Save Us and acclaimed tech critic, author, and international speaker, Paris Marx joins me for this episode where we discuss AI futures in a Canadian context: the idea of a "sovereign cloud", an "AI minister", and much more! Recorded Oct 15, 2025. Released Oct 20, 2025. Website Tech Won't Save Us Disconnect https://disconnect.blog/im-writing-a-new-book/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Witnessing, with Michael Richardson | 25 Aug 2025 | 01:10:48 | |
In this episode, I get to chat with the brilliant Michael Richardson on the concept of "Nonhuman Witnessing" especially in how this relates to algorithms and AI. In his book, "Nonhuman Witnessing" (Duke), he argues that a "radical rethinking of what counts as witnessing is central to building frameworks for justice in an era of endless war, ecological catastrophe, and technological capture". Recorded August 13, 2025. Released August 25, 2025. Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World (Duke, 2024) https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/3310/Nonhuman-WitnessingWar-Data-and-Ecology-after-the Website https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/michael-richardson Bluesky Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Dopaminergic, with Rohit Revi | 11 Aug 2025 | 00:58:48 | |
Rohit Revi walks us through paranoia, care, conspiracy, capitalism, and catastrophe, in relation to technology and culture, to draw us into a deeper consideration of collective psychic resources and psychological commons. We talk about psychometry and linger on the dopaminergic. Recorded July 16, 2025. Released August 11, 2025. Great Delirium: Culture, Technology, and Paranoia in the New Age of Catastrophe (2025-02-24) Revi, Rohit; Cultural Studies; Murakami Wood, David; McBlane, Angus Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Con, with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna | 28 Jul 2025 | 00:56:44 | |
Emily M.Bender and Alex Hanna have been leading the charge against "AI", helping us understand it for the con that it is, and how AI companies are turning to health, education, and other social realms to try to recover their costs. In this episode we discuss LLMs vs. what the AI (and AGI) con is -- who benefits, and who loses -- and much more. Recorded July 15, 2025. Released July 28, 2025. The AI Con Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 https://www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/ The predatory fantasy of worker empowerment in AI marketing Justine Zhang, Su Lin Blodgett, Nina Markl AI x Crisis: Tracing New Directions Beyond Deployment and Use workshop, Aarhus 2025. AI isn’t replacing student writing – but it is reshaping it https://theconversation.com/ai-isnt-replacing-student-writing-but-it-is-reshaping-it-254878 Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.12712 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Control, with Paul Schütze | 14 Jul 2025 | 00:55:42 | |
In this episode, Paul Schütze and I pick apart the inherent contradictions of “sustainable AI”, marketing language that aims to convince the public that one of the most extractive industries can be used to solve climate change. We delve into the layers of control embedded in the logics of AI, when technology becomes the fix that needs fixing. Recorded May 20, 2025. Released July 7, 2025. The impacts of AI Futurism https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09758-6 The Problem of Sustainable AI https://doi.org/10.34669/WI.WJDS/4.1.4 contact paul.schuetze@uos.de and website: paulschuetze.de Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Water, with Rebecca Kilberg, Mary-Clare Bosco and Jonathan Gilmour | 16 Jun 2025 | 00:52:46 | |
In this episode I speak with Rebecca Kilberg, Mary-Clare Bosco and Jonathan Gilmour who together use policy approaches to solve problems related to data center water usage and the various planetary and health outcomes that emerge from water consumption and extraction. They talk about how you get such data and what to do with it, and the importance of creating many local sites of resistance for a more sustainable future. Want in? Get in touch. Recorded May 19, 2025. Released June 16, 2025. Voices: Data centers must be transparent about water usage — for the sake of the Great Salt Lake https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2024/12/31/voices-utah-data-centers-must-be Reducing Data Centers’ Water Consumption https://aspenpolicyacademy.org/project/reducing-data-centers-water-consumption Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Solidarity, with Shannon Wait | 02 Jun 2025 | 00:52:58 | |
In this episode, Shannon Wait — Alphabet Workers Union-CWA organizer — speaks with me about the labour conditions for data center and AI workers. We talk about contracts, sub-contracts, sub-sub-contracts, NDAs, invisible labour -- and how all of this leads to unions, solidarity, and a fight for tech workers’ rights globally. Recorded May 8, 2025. Released June 2, 2025. Interview with Shannon Wait, Alphabet Workers Union-CWA Organizer (2024) https://poweratwork.us/shannon-wait-interview A union of Alphabet workers in the U.S. and Canada https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/ Google Raters Participated in Historic Action at Google HQ to Demand Google End Poverty Wages for 5,000 Workers https://code-cwa.org/news/google-raters-participated-historic-action The woman who took on Google and won (2021) https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56659212 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Remade, with Allison Carruth | 19 May 2025 | 01:02:12 | |
Allison Carruth and I talk about her new book which gets at some of the material infrastructure and social systems that have made the US a settler state ever obsessed with new frontiers, including space. We talk about tech imaginaries, worlds remade, and better futures — a vision that invites confronting the state of things head-on, a slower redoing, and is based on connection, love, and friendship (maybe with aliens, too). Recorded May 7, 2025. Released May 19, 2025. Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech (2025) https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo239362741.html Allison Carruth https://allisoncarruth.com/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Mundane, with Wendy H. Wong | 30 Mar 2026 | 01:00:28 | |
In this episode, Wendy H. Wong explains the human rights implications of datafication. We talk about how data become valuable, sticky data, big tech’s encroachment on governance, our faces/selves as datapoints, and how the mundane underlies and explains so much of how data collection happens in the first place. Recorded Mar 20, 2026. Released Mar 30, 2026. Wendy H. Wong We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048576/we-the-data/ Human Rights in the Digital Age https://youtu.be/HyLV5Tf54QM?si=y08lMREdIgYVULcG Big Tech companies govern our lives. It’s time they’re held accountable for it Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Hype, with Dani Shanley and Gemma Milne | 05 May 2025 | 01:00:06 | |
In this episode, Dani Shanley and Gemma Milne walk me through "hype" -- what it means in various technological contexts, how it works, what it is definitionally, how it feels in the body, who it serves, who it harms, and how we might need to nuance our relationship to it, especially as critical (tech) scholars. Recorded May 1, 2025. Released May 5, 2025.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Damage, with Dustin Edwards | 28 Apr 2025 | 00:57:24 | |
Dustin Edwards and I discuss the damage caused by digital infrastructure and its extractive requirements. We talk about data centers and copper mines, but more than this, we delve into the what a decolonial, feminist, anti-racist approach can look like for white settler scholars grappling with their inheritances and obligations to the landscapes and to the stories they tell themselves, as we make (new) worlds. Recorded Apr 8, 2025. Released April 28, 2025. Enduring Digital Damage: Rhetorical Reckonings for Planetary Survival https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817322472/enduring-digital-damage/ The making of critical data center studies Dustin Edwards, Zane Griffin Talley Cooper and Mél Hogan https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/13548565231224157 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Consent, with Jasmine McNealy | 14 Apr 2025 | 00:52:10 | |
In this episode, I ask Jasmine McNealy about the role of consent online, from social media exchanges to the circulation of deep fakes. Who gets to define harm? Who is responsible for the damage? Does anyone have to take accountability? We also talk about surveillance, sonic privacy, and the many data trails the body leaves behind. Recorded Apr 4, 2025. Released April 14, 2025. Sonic Privacy. Yale Journal of Law & Technology/Yale ISP-Knight Foundation Public Sphere Series. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/isp/documents/mcnealy.pdf Consent (Still) Won’t Save Us Chapter from: Feminist Cyberlaw https://uplopen.com/chapters/e/10.1525/luminos.190.p Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Together, with Collin Bjork | 24 Mar 2025 | 00:58:38 | |
Collin Bjork and I discuss the double (triple?) meaning of "extractive AI". Collin explains Otter.ai -- an AI powered voice-to-text transcription software, and the capitalist logics that enable it -- vs. Maori-led Te Hiku Media, based on principles of stewardship, community and collaboration. Collin also explains how rhetoric is about togetherness more than persuasion. Recorded Feb 12, 2025. Released March 24, 2025. Mentioned in ep: Bad Ideas About Writing (Ball & Loewe); Extractive AI and Its Challenge to Technical Communication (Bjork; forthcoming, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, October 2025); "The Acousmatic Question and the Will to Datafy" (Sterne & Sawhney); "Big AI Companies Need Higher Ed...But Does Higher Ed Need Them?" (Bjork); "ChatGPT Threatens Language Diversity" (Bjork); Te Reo Māori Speech Recognition (Te Hiku Media); Abundant Intelligences - Indigenous AI (Jason Edward Lewis, Hemi Whaanga, et al...) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Deskill, with Hagen Blix | 17 Mar 2025 | 01:04:59 | |
In this episode Hagen Blix and I talk about how the fear of AI, from the non-billionaire CEO class, comes from the threat of deskilling workers. Recorded Mar 5, 2025. Released March 17, 2025. Tech Workers Can Still Fight Silicon Valley’s Overlords by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer https://jacobin.com/2025/02/tech-workers-silicon-valley-trump/ Why We Fear AI: On the Interpretation of Nightmares Paperback – March 21 2025 by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer https://www.commonnotions.org/why-we-fear-ai Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Unlearning, with Kane Murdoch | 10 Mar 2025 | 01:02:39 | |
In this episode I speak with Kane Murdoch about the perils of contract cheating. As an integrity officer, he frames what's happening with "cheating" as an unlearning that we should all be paying attention to if we care about education. Recorded Feb 6, 2025. Released March 10, 2025. Guerilla Warfare https://www.guerillawarfare.net/ Ellis, C., & Murdoch, K. (2024). The educational integrity enforcement pyramid: a new framework for challenging and responding to student cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 49(7), 924–934. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2329167 Lures and violent threats: old school cheating still rampant at Australian universities, even as AI rises — The Guardian Ghost writers helping UNSW students to cheat on assessments, leaked report reveals Cheating found at UNSW up by 2000% as new detection methods used University students caught paying others to do their work at record levels The Rise of Plagiarism: Contract Cheating https://www.turnitin.ca/products/originality/contract-cheating Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Indexicality, with Roland Meyer and Gillian Rose | 24 Feb 2025 | 01:02:39 | |
AI images are circulating more and more online and sometimes we can't tell the 'real' from AI-generated. But as I discuss with the inimitable Gillian Rose and Roland Meyer, we need to think about AI images beyond their indexicality, i.e. the idea that a photograph is a direct representation of the subject it captures. In this episode, we grapple with AI generators that are part of extractive, colonial industries, and how that shapes the affect of AI visuals. Recorded Jan 29, 2025. Released Feb 24, 2025. It’s a flat world. The Synthetic Realities of Sora https://rrrreflect.org/special-issue-1/its-a-flat-world-the-synthetic-realities-of-sora “It’s a flat world. The Synthetic Realities of AI Video” by Roland Meyer at Hidden Layers 24 The New Value of the Archive AI Image Generation and the Visual Economy of ‘Style’ https://image-journal.de/the-new-value-of-the-archive/ “Generic Pastness. AI Image Synthesis and the Virtualization of the Archive” Models All The Way Down by Christo Buschek & Jer Thorp https://knowingmachines.org/models-all-the-way Gillian Rose, Professor of Human Geography Fellow of the British Academy and Academy of Social Sciences webpage: https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/grose.html bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/profgillian.bsky.social blog: visualmethodculture.wordpress.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Asymmetries, with Jathan Sadowski | 10 Feb 2025 | 01:00:36 | |
In this episode Jathan Sadowski discusses the 'risk industry' as imagined by FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) and the asymmetries they create. Recorded January 15, 2025. Released February 10, 2025. The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite/paper This Machine Kills: A podcast about technology and political economy https://soundcloud.com/thismachinekillspod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Lessons, with Charles Logan | 27 Jan 2025 | 00:55:08 | |
Charles Logan is the go-to person to talk to about how AI is infiltrating the many layers of education, from K-12 to universities. In this conversation, we learn our lessons; we talk about what Ed Tech is, its promise and hype, and (ultimately) how to refuse it as professors and teach students to resist it as well. We also wonder about 'AI-proofing' the classroom and wether this is the way to deal with its onslaught. Recorded January 14, 2025. Released January 27, 2025. Applying the Baldwin Test to Ed-Tech https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/applying-the-baldwin-test-to-ed-tech The Captivating Creature from Educaria and Other Scary Stories Iggy Peck, Architect Is an AI Doomer and Other Things I Struggle to Talk with My Kids About Lessons on How to Practice Everyday Resistance and Refusal https://www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/lessons-on-how-to-practice-everyday-resistance-and-refusal You need to talk to your kid about AI. Here are 6 things you should say. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Storying, with Dillon Mahmoudi and Anthony Levenda | 20 Jan 2025 | 00:56:46 | |
In this episode I speak with Dillon Mahmoudi and Anthony Levenda about the relationship (feedback loop) between data and urban planning. We focus on the idea of 'storying' data to make it compelling and to get past the inertia of data delivered as mere stats or numbers that have little resonance and don't (or no longer) move people to action, towards better living conditions. Recorded January 13, 2025. Released January 20, 2025. The urban-tech feedback loop: a surveillance and development data-walk in South Lake Union https://dillonm.io/papers/the-urban-tech-feedback-loop/ The Amazon Warehouse https://dillonm.io/papers/the-amazon-warehouse/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Hollowed, with Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij and Andrea Reyes Elizondo | 16 Mar 2026 | 01:00:56 | |
In this episode, Olivia Guest, Iris van Rooij and Andrea Reyes Elizondo discuss why it’s important to the overall purpose and significance of the university to resist the uncritical adoption of AI in academia. The risk of AI adoption is that it’ll hollow out the institutions first, and then society at large. Recorded Feb 27, 2026. Released March 16, 2026. Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia Olivia Guest, Marcela Suarez, Barbara Müller, Edwin van Meerkerk, Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Ronald de Haan, Andrea Reyes Elizondo, Mark Blokpoel, Natalia Scharfenberg, Annelies Kleinherenbrink, Ileana Camerino, Marieke Woensdregt, Dagmar Monett, Jed Brown, Lucy Avraamidou, Juliette Alenda-Demoutiez, Felienne Hermans & Iris van Rooij https://philarchive.org/rec/GUEATU *the 2nd quote read on the episode: Guest, O. (2025). What Does 'Human-Centred AI' Mean?. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.19960 We've been here before! What do you mean? Olivia Guest, 18 February 2026 https://olivia.science/before/ Summer School: Critical AI Literacies for Resisting and Reclaiming https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/18/summer-school-critical-ai-literacies-for-resisting-and-reclaiming/ and https://olivia.science/ai/ Academic Collaborations and Public Health: Lessons from Dutch Universities' Tobacco Industry Partnerships for Fossil Fuel Ties. Zenodo. Knoester, L., Pereira, A., Vanheule, L., Reyes Elizondo, A., Littlejohn, A., & Urai, A. (2025). https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15274865 Why AI transparency is not enough https://www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/why-ai-transparency-is-not-enough Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Defining, with Ali Alkhatib | 13 Jan 2025 | 00:55:02 | |
I got to speak with the brilliant Ali Alkhatib about his blog post "defining AI" -- an object, subject, metaphor, and discursive formation used amongst all of us trying to figure out how to grapple with AI's ownership, deployments, and impacts. Who gets to define AI? Is it just computer scientists? What are the stakes of having it defined only technologically? Recorded December 23, 2025. Released January 13, 2025. Ali Alkhatib (website) Defining AI https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Colonialism, with Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry | 06 Jan 2025 | 01:00:14 | |
I start the new year with an episode on "data colonialism". I had the great pleasure of speaking with Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry about our contemporary relationship to corporations, about the idea that there’s no capitalism without colonialism (and vice versa), about how human lives are being exploited these days, and about data being a cheap resource. Recorded December 16, 2024. Released January 6, 2025. Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo216184200.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Investigative, with Déborah López and Hadin Charbel | 30 Dec 2024 | 01:02:00 | |
Such a delight speaking with Déborah López and Hadin Charbel, incredible artists-architects-scholars as investigators of future possibilities in light of climate change rapidly changing arctic (and other) landscapes. We discuss a range of art projects, from large installations to projections to speculative fiction, and how these modes and conditions can help us think and feel about alternate endings -- in our teaching and in our day to day embodied, lived realities. Recorded Dec 12, 2024. Released Dec 30, 2024. Artists website Artists Instagram https://www.instagram.com/pareid.architecture/ Pareid creates organ-like installation from corrugated plastic tubes in Madrid https://www.dezeen.com/2022/04/20/pareid-everywhere-nowhere-installation-urvanity/ Re: Arctic https://vimeo.com/469736816?&login=true Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Collaborative, with Chris Gilliard | 16 Dec 2024 | 01:03:24 | |
In this episode, I spoke with Chris Gilliard (@hypervisible) about AI’s encroachment on universities and what this means for collaboration — i.e. learning, writing, thinking and feeling. This conversation puts out a warning of sorts to universities adopting AI given that, as a technology, it is built off of stolen materials, relies on extraction and colonial labour practices, is racist, misogynist and transphobic in its outputs, and terrible for the environment — all issues the university claim to value and fight against? Recorded Dec 11, 2024. Released Dec 16, 2024. “ChatGPT Should Not Exist” by David Golumbia (Dec 14, 2022) https://davidgolumbia.medium.com/chatgpt-should-not-exist-aab0867abace “Practico-inertia” by Rob Horning (March 1, 2024) https://robhorning.substack.com/p/practico-inertia “Critical keywords of AI in education” by Ben Williamson (November 8, 2024 ) https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/ “Big AI Companies Need Higher Ed … but Does Higher Ed Need Them?” by Collin Bjork (Dec 2, 2024) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Regulated, with Jennifer Holt | 25 Nov 2024 | 00:59:10 | |
It was a real honour and joy to speak with someone whose work has so significantly shaped my own (and many of us writing about data centers): Jennifer Holt joined me for a chat about US cloud policy. The Cloud is understood in this episode through the lens of policy, which means we grapple with who owns data, its infrastructures and our data futures. We also talked a bit about what the latest US elections might mean for Big Tech... Recorded Nov 20, 2024. Released Nov 25, 2024. Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548069/cloud-policy/ CMSW podcast: Jennifer Holt, “Cloud Policy: Anatomy of a Regulatory Crisis” https://cmsw.mit.edu/podcast-jennifer-holt-cloud-policy-anatomy-regulatory-crisis/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Frequencies, with Trent Wintermeier | 11 Nov 2024 | 00:47:57 | |
Listen to the data center's hum with your feet first... on this episode, Trent Wintermeier and I discuss what it means to absorb sound through the body and "hear" vibrations with and through your limbs and ears. We discuss what this means for folks living near data centers, especially in places imagined as kinds of sacrifice zones. Recorded Oct 9, 2024. Release Nov 11, 2024. Trent Wintermeier https://trentwintermeier.cargo.site Affective Footprints https://www.heliotropejournal.net/helio/affective-footprints Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Safety, with Remmelt Ellen | 28 Oct 2024 | 00:58:17 | |
In this episode, I have a conversation with Remmelt Ellen from AI Safety Camp. We discuss AI safety and his 44-page book Artifical Bodies outlining AI harms from the perspective of someone really grappling with the ethics, hype, and harms of the industry and beyond. Recorded Oct 4, 2024. Released Oct 28, 2024. Artificial Bodies https://workflowy.com/s/artificial-bodies/znDloerXJaEQvKF6#/846236876b45 AI Safety Camp https://www.aisafety.camp/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Deep, with Lisa Yin Han | 14 Oct 2024 | 00:59:24 | |
Everyone should read Lisa Yin Han's Deepwater Alchemy! It's a stunningly well written book about how we come to value the ocean through various extractive mediations. Recorded Sept 27, 2024. Released Oct 14, 2024. Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor How underwater mediation has transformed deep-sea spaces into resource-rich frontiers https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517915940/deepwater-alchemy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Dancing, with Joana Chicau | 23 Sep 2024 | 00:58:04 | |
Joana Chicau is a designer, researcher and coder, with a background in choreography and performance. We had a truly delightful chat about how dance can make you understand data differently. Recorded Sept 13, 2024. Released Sept 23, 2024. Website https://joanachicau.com/about.html Publications https://researchers.arts.ac.uk/2383-joana-chicau/publications Choreographing You https://re-coding.technology/choreographing-you/ From Individual Discomfort to Collective Solidarity: Choreographic Exploration of Extractivist Technology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Geologica, with Siobhan Angus | 09 Sep 2024 | 00:46:44 | |
It was such an honour to be in conversation with Siobhan Angus about what can only be describe as a masterpiece: her book Camera Geologica. Recorded August 8, 2024. Released Sept 9, 2024. Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography https://www.dukeupress.edu/camera-geologica Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Opposition, with Daisy Maldonado, Annie Ersinghaus & Gilberto Manzanarez | 02 Mar 2026 | 01:00:06 | |
In this episode, Daisy Maldonado, Annie Ersinghaus, Gilberto Manzanarez and I discuss on-the-ground opposition to two data centers being built against the will of local residents: Project Jupiter (Oracle/Open AI) in New Mexico, and the largest data center in California -- in Imperial Valley. This conversation was part of: Powering AI from the Borderlands: Organizing Against Data Centers, facilitated by Dustin Edwards. Recorded Feb 24, 2026. Released Monday March 2, 2026. Powering AI from the Borderlands: Organizing Against Data Centers https://cal.sdsu.edu/humtech/events Gilberto Manzanarez on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/valleimperialresiste/ Resistance to data centers rises on the border https://www.hcn.org/articles/resistance-to-data-centers-rises-on-the-border/ "Jupiter Watch" videos on Project Jupiter in New Mexico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi_phIsUpRg&t=5s The Water Is Coming ¡Ya Viene La Agua! Annie Ersinghaus’s short doc on the politics of the Rio Grande (Project Jupiter is pulling from underground water along the Rio Grande) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgab5ICoWJI&t=430s Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Reform, with Leslie R. Shade | 26 Aug 2024 | 00:51:40 | |
In this episode, I speak with my dear friend and colleague, Leslie R. Shade about the importance of media reform from an intersectional feminist political economic perspective! Recorded Aug 1. Released Aug 26, 2024. Chapter 5: From Media Reform to Data Justice: Situating Women's Rights as Human Rights from The Handbook of Gender, Communication, and Women's Human Rights Margaret Gallagher (Editor), Aimee Vega Montiel (Editor) ISBN: 978-1-119-80068-2 November 2023, Wiley-Blackwell https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Handbook+of+Gender%2C+Communication%2C+and+Women's+Human+Rights-p-9781119800682#tableofcontents-section Read all her work here: https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/2541-leslie-shade/publications Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Territorial, with Alina Utrata | 24 Jun 2024 | 00:51:42 | |
Alina Utrata and I have a conversation about billionaires conquering space for personal pleasure, in the pursuit of energy sources or minerals, or, to push forward a longtermist interplanetary movement. Alina explains how when we think about outer space as "empty", we unwittingly thinking territorially -- an incredibly valuable contribution to critical space scholarship. Recorded May 20. Released June 24, 2024. Engineering Territory: Space and Colonies in Silicon Valley Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Futures, with Lee Vinsel | 10 Jun 2024 | 00:51:32 | |
I invited Lee Vinsel to discuss with me a post he wrote from a workshop on "Politics of Controlling Powerful Technologies". In this episode we discuss how futures are (imagined to be) predicted through data modelling and crunching numbers, and how various alternatives to these statistical imaginaries also come short of knowing what awaits us. Can we stand to not know? And if we don't know what the future holds, how do we plan politically? Recorded April 19. Released June 10, 2024. How to Be a Better Reactionary: Time and Knowledge in Technology Regulation https://sts-news.medium.com/how-to-be-a-better-reactionary-1630b5098fbc Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Objective, with Lisa Messeri and M. J. Crockett | 27 May 2024 | 00:53:42 | |
In this episode, Lisa Messeri and M. J. Crockett discuss how scientists are in danger of overlooking AI tools’ limitations, and how science is made stronger by questioning its obsession with objectivity. Recorded April 18, 2024. Released May 27, 2024. Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research Lisa Messeri & M. J. Crockett Nature volume 627, pages49–58 (2024)Cite this article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07146-0 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Thirsty, with Shaolei Ren | 13 May 2024 | 00:48:22 | |
In this episode, Shaolei Ren and I discuss the relationship between water and generative AI. We delve into what happens to water in the (very thirsty) data center, what it's used for, and how much fresh water the AI revolution will ask of the planet in the future, and at what costs. Big Tech doesn't yet disclose its water withdrawal or consumption, so researcher like Shaolei Ren take up the work and propose solutions for a more sustainable future for AI. Recorded April 19, 2024. Released May 13, 2024. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Diversity, with Catherine Stinson and Sophie Vlaad | 22 Apr 2024 | 00:53:32 | |
With Catherine Stinson and Sophie Vlaad, we discuss what diversity means in the context of AI -- its applications, conceptualizations, teams, institutions, networks, members, and ideals. As they ask in a recent article, "diversity" is often proposed as a solution to ethical problems in artificial intelligence (AI), but what exactly is meant by "diversity" and how it can it solve those problems? Recorded March 22, 2024. Released April 22, 2024. A feeling for the algorithm: Diversity, expertise, and artificial intelligence Stinson, C., & Vlaad, S. (2024). A feeling for the algorithm: Diversity, expertise, and artificial intelligence. Big Data & Society, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231224247 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Unsustainable, with Matthew Archer | 08 Apr 2024 | 00:47:52 | |
Listen to my conversation with Matthew Archer, author of Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability. In his beautifully written book, Matthew makes a case for being highly skeptical of corporate sustainability initiatives, especially as they've become increasingly grounded in metrics of all kinds that measure just and exactly what the companies themselves determine to be worthy of measuring. Framing sustainability as a technical issue has been and continues to be a failure, and so we ask: what it might mean to take this criticism seriously? Recorded Feb 2, 2024. Released Apr 8, 2024. Unsustainable: Measurement, Reporting, and the Limits of Corporate Sustainability (Feb 2024, Published by NYU Press) https://nyupress.org/9781479822027/unsustainable/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Change, with Sireesh Gururaja, Amanda Bertsch and Clara Na | 25 Mar 2024 | 01:00:28 | |
Together, Sireesh Gururaja, Amanda Bertsch and Clara Na explain the paradigm shifts in Natural Language Processing that they've noticed themselves, observed in the community, and documented through a series of interviews with NLP researchers. They share their hopes for the NLP field -- as less focused on benchmarks, and as more self-reflexive and ethically-driven -- moving forward. Recorded Jan 19, 2024. Released March 25, 2024. To Build Our Future, We Must Know Our Past: Contextualizing Paradigm Shifts in Natural Language Processing by Sireesh Gururaja, Amanda Bertsch, Clara Na, David Gray Widder, Emma Strubell https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07715 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Adversarial, with Steph Maj Swanson | 11 Mar 2024 | 00:50:21 | |
Steph Maj Swanson, aka Supercomposite and I discuss the spooky Loab phenomenon, generative adversarial network, negative prompts and the demons (maybe?) lurking in large datasets. Recorded Jan 19, 2024. Released March 11, 2024. What I Learned from Loab: AI as a creative adversary The artist behind the viral cryptid "Loab" reflects on her critical relationship to AI art tools https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-12052-what_i_learned_from_loab_ai_as_a_creative_adversary Original Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/supercomposite/status/1567162288087470081?lang=en Insta https://www.instagram.com/supercomposite/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Mirrored, with Kyriaki Goni | 26 Feb 2024 | 01:00:09 | |
Kyriaki Goni - an artist with a background in social and cultural anthropology - and I start our conversation reflecting back on the lockdowns of April 2020 in Athens; what this signified, and how it shaped her art, which ultimately manifested as "The Portal or Let’s Stand Still for the Whales", which was a reflection on the tensions between the darkness of pandemic realities and the quiet restoration of natural things in her surroundings, and beyond. We also talk about "Perfect Love #couplegoals #AIgenerated, 2020,2022", as an exploration of intimacy, doomscrolling and isolation. We finish our conversation on "Not Allowed for Algorithmic Audiences, 2021" which focuses more specifically on 'audio assistant' tech, and the way algorithms pull audio from social media and various corners of the internet to then classify and reorganize the way we're listened to and heard. One of the (MANY) things I love about Kyriaki's work is that it is decidedly not preachy -- instead it holds a mirror to the audience to reflect gently, and in their own time, on the significance of technology in various contexts. Recorded Jan 12, 2024. Released Feb 26, 2024. KYRIAKI GONI ANTHROPOCENE ON HOLD https://www.pcai.gr/anthroposcene-on-hold NOT ALLOWED FOR ALGORITHMIC AUDIENCES March 23, 2023–April 29, 2023 The Breeder Feeder https://thebreedersystem.com/uncategorized/kyriaki-goni_-not-allowed-for-algorithmic-audiences/ studio international: Kyriaki Goni – interview: ‘For me, technology is an existential discussion’ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Enough, with Adam Becker | 16 Feb 2026 | 01:11:36 | |
In this episode, Adam Becker and I talk about our AI overlords and their “philosophical” influences — mostly eugenics-based pseudoscience and bad readings of sci-fi that make tech billionaires feel like they’ve earned their billions by being the smartest people on the planet… while ruining the planet. Recorded Feb 13, 2026. Released Feb 16, 2026. More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity (2025) https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9781541619593 BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w172zsskmkss5ll (start at 39:15) Rolling Stone Q&A: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tech-billionaires-adam-becker-1235381649/ Dreaming Against the Machine http://dreamingagainstthemachine.com/ Forthcoming: Adam Becker’s new podcast website (bookmark this now for later!) Mentioned in our conversation: I Am An AI Hater by Anthony Moser https://anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/haterdom/2025/08/26/i-am-an-ai-hater.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Efficient, with Anne Pasek | 12 Feb 2024 | 01:06:59 | |
Most of us researching data centers have come to rely on various figures and stats telling us how environmentally impactful the internet has become: how big is the footprint? how much energy is used? Anne Pasek and I discuss in this episode just how these things get tallied, and by whom, and to what ends. We also discuss what gets omitted in these calculations, and how a "relational footprinting" approach might help us situate our knowledge about this topic. We also briefly talk about open access publishing and the power of zines in particular. Recorded Dec 12, 2023. Released Feb 12, 2024. Digital Energetics https://meson.press/books/digital-energetics/ Getting Into Fights with Data Centers (zine) https://emmlab.info/Resources_page/Data%20Center%20Fights_digital.pdf Pasek, A., Vaughan, H., & Starosielski, N. (2023). The world wide web of carbon: Toward a relational footprinting of information and communications technology’s climate impacts. Big Data & Society, 10(1). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Conflicted, with Tobias Williams | 25 Dec 2023 | 00:53:51 | |
Teaching in times of generative AI is weird, and sometimes wonderful. Tobias Williams and I discuss what it means to make art and teach art at this juncture and the conflicted feelings that emerge from resisting with the tools of creation. Recorded Oct 10, 2023. Released Dec 25, 2023. Profile https://www.instagram.com/getrichnever/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Impacts, with Irene Niet | 11 Dec 2023 | 00:51:59 | |
Irene Niet and I have a conversation about how researchers might consider the environmental impacts of AI in relation to their social consequences, and in relation to their impacts on democracy. Recorded Oct 16, 2023. Released Dec 11, 2023. Research profile https://research.tue.nl/en/persons/irene-a-niet Digital (Un)sustainability - Routledge https://crowdusg.net/2022/06/06/digital-unsustainabilities-call-for-chapters/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||
| Chipified, with MC Forelle | 27 Nov 2023 | 00:45:43 | |
Ever wonder about the microchips in your car? MC Forelle and I talk about the “chipification” process of cars, since the 70s and 80s, and how these processes and logics see to increased corporate control and surveillance, while making opting out and DIY tinkering more difficult. We briefly touch on subscription model for automotive features — like BMW did for its heated seats not long ago — remember that? Recorded Oct 5, 2023. Released Nov 27, 2023. The material consequences of “chipification”: The case of software-embedded cars https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/doi/full/10.1177/20539517221095429 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. | |||