The Technically Human Podcast

Chris Wexler's Quest to Detoxify the Internet: AI and Krunam's Fight to Stop Human Trafficking

In this episode, I sit down with Chris Wexler, the CEO of Krunam, one of the world’s leading image and video classifiers of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM). We discuss the dark side of the world wide web, and Chris explains how exploitative economies of human trafficking proliferate online. We discuss how Krunam puts AI to use combatting this exploitation. We also look at the rise of social justice-oriented technologies and the rise of social impact investing, and Chris shares why he is hopeful that the future of tech investing will be social-impact based.

Krunam has created one of the most potent AI tools for successfully identifying and removing digital toxic waste from the internet. By using AI to identify CSAM and other incendiary and exploitative content to improve and speed content moderation, Krunam’s technology has helped private platforms and law enforcement halt some of the most exploitative child sex trafficking outfits operating today. 

Before founding Krunam, Chris established several leading digital and analytics practices at four different major ad agencies while working with major brands. He now devotes his time to creating safer digital environments and developing social impact technology to better serve human values and social justice.

*A brief content warning note about today’s episode: my interview with Chris discusses using AI to classify images containing child sexual content. The work is important, but the discussion includes frank conversations about sexual material and is not suitable for all ears. Please consider your surroundings before listening, and you may want to avoid listening in a space that you share with children.

 

The Rise of the Ethical Hacker: The Wild, Wild West of Cybersecurity with Ted Harrington

In this episode, I sit down with Ted Harrington, the author of Hackable: How to Do Application Security Right, and the Executive Partner at Independent Security Evaluators (ISE), one of the most prominent global companies working in the growing industry of ethical hacking. We talk about cybersecurity, the growth of the "ethical hacker" profession, and how the next generation of humanists and technologists can keep the internet safe.

For his stewardship of security research that Wired Magazine says “wins the prize, hands down,” Ted has been named both Executive of the Year [by American Business Awards] and 40 Under 40 [by SD Metro]. He leads a team that started and organizes IoT Village, an event whose hacking contest is a three-time DEFCON Black Badge winner, and which represents the discovery of more than 300 zero-day vulnerabilities (and counting). Ted’s work has been featured in more than 100 media outlets, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and USA Today.

Captivating Technology: How surveillance technology is taking over our prisons and our bodies

We are back with a brand-new season of the Technically Human podcast! This week's episode features Dr. Anthony Hatch. We discuss the use of psychotropic drugs in prisons as a form of carceral technology, race, and the bioethics of food systems. Learn more about how technologies are mediating health data, how our understanding of our bodies changes in response to new monitoring and mediating technologies, and how Dr. Hatch is creating a space for the next generation of technologists, humanists, and social scientists to develop more equitable, ethical relationships to building tech products.

Anthony Ryan Hatch, Ph.D., is a sociologist and Associate Professor and Chair of the Science in Society Program at Wesleyan University where he is also affiliated faculty in the Department of African American Studies, the College of the Environment, and the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America (Minnesota, 2019) and Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America (Minnesota, 2016). He recently appeared in the PBS documentary Blood Sugar Rising and lectures widely on health systems, medical technology, and social inequalities. 

In Spring 2021, he started Black Box Labs, an undergraduate research and training laboratory that offers students training in qualitative research methods aligned with science and technology studies and the opportunity to collaborate with faculty on social research. 

This episode was produced by Matt Perry

Art by Desi Aleman

Network Technology: Dr. Ethel Mickey explains how networks structure the tech workforce

In this episode of "Technically Human," I talk to Dr. Ethel Mickey about tech's "pipeline problem." We discuss STEM culture in universities, how inequality gets generated through a culture of networking, and Dr. Mickey walks me through the pipeline from campus culture to the tech workforce. 

Dr. Ethel Mickey is a sociologist of gender, work, and organizations, with a focus on science & technology settings. She received her PhD from Northeastern University, and is currently a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with the NSF-funded UMass ADVANCE program. Her research broadly explores the persistence of intersectional inequalities through relational dynamics including networks and collaborative teams, and she is currently working on a book manuscript on gendered and racialized networks in the tech sector. Her work has appeared in Gender & Society, and Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and has been recognized by the American Sociological Association and Sociologists for Women in Society. 

And this episode concludes season 5 of the Technically Human podcast. We’ll be on hiatus for the next few weeks. Please stay tuned, and join us for an exciting new season of the show when we return in the middle of July to bring you interviews with Silicon Valley writer Dan Lyons on satire, ethics, and tech culture, sociologist Dr. Anthony Hatch on biology, tech, and prisons, and many more exciting conversations. See you in July!

Podcast produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

Millennial Action Technology: Steven Olikara talks tech and political activism for a new generation of leaders

In this week's episode, I speak to Steven Olikara, founder of the Millenial Action Project (MAP), the largest nonpartisan organization of young lawmakers in the U.S. Steven and I discuss the role of tech in political activism and the challenges of bipartisanship in a technological age. 

Steven Olikara has been named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum, a Forbes 30 Under 30 in Law & Policy, and a Forward Under 40 by the Wisconsin Alumni Association. 

JUST IN: This week, Steven announced his decision to form an exploratory committee for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin, with the goal of running as a candidate in the 2022 election.

To learn more about Steven's campaign and his vision for the senate, grounded in the ideal of dignity for all, visit www.www.stevenolikara.com. 

Podcast produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

 

Hard at Work: Sharla Alegria discusses inequality in the tech workforce

In this episode, I talk to Dr. Sharla Alegria about inequality in the tech workforce. We discuss tech workplace culture, the relationship between ethics and equality, and Sharla explains why robots aren't really taking your job--but growing culture of inequality might.

Dr. Alegria earned her Ph.D. in Sociology with a certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2016 and joined the faculty at the University of Toronto in 2019. She teaches classes on work; race, class, and gender; science, knowledge, and technology; stratification and inequality. Sharla’s research on inequality in the new economy, knowledge-based work examines tech work to understand why women’s representation in computing jobs has decreased since the early 1990s despite public and private sector investment. Beyond tech work, her research examines race and gender inequality in workplaces and institutions invested in diversity and equity. Her award-winning research appears in American Journal of Sociology, Gender & Society, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. 

We are currently in the middle of a series of live events on ethics and technology, scheduled for the next few weeks. On May 25, we will host a screening of the new documentary, Coded Bias, followed by a Q and A with the director, Shalini Kantayya, and All events are free, virtual, and open to the public, but space is limited. Check out our “Upcoming Events” page for more information about the events, and to reserve your spot.

Podcast produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast Art by Desi Aleman.

Digital Justice: Tech, policing, and the digital divide with Dr. Rashawn Ray and Dr. Nicol Turner Lee

In this episode of "Technically Human," I talk to Dr. Rashawn Ray and Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, both Fellows at the Brookings Institution, about race, tech, policing, and the digital divide. We talk about the role of video technology and social media in police accountability, the dangers of surveillance technologies developed in Silicon Valley when deployed in policing, and the long history--and the consequences--of the digital divide in the context of social equity.

Dr. Rashawn Ray, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, is Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Dr. Ray has published over 50 books, articles, and book chapters, and roughly 50 op-eds. Recently, Dr. Ray published  How Families Matter: Simply Complicated Intersections of Race, Gender, and Work (with Pamela Braboy Jackson) and another edition of Race and Ethnic Relations in the 21st Century: History, Theory, Institutions, and Policy, which has been adopted nearly 40 times in college courses. Ray has written for the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek,  Business Insider, Huffington Post, and NBC News. 

Dr. Nicol Turner Lee is a senior fellow in Governance Studies, the director of the Center for Technology Innovation, and the Co-Editor-In-Chief of TechTank. Dr. Turner Lee researches public policy designed to enable equitable access to technology across the U.S. and to harness its power to create change in communities across the world. Dr. Turner Lee has been cited in the New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Communications Daily, Multichannel News, and Washington Informer. She can also be seen or heard on NPR, NBC News, ABC, and more, she has testified before Congress, and she is Chair of the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC), which is committed to joining policymakers and academics around significant tech policy issues. Her new book, Digitally Invisible: How the Internet is Creating the New Underclass (Brookings Press, 2021), examines the history, and the consequences, of the digital divide.

And now some exciting news!

We are currently in the middle of a series of live events on ethics and technology, scheduled for the next few weeks. Next Tuesday, May 18, I will host a Fireside chat with former CIA officer and former NSA advisor to Joe Biden, Yaël Eisenstat, who oversaw Facebook’s Global Elections Integrity Operations for political advertising and has since become one of facebook’s leading critics.

The following week, on May 25, we will host a screening of the new documentary, Coded Bias, followed by a Q and A with the director, Shalini Kantayya, and All events are free, virtual, and open to the public, but space is limited. Check out our website, www.etcalpoly.org for more information about the events, and to reserve your spot.

Hope to see you there! 

Podcast produced by Ana Marsh and Matt Perry.
Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

Nintendo Nation: Jeff Ryan on Super Mario, gaming culture, and the ludology of play

In this episode, I talk to Jeff Ryan, author of Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. We discuss gaming culture, the gender dynamics of the gaming community, and Jeff defines the key to gaming, in what he calls "the ludology of play."

Jeff Ryan is the author of A MOUSE DIVIDED: HOW UB IWERKS BECAME FORGOTTEN...AND WALT DISNEY BECAME UNCLE WALT and SUPER MARIO: HOW NINTENDO CONQUERED AMERICA. He has been published in Salon, Slate, Fast Company, Wired.com, Kotaku, and All Things Considered; and has been featured on NPR’s Marketplace, Time, Forbes, The New York Times, The Economist, The Independent, and Star Talk With Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He lives in Bloomfield, NJ, with his wife and two daughters. A lifelong gamer, he has reviewed over 500 video games and covered four console launches as the games editor for Katrillion, a popular dotcom-era news and entertainment Web site. He swears his books were not undertaken to write off family vacations to Orlando on his taxes.

A note on today’s episode: In recording this episode of “Technically Human,” our human interlocutors encountered some technical interference! None of this at all alters the brilliance of Jeff’s comments.

Some exciting news: We are launching a series of live events on ethics and technology, scheduled for the next few weeks, including an important and urgent conversation with Dr. Rashawn Ray on race, policing, and tech, a screening of the new documentary, Coded Bias, followed by a Q and A with the director, Shalini Kantayya, and a Fireside chat with former CIA agent and former NSA advisor to Joe Biden, Yaël Eisenstat, who, in the wake of the 2016 election, oversaw Facebook’s Global Elections Integrity Operations, and has since become one of facebook’s leading critics.

All events are free and open to the public, but space is limited.

Check out our website, www.etcalpoly.org for more information about the events, and to reserve your spot.

This episode was produced by Ana Marsh and Matt Perry

Podcast art by Desi Aleman

Climate, Chemicals, Carcinogens, Cancer: Dr.Sandra Steingraber challenges the system

In this episode, I speak to Dr. Sandra Steingraber. We discuss the links between environmental destruction, contamination of vital resources, and the grave dangers that fracking technology poses to human health. Dr. Steingraber explains the link between environmental justice and social justice, and we talk about what the state of collaboration across fields and areas of expertise as universities increasingly turn into what she calls "Disaster Capitalism."

Biologist, author, and cancer survivor Dr. Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. writes about climate change, ecology, and the links between human health and the environment. She has been named a Woman of the Year by Ms. Magazine, a Person of the Year by Treehugger, and one of 25 “Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” by the Utne Reader. She is the recipient of the biennial Rachel Carson Leadership Award and the Jenifer Altman Foundation’s Altman Award for “the inspiring and poetic use of science to elucidate the causes of cancer.” Steingraber received a Hero Award from the Breast Cancer Fund and the Environmental Health Champion Award from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Los Angeles. She has testified in the European Parliament, at the European Commission, before the President’s Cancer Panel, and has participated in briefings to Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, and before United Nations delegates in Geneva, Switzerland.

This episode was produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

Natural Technology: Defining Technology in New Ways with Dr.Timothy Morton

In this episode, I sit down with ecocritic Dr. Timothy Morton to talk about the relationship between tech and ecocriticism. We talk about the human relationship to the non-human world, we discuss the ethics of technological production in the age of the Anthropocene, and we analyze how the stories we tell ourselves about tech production as "progress" may bear devastating consequences in the form of environmental destruction. 

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Laurie Anderson, Björk, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appears in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges. They are the author of the libretto for the opera Time Time Time by Jennifer Walshe.

Morton has written All Art Is Ecological (Penguin, 2021), Spacecraft (Bloomsbury, 2021), Being Ecological (Penguin, 2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (Verso, 2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (Columbia, 2016), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (Chicago, 2015), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minnesota, 2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (Open Humanities, 2013), The Ecological Thought (Harvard, 2010), Ecology without Nature (Harvard, 2007), 8 other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food. Morton’s work has been translated into 10 languages. In 2014 they gave the Wellek Lectures in Theory. 

This episode was produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Podcast art by Desi Aleman.

Persons and Things: ThingLogix CTO Rob Rastovich talks human values and the Internet of Things

In this episode, I sit down with Rob Rastovich, CTO of ThingLogix to talk about the Internet of Things. We discuss the problem of privacy in an age where all of our things talk to one another--and where tech companies are listening in to our conversations with our devices. Rob addresses some of the ethical critiques that have emerged about IoT, and I ask him about how he understands the relationship between his work as a technologist, anchored in the digital world of tech, and his work as a rancher, anchored in the very physical world of non-human animals, plants, and land.

Rob Rastovich is the Chief Technology Officer of ThingLogix, and an expert on the Internet of Things, or IoT. He has been actively involved in technology for nearly 30 years, from building a top 10 e-commerce site in a time when e-commerce was still in its infancy to establishing Amazon’s AWS IoT.

ThingLogix was awarded the 2018 IoT Platforms Leadership Award, and has become an advanced tier technology partner for Amazon Web Services. When he’s not at the forefront of IoT, Rob can be found maintaining his cattle ranch in Central Oregon.

Episode produced by Ana Marsh and Matt Perry.

Artwork by Desi Aleman.

Body Technology: Disability and Technology Part 2 with Paralympian Ezra Frech

In this series, we talk about adaptive technologies and physical disability. In this episode of the series, Paralympian Ezra Frech joins us to discuss the disability community at the intersection of technology. We discuss disability in the space of intersectionality, the significance of sports for the disability community, and why designing for a diversity of bodies, with equity and empathy, makes a difference.

Ezra Frech is an American Paralympian Athlete who competes in high jump, long jump, and sprinting events in international level events. Ezra was born with congenital limb differences, missing his left knee, left shin bone, and fingers on his left hand, and has used a running blade since he was 4 years old. 

In 2019 Ezra made the US Paralympic Track and Field Team and, as the youngest athlete on the team at 14 year’s old, competed in three international events, including the Junior World Para-Para-Athletics Championships, where he won three medals, the Parapan American Games where he won two silver medals, and the World Para-Athletics Championships, where he placed in the top 8 in all three of his events and was the youngest athlete out of 1,400 competitors. He’s slated to compete for Team USA in the upcoming 2021 Tokyo Paralympic Games.

He is an advocate for disability rights, and the inspiration behind and co-founder of Angel City Sports, a high-growth, high-impact non-profit organization dedicated to providing the joy of sports to children and adults with physical disabilities. 

Episode produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Body Technology: Disability and Technology Part 1 with Clayton Frech

In this series, we talk about adaptive technologies and physical disability. Clayton Frech, the founder and CEO of Angel City Sports, joins us to discuss the disability community at the intersection of technology. We discuss disability in the space of intersectionality, the significance of sports for the disability community, and why designing for a diversity of bodies, with equity and empathy, makes a difference.

Over the last twenty-five years, Clayton Frech has held leadership roles in the business, government, and non-profit sectors. He became involved in the disability community when his first son, Ezra, was born missing his left knee and left fibula and with only one finger on his left hand.  Following Ezra’s passion for sports, Mr. Frech identified major gaps in access to sports programming for athletes with physical disabilities in the U.S.  In 2013, with the help of friends and family, he set out to address these gaps, and in 2015, he produced the first Angel City Games, which is now the largest Paralympic competition in the country, and the West Coast’s most prestigious Paralympic event. 

 In 2015, Mr. Frech started Angel City Sports to address inequities in access to sport for kids and adults living with physical disabilities. In addition to serving as a strategic advisor to a number of small and mid-sized companies, he recently launched Ampla Institute, a career development and planning firm dedicated to helping people find their purpose and optimize their career potential.

Stay tuned for next week’s episode, where we talk to Ezra Frech about running on a blade as a US Paralympian athlete, headed to Tokyo for the International Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

Episode produced by Matt Perry and Ana Marsh.

Haley Pavone Reinvents the Heel: Fashion is an Ethics and Equity Issue

When Haley Pavone proposed a convertible high heel to flat shoe, industry experts told her it was impossible. When she successfully engineered a shoe that could convert from a flat to a heel, venture capitalists often couldn't see the value--or even the problem. Fashion footwear for women is an industry-developed by and run by men. In the episode, Haley talks about equity and inclusion in fashion and explains how she engineered the first convertible flat to heel shoe. We talk about empathic and humane design, feminism and entrepreneurship, and why ethical technology requires us to think about how we'd walk a mile in someone else's shoes.

Haley Pavone is the Founder & CEO of Pashion Footwear. She is a Cal Poly graduate in Business and Entrepreneurship, and an alumnus of the University's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She has appeared been profiled by Forbes, Businesswire, and she recently appeared on the critically acclaimed and multi-Emmy® Award-winning entrepreneurial-themed ABC reality show “Shark Tank.” She’s passionate about empathic and humane design, and building collectively and collaboratively, with insight, inclusion, and compassion.

 

Art by Desi Aleman
Produced by Matt Perry

World Building:John Maeda designs the future of art, tech, and architecture

In this episode, I give my mic over to Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, two producers on the show, for an interview with John Maeda.

Dr. John Maeda is an American technologist and product experience leader who is known around the world for building bridges between business, engineering, and design—and his dedication to working inclusively. He is the SVP Chief Customer Experience Officer at Everbridge, where he works on the future of Critical Event Management technologies for saving lives and keeping businesses and society running.

He is an MIT-trained computer scientist, who blends his training as a computer scientist with an MBA. He is the author of five books including the new How To Speak Machine and the bestselling Laws of Simplicity. Among his MANY leadership positions, he serves on the board of Directors at Sonos and the Smithsonian Design Museum, he is the former President/CEO of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and he is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins venture capital in Silicon Valley.

During his early career, Dr. Maeda was an MIT research professor in computational design,  represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He is also a recipient of the White House’s National Design Award. He has appeared as a speaker all over the world, from Davos to Beijing to São Paulo to New York, and his TED talks have received millions of views. 

To quote WIRED Magazine, “Maeda is to design what Warren Buffett is to finance.”

Today’s hosts, Ana Marsh and Matt Perry, are producers on the Technically Human podcast.

Ana Marsh is a fourth-year computer science student at Cal Poly. She is graduating in the Spring of 2021 and plans to start full-time at Microsoft in the Fall. She has a deep interest in ethical technology, cultivated through her coursework in computer science and the University’s new technically human course, part of the Cal Poly ethical technology initiative. Matt Perry is a fifth-year architecture student at Cal Poly from Las Vegas, NV. Now in the final year of his degree, he is doing research on ephemeral architecture and designing for the human experience, while exploring the future of architecture. He hopes to spend his time designing architecture with the human experience at the forefront of design.

Ana and Matt talk about what it means to blend tech and art, how we can think about the future of humane design, and how we can make tech great again.

Art by Desi Aleman
Produced by Matt Perry