Podcasts about 3di

Shirley Robertson's Sailing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2022 25:32

In Episode 9 of Series 7, Todd is joined again by Ben Lucas, Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham, funders of this series. Together they reflect on some of the key themes and ideas to emerge from Series 7 of The Rights Track about human rights in a digital world. Transcript Todd Landman 0:01 Welcome to The Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we've been discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman. And in the last episode of this fantastic series, I'm delighted to be joined for the second time by Ben Lucas, Managing Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham, a hub for world class data science research and funders for this series of our podcast. Ben helped kick off series seven at the end of last year talking about some of the challenges and opportunities created in a data driven society and the implications for our human rights. Today, he's here to help us reflect on some of the key themes that have emerged from this series. So welcome, Ben, it's great to have you on this final episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas 0:46 Great to be here. Thanks very much. Todd Landman 0:48 So last night, we were at a launch event for INFINITY, which is an inclusive financial technology hub being launched here at the University of Nottingham, we had a bucolic setting at the Trent bridge, cricket ground, which I say was quite historic. But some of the messages I heard coming out of that event last night, really gave me hope for the promise of digital with respect, particularly to helping people who are currently excluded from financial technologies or finance more generally. And the ever, you know, sort of problem of people getting credit ratings getting access to finance, I wondered if you could just reflect on what was shared last night around the the positive story that could be told around using technology to give people access to hard to find finance? Ben Lucas 1:29 Yeah, absolutely. So I think the central issue with financial inaccessibility is really the fact that people get trapped in this really bad cycle, and perhaps don't have savings, and then you lean more on credit options, for example. And then you become more and more dependent, if you like on credit options. Equally, there are also folks who are excluded from accessing credit completely or at an affordable rate. In the first instance, which obviously changes very much the quality of life, let's say that they're able to enjoy the things they're able to purchase, and so on. So really, the mission of projects like INFINITY, which is focusing very much on this idea of inclusive financial technology, is trying to boost accessibility to everything from tools that help people save to tools that help people spend to a breaking that some of these negative cycles that cause people to end up in not so great financial situations. And yeah, it's really leveraging and learning from, you know, all the wonderful developments in, you know, things like analytics and new financial services, products, especially those that are app based, that we use in the rest of the financial services world, but applying them for good, basically, so very much consistent with this data for good message that we've been speaking about in this series. Todd Landman 2:51 Right that's really interesting. So it's a data driven approach to understanding the gaps and inequalities in a modern society that does have the data infrastructure and technological infrastructure to give people access. But really the data driven approach lowers the barriers to entry for those folks. And I was quite struck by that there was a colleague there from Experian, which is a credit rating agency talking about the millions of people who either don't have online bank accounts don't have access to the right kinds of technologies, and don't have the kind of credit rating that gives them access to the lower priced financial products out there, which in sort of ordinary terms means they're paying a much higher interest rate to borrow money than people that do have a credit rating. So one solution was to use data analytics and a data driven approach to understand their position to boost their credit rating in a way that would give them access to cheaper finance. Did I get that right? Ben Lucas 3:40 Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, the central thing in financial services and lending is obviously managing their risk exposure with any individual consumer, but then also across, you know, their entire consumer portfolio. And I think, you know, one of the big opportunities in the inclusive FinTech space slash probably what we're going to see going forward is credit rating agencies and credit rating support products, looking for other variables or indicators that, you know, can really paint a clearer picture of individual consumers, and perhaps even say, well, actually, there's not so much risk with this consumer because there is other factors that the usual you know, bog standard algorithm doesn't pick up on, and maybe we don't have that risk exposure, maybe we can offer them, you know, financial products or lending products at a better rate, you know, that colleagues spoke also about Experian's boost product, for example, and I won't go into an advertisement for that, but yet a really interesting example of how by sort of extending the available data and what we do with that, you know, it's possible to sort of calibrate and tailor solutions that are a win win that reduce the risk for the credit provider, but give additional consumers more accessibility. And I think the other big piece just to detail briefly, within data driven and financial research, you know, some of the work that colleagues in the INFINITY team have been doing around, you know, helping to understand that an aggregate and in a privacy preserving way, where perhaps people are making not so great financial decisions. So being able to, you know, hopefully in the future help flag you know privacy protecting way to consumers when they're not making great decisions, which can be everything from wasteful over the top expenses to things like you know, too much gambling or unhealthy eating, for example. So certainly a very, very exciting space. Todd Landman 5:33 No, it's really fascinating, and it resonates well with many of the themes we've heard in this series of The Rights Track. So I'm going to just think about putting these things into groupings or clutches of perspectives if I may, so that you made reference this idea of data for good and of course, we had some guests on the podcast this series, including Sam Gilbert, who talked about the ability for digital transformation and data driven approaches to unearth previously unknown factors and public health benefits, and it could be social justice benefits and other benefits from leveraging data that don't normally talk to each other in a data analytic way. Wendy Betts told us about using really preserving the chain of evidence using visual imagery, but that date stamp timestamp location stamped and then preserving the metadata that sits behind an image for verification for the investigation of human rights abuse and human rights crimes. Amrit Dhir showed us in the United States how his organisation Recidiviz uses data from prisons to actually bring greater sense of justice to prisoners, as well as parolees. And finally, Diane Coyle, the world famous economist not only reflected on the many economic transformations that have happened with the digital disruption, but also made the case for universal access to online life and being on the grid almost as a basic human right, in the ways that access to information access to health care, access to services need to be provided. And certainly during COVID-19, we've learned that many people were excluded from those services precisely because they didn't have the right internet connection, or at least cannot afford to have the right kind of internet connection. So I just wondered what your general reflections are on that general theme of data for good. And what can you tell us about what you think listening to the guests that we've had during this series? Ben Lucas 7:21 Yeah, I mean, I really liked the way that Sam sort of sets the scene in his book, Good Data; An Optimist's Guide to our Digital Future. I think that nobody, of course likes to have their privacy compromised, at an individual level. But the reality is, when we look at, you know, the things we can do when we have data at scale across, you know, large populations, there's a lot that can be achieved, whether that's in something like inclusive FinTech, whether that's in protecting human rights by combating modern slavery, whether that's to do with health data in a system like the NHS. Yeah, I don't think anybody likes to have their privacy compromised, obviously, at that individual level. But if there's a sort of way to communicate that greater good message, I'm not trying to encourage people to willingly give away their data for free, quite the opposite. But I think that's the sort of big debate the both commercial and academic data scientists, you know, that's really the arena in which we work. Because there are a lot of benefits to be had. When we think about sort of data at scale. Equally, we need to protect, you know, individuals and communities. I think, you know, it's really great in this series to hear about, you know, things like eyeWitness up and Recidiviz and some of these platforms that I think are managing that really well and really getting that good out of the data. Yeah, I think that's been really nice. There's a lot we can say also, on the subject of, I think this is more of a frontier thing. But artificial intelligence in particular, which came up a few times, which I think is going to be the next well already is actually the next big frontier in terms of talking about, you know, transparency and fairness, especially because we're applying these tools to these large datasets. Todd Landman 9:04 Right. And I also came across a very interesting project and another group here at the University of Nottingham. It's within the Nottingham University Business School. And it's a neo-demographic lab or N/Lab, which works on you know, big data science projects around harnessing unknown information from pre existing datasets. And there was a partnership with OLIO, which is an app that allows people to trade food that they're not going to need so surplus food sits in people's houses, other people need food. So this app allows people to share food across the app, and to actually make best use almost the circular economy, if you will, in sharing food. Now, quite apart from the pragmatics and the practicalities of sharing food between households. Of course, the app collects data on who needs food and who has food, and that then allows the geo-mapping of food poverty within particular districts and jurisdictions within the United Kingdom. Can you say a bit more about that project and does this fit within the category of data for good? Ben Lucas 10:03 Absolutely. I mean, that's an absolutely fantastic piece of work, you know. And obviously, the purpose of that platform and all that work is to look at both combating food inaccessibility and food poverty, on the one hand, and on the other, combating food waste. So really, yeah, absolutely a fantastic example, as far as data for good and also doing the right thing by people in society. I think it is also a great example of this idea that we can, you know, log data from sharing platforms, and really whatever platform in an ethical way, you know, in the work those that colleagues at N/Lab are doing, you know, so it's all privacy preserved data. It's possible to get a, you know, useful enough geotagged picture of how the sharing is taking place, such that it can be understood at a network level, but it's not giving away, you know, exact locations, it has no identifiers of who's linked to it. But even just with that sort of network exchange level data, you know, it really tells a very interesting story about how this system works. And, you know, as you said, I mean, this is very much in the peer to peer sharing economy space, which is a relatively new idea. So it's also from an academic point of view, very important and very useful to be doing research to understand these entirely, relatively new kinds of systems. Todd Landman 11:26 So essentially, because the heat map that that project produced was for a belief Haringey Council in Greater London, and I guess, you know, knowing what I know about data, this could be scaled up for all jurisdictions, the United Kingdom. And beyond that the heat map tells you areas of food poverty, but also could inform government as to where to put resource and where dare I say levelling up funding could be targeted to help those most in need. Ben Lucas 11:53 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I understand it, that works, you know, been incredibly useful for the platform and how it's looking to grow and continue to be successful. But yeah, absolutely. That's really another key thing here is the value these platforms have for policymakers for government, indeed. Todd Landman 12:08 Great. So we've had the data for good story, I now turn our attention to the data for bad story, because we had some guests that were very suspicious, sceptical and were critical of this burst and proliferation and digital transformation and the production of data second by second day by day, week, by week, year by year and two of our guests had actually different perspective on this, so Susie Alegre has this fantastic new book out with Atlantic books, she called Freedom of Thought. And what she was really concerned about was not only the history of analogue ways in which people's freedom of thought had been compromised, but also the digital ways in which freedom of thought might be compromised by this digital revolution. And for her, her concern, really is that there are unwitting or witting ways in which people's thought patterns might be manipulated through AI and machine learning. And we use popular examples of consumerism, consumer platforms, such as Amazon and other shopping platforms where not only does one get bombarded by advertisements, but actually gets suggestions for new things to buy based on patterns of spend in the past. And there is cross referencing between platforms. And I think Sam Gilbert also addressed this thing about this micro targeting and cross referencing. So if I search for something on one platform, it shows up on another one, when I'm sort of, you know, at least expecting it to do so. A bought some shoe laces the other day, they came to the house within a day. So I had that lovely customer experience. And yet, when I went on to a CNN website to look at the news headlines, the first ad that popped up was for shoe laces. So can you say a bit more about the unease that people have around these sharing platforms and the worry that our thoughts are being manipulated by this new technology? Ben Lucas 13:45 Yeah, I think this idea of freedom of thought or, you know, illusion of decision freedom is a really important one, when we're talking about the internet, and especially, you know, one can imagine, you know, as was evidenced with the Cambridge Analytical scandal back a few years ago, you know, this becomes especially dangerous when we're talking about political messaging. I think it's important that we, as users of the internet, approach the internet with a healthy degree of scepticism being a bit, you know, cautiously analytical, and occasionally taking a step back and thinking about what the implications of our behaviour online, including simply consuming content consuming information really are. The reality is most of if not all of the online platforms that we use be that social media, ecommerce, or whatever. They are designed to achieve immersion. They're designed to keep you spending more time and if you're spending time in the wrong kind of echo chambers, or if you're getting exposed to messages from bad actors. You hear these stories of people going down all sorts of terrible rabbit holes and things and this is how conspiracy theories and so forth proliferate online. Yeah, but certainly even just for the regular internet user, we all definitely need to be thinking about where is information coming from? Is it from reliable sources? Is the intent good? And do we indeed have that decision making freedom? I think is the really important thing, or is someone trying to play with us? Todd Landman 15:13 Well, it's a really interesting answer. And it links very nicely to our episode with Tom Nichols, because he was saying that there's this tendency towards narcissism. And that's, you know, certainly during COVID, people had more time inside, they had more time to dedicate to being online. But at the same time, the rabbit holes that you're worrying about really raised too high relief. And so that retreat into narcissism, the idea that if you're going to post something, you're only going to post something negative, critical and maybe sowing division by posting those critical comments. But you also in your answer talked about the power of particular individuals. And I guess, I have to address the question of Twitter in two ways. So Tom made this observation of Twitter is this sort of, you know, you have now have 240 characters to, you know, vent your spleen online and criticise others, but also that's powerful platform to mobilise people. And I say this in two ways. The first is that the revelations from the January 6 committee investigating the events that led up to the insurrection against the US Capitol was putting a lot of weight this week on just the number of followers that former President Trump had, and a single tweet in December where he said, you know, come to the Capitol on January 6, it will be wild. And then there were an array of witnesses paraded in front of the committee, from far right groups from the Oathkeepers, and other groups of that nature, who were saying, but actually, we saw this as a call to arms. So there was a nascent organising taking place, but there's almost this call to arms issued by a single tweet to millions of followers that really was, you know, the spark that lit the fire and wonder if you might just reflect on that. Ben Lucas 16:50 Yeah, I think for anyone currently also trying to keep up with slash decipher the story in the news about Elon Musk, putting in an offer to buy Twitter, which has now fallen through, I would use that lens to sort of explore this because one of the goals that I think he was seeking to achieve in taking over Twitter was really opening up its potential for free speech further. But yeah, for anybody sort of observing. That's a really tricky one. Because sometimes when the speech is, well, I mean, that there should be free speech. But people should be saying, you know, hopefully nice things within that freedom, and not denying the rights of others and not weaponizing free speech to stir up trouble. I think it's really, you know, we touched on this in the first episode of the series as well, the really big question with social media is, who's the editor in chief? Is it everybody? Or is it nobody, and which is the better format? Todd Landman 17:42 Yeah, and we talked about that unmediated expression and unmediated speech and that Martin Scheinin, as well, as Tom Nichols talked about how traditional media organisations have had that mediating function, and the editorial function, which is lost when you have an open platform in the way that Twitter has, even though they did in the end, deplatform the former President. But I want to get back to that. I mean, you know, the task of the January 6 committee is not only to say we think there's a causal link between this tweet and people doing things, but they will also need to demonstrate the intentionality of the tweet in and of itself. And I think that's a major concern, because there's certainly ambiguity in the language saying, you know, come to the Capitol, it's going to be wild doesn't necessarily convert into a mass uprising with weapons and an insurrection. So there's a tall order of, I would say, legal proof, above reasonable doubt that needs to be established, were one to go down that legal route. But if we look at Elon Musk, I mean, here's one person who's exceptionally wealthy in the world who can buy an entire platform. And the concern that many people have is can one individual have that much power to acquire something that powerful, and we don't know if the deals fallen through, because there are some legal wranglings going on at the moment about whether he could actually withdraw at this late stage in the purchase process. But be that as it may, I wonder if you might just reflect on this ability for a very wealthy single individuals take control of a platform as powerful as Twitter. Ben Lucas 19:10 So I think it's a really complicated one, it's really one of the most complicated questions within the social media space, you know, because these platforms are ultimately businesses. There's a founder, there's a CEO, there's a board, there's that leadership, and hopefully accountability and responsibility. It is really a tough one, you know, one wonders about a future where, you know, in the same way, you've got the Open AI Foundation, for example, or you've got, you know, other truly sort of open peer to peer kind of platforms. If we think about how the internet is or technology is trying to decentralise things like finance in the future, wonders if there's sort of an alternative model that could solve some of these problems. I think the narrative so to speak specifically about Elon Musk that he's been putting forward, was really just to open up Twitter even further taking that sort of laissez faire kind of approach and just you know, letting free speech just sort itself out. And again, free speech is and can be a good thing. But sadly, when people engineer these kind of messages to avoid legal accountability, but are implying, you know, some sort of stirring up of trouble, when people engage in narcissistic sort of messaging when people engage in putting forward, you know, campaigns, you know, engineering very, very strong emotions, like fear and anger, obviously, that can get out of control very, very quickly. The reality is, I'm not qualified to come up with the solution. And I, sadly, I don't know who is. Yeah. Todd Landman 20:36 Well, that's interesting, because we have some guests that were suggesting a solution. And if I listened to you speak about the Elon Musk agenda to open up in a laissez faire way, it's almost the invisible hand of the information market, you know, if we go back to economics, and one tenant of economics at least has been that the invisible hand sort of guides markets, and the pricing and equilibrium that comes from supply and demand produces a regulatory outcome that is beneficial for the most people most of the time, it's a somewhat naive view, because there's always winners and losers and economic transactions. So counter to this idea of the invisible hand of the information market, we had quite an interesting set of thoughts from Martin Scheinin, and from Susie Alegre on the need for regulation. And that really does take us back to the beginning of this series of The Rights Track where you made the observation that tech is advancing more quickly than the regulatory frameworks are being promulgated that there's this lag, if you will, between the regulatory environment and the technological environment. So I wonder just for your final reflections, that really what both Martin Scheinin and Susie Alegre are saying that if tech is neutral, we need to go back to ethics, morality law and a human rights framework to give us the acceptable and reasonable boundary conditions with which all this activity needs to be thought about. Ben Lucas 21:56 Yeah, exactly. I mean, it really does come down to, you know, well constructed regulation, which is obviously complicated, especially when, you know, most major social media platforms have a global footprint. So it's then how to ensure consistency across the markets they operate in. I think a lot of the regulatory frameworks are kind of there for the offline world. And the main thing, yeah, that we were sort of getting at in the first episode of this series is really that because technology moves so fast, because these platforms grew so quickly, you know, there are laws to stop people, no one can just go into the town square and start, you know, hurling obscenities, you know, in public, but for some reason, you know, it happens millions and millions of times a day on social media platforms. So I think, yeah, regulation really is key here. But the other thing is, I would say the people that misuse, the definition and excuse of free speech, should actually really look up the definition of free speech again. Todd Landman 22:57 Well, it's this idea of doing no harm. You know, I think I mentioned this notion of a Hippocratic Oath, if you will, for the digital world that you can engage but do no harm. And what people conceive and perceive as harm, of course, is open to interpretation. But that's a general kind of impulse behind this. And you know, this distinction between the offline world and the online world is also really, really important. So Tom Nichols invites us to maybe get off the grid occasionally go back into our community, say hi to our neighbours, volunteer for things and experience humanity face to face in the offline world a bit more than were experiencing in the online world. And of course, the appeal to morality, ethics, law and the human rights framework is going back to you know, basic philosophy, basic conceptions of rights, basic conceptions of law, to make sure that, you know, our offline world thoughts can be applied to our online world behaviours. So, you know, these are super deep insights. And as the world progresses, as technology progresses, as the interconnections between human beings progress in ways that we've seen over the last several decades, through the medium of digital transformation, and this ever expanding digital world, it does make us pause at this moment to say that actually reflect on human dignity, human value, integrity, and accountability and responsibility for the kinds of things that we do both within the offline world and the online world. And you've given us much to think about here Ben certainly across the many episodes of this series, you kicked us off with this great, you know, offline - online regulation versus tech dichotomy that we all face. We've heard from so many people, evangelising the virtues of the digital world but also raising significant concerns about the harm that can come from that digital world if we allow it to run unchecked. So for now, it's just my job to thank you Ben for coming back on this final episode, giving us a good wrap up set of reflections on what you've heard across the series. And thank you ever so much for joining us today on this episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas 25:02 Thanks so much. Christine Garrington 25:04 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights track podcast which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a full transcript of this episode on the website at www.rightstrack.org together with useful links to content mentioned in the discussion. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

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Series 3 - Ep24 - Tom Whidden Part 2

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 28, 2022 69:21

This month on the podcast it's America's Cup Hall of Famer Tom Whidden who in this second part of his chat with Shirley Robertson discusses in detail the events of the famous 'race of the century', the America's Cup race that saw the New York Yacht Club finally relinquish their one hundred and thirty two year ownership of the America's Cup.It was a landmark edition of the Cup, in which Tom Whidden, onboard with Dennis Connor and his American Team, lost the Cup to Alan Bond's Australian syndicate, Australia II - the loss was the very first time the Cup left ownership of the New York Yacht Club since the first victory in 1851 in front of British Queen, Victoria, in a now famous race around the Isle of Wight. Yet despite the implications of the loss, as Whidden reveals, humour was somehow still on the agenda...:"We had a little dock house where the telephone was, and I walked down the dock and the phone was ringing and I pick up the phone. Dennis is still on the boat at that point...and the voice on the other end says "It's the President, they would like to talk to Dennis" and I say "Yeah yeah yeah", and they say "No, it's really the President, it's President Reagan"...so I get on the loudspeaker and I said "Dennis Connor, Dennis Connor, you have a phone call, it's the President and he wants to tell you you screwed up!"Whidden's lighthearted and amicable style is wonderful to listen to, as he discusses his sailing career with a transfixed Robertson. There are Dennis Connor stories aplenty, including his much talked about "plastic boat" quote of the 1987 Challenger Series campaign, but of course there's far more to Whidden than his America's Cup campaigns. For decades now he's been at the forefront of one of the industry's leading corporate entities as the driving force of new technologies at North Sails, where he currently sits as Executive Chairman.Whidden discusses the growth of the company, the adoption of the revolutionary new production techniques, 3DL and 3Di and the future of the company as they continue to develop sailing technologies. The pair round their discussion off back at the modern day America's Cup, and Whidden's position within the New York Yacht Club, as he discusses his thoughts on the new AC75s, and American Magic's position representing the Club as the Cup heads to Barcelona.This edition of the podcast is in two parts and is available to listen to via the podcast page of Shirley's own website, at www.shirleyrobertson.com/podcast or via most popular podcast outlets, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast and aCast. The podcast is produced and written by Tim Butt - for further enquires, please contact podcast@shirleyrobertson.com. Support the show

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#58 - North Windsurfing is Back

The Windsurfing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 25, 2022 66:48

North Windsurfing research and development team Peter Bijl and Chris Williams talk to Maciek about the new sails they've been working on using 3Di technology.

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Liberating our minds in a digital world: how do we do it?

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2022 31:47

In episode 6 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, we're joined by Susie Alegre, an international human rights lawyer and associate at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights. Susie's work focuses in particular on the impact of technology and AI on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds – explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we are asking her how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world? Transcript Todd Landman 0:01 Welcome to the Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the sixth episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Susie Alegre. Susie is the international human rights lawyer and associate the Doughty Street Chambers specialising in digital rights, in particular the impact of technology and artificial intelligence on the rights to freedom of thought and opinion. Her recently published book - Freedom to Think; The Long Struggle to Liberate our Minds - explores how the powerful have always sought to influence how we think and what we buy. And today we're asking her, how do we liberate our minds in a modern digital world? So Susie it's great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track. Welcome. Susie Alegre 0:47 Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Todd Landman 0:49 So I love the book - Freedom to Think - I've read it cover to cover. In fact, I read it probably in two days, because it's such a compelling read. And I guess my first question for you is, why is the freedom to think broadly understood belief, expression, speech, religion, thought, why is all of that so critical to us as human beings? Susie Alegre 1:10 I think the way that I've looked at it in the book is really dividing those elements up a little bit. So what I focused on in the book is freedom of thought and opinion and what goes on inside our heads, as opposed to the more traditional discussions that we have around freedom of speech. And one of the reasons for that is that while freedom of speech has consequences and responsibilities, and freedom of speech can be limited, that freedom in our inner worlds to think whatever we like to practice our thoughts and opinions and decide whether or not there's something we should share, is what allows us to really develop and be human. And the right to freedom of thought and opinion, along with belief and conscience, insofar as we practice that inside our heads is something that's protected absolutely in international human rights law, which I think reflects its importance. And when you consider other absolute rights and human rights law, like the prohibition on torture, or the prohibition on slavery, the right to freedom of thought inside your head alongside those other rights, really gets to the heart of human dignity, and what it means for us to be humans. Todd Landman 2:24 Yes and so in protecting those rights, we are giving people agency because I was caught really captured by one thing you just said there about, we choose what we want to share. So a lot of us can have a million thoughts a second, but we don't share all of them. Although in the current era, it seems that people are sharing pretty much everything that they're thinking. But we'll get to that in a minute. I'm just curious about this idea of agency that, you know, you choose what to share, you also choose what not to share. And that element of choice is fundamental to being human. Susie Alegre 2:53 Absolutely. And what the right to freedom of thought, well certainly a key element is right to freedom of thought and freedom of opinion, is what's called freedom in the forum internal that's inside, you know, in our inner lives, it's not what we then choose to do, or say in the outer world. And having that inner space, it's really important for us to be able to develop who we are, you know, I'm sure all of us have had thoughts that we wouldn't particularly like to be recorded. And I don't know if you've seen the recent drama Upload, which. Todd Landman 3:28 I have not. Susie Alegre 3:29 Well it's worth a look, because I was watching one of the episodes where it was about people being unable effectively to shut off their thoughts or their thoughts were being live streamed if you like. And I mean, you can only imagine the horror of that, you know, that was a comedy. A similar story played out in a short story by Philip K. Dick, The Hood Maker, which was a situation where you had people who were able to read other people's thoughts, and the only way that you could protect yourself from this mind reading was to wear a hood. And so protecting your thoughts from mind reading was really seen as an act of rebellion and effectively made unlawful and that I think shows just how important this space is. It is if you like the absolute core of privacy. So privacy becomes like a gateway right to that central core of who we are, and how we decide who we're going to be. Todd Landman 4:27 I like this idea of a gateway right - that's really cool. Now, in the book, you have this really the first part is quite a deep dive into history. I mean, you go right back to Socrates, you worked your way through Galileo, you work your way through people that challenge the status quo, through freedom of thought, whether it was scientific practice, or religious belief or any kind of thought, but what are some of the high points of this history and shall we say the analogue attempts to control people's thoughts? Susie Alegre 4:53 Yeah, as you say, I looked right back and and Socrates is if you like, a classic example of a martyr for freedom of thought. One of the interesting things as well about Socrates is that we don't have anything written down by Socrates, because Socrates was himself very suspicious of the written word and what that did for humans ability to debate. But what he did do was absolutely question the status quo. And he delighted in creating arguments that would undermine Greek democracy at the time. But one of the reasons why we all know the name of Socrates and remember, Socrates, is because Socrates was effectively judged by his peers, and forced to take his own life by Hemlock because of his scurrilous ideas, and his attempts to twist the minds of young Athenians and to question the gods. So while Socrates might be sort of seen as an example of a champion of freedom of thought and freedom of speech, it was very clear that at that time in history, you didn't really have freedom of speech, because it ultimately landed up with a death sentence. Some of the other areas I looked at were people like Galileo and questioning whether the sun and the universe travelled around the Earth or the other way around, and that really landed him in house arrest. So really, again, questioning the status quo of the church, and certainly religions through the centuries have been one of the prime movers in curtailing freedom of thought and freedom of religion, if you'd like. Todd Landman 6:32 Yeah, in my world, the Galileo story is a kind of clash between observational data and belief. Susie Alegre 6:38 Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But again, it sounds like one of those arguments of you know, well, you can have your own opinion and every opinion is sort of questions, but in another century, and in that century, you'll end up under house arrest, when you challenge the beliefs of the status quo and of the powers that be. Todd Landman 6:56 Yes, we see that being played out today, in the scepticism around science, whether one takes an extreme view about for example, being a flat earther. Or if there's doubt about scientific discovery, scientific development, the way in which countries respond to the COVID crisis, the hesitancy around vaccines, masks mandates, that kind of general scepticism around science, is also one where sure, there's freedom of thought, belief and opinion. But then there's also tested peer reviewed scientific evidence for the best thing we think we can possibly do under times of great uncertainty. Susie Alegre 7:31 Absolutely. And that area is a prime area where you see the difference between freedom of thought and opinion and freedom of speech and expression. So where you have sort of COVID conspiracy theories, if you like spreading through social media or spreading really proven false information that can harm people. You know, there is then a legitimate reason to restrict that expression and the spread of that expression, to protect public health. Doesn't mean that people can't still think those things. But there really have to be limitations on how those expressions are spread, when they are absolutely damaging to public health or to other people's rights. Todd Landman 8:18 Yes, exactly. And I don't think you covered this in the book. But I just want to push you a little bit. You mentioned about Socrates written word not being written down. But with the invention of the printing press historically, how had that changed freedom, expression, thought, belief? What's the role of that technological advance in your understanding of the history of this idea? Susie Alegre 8:39 Well, the printing press just really accelerated the way that information could be shared, it effectively accelerated the impact of expression, if you'd like. And interestingly, actually, I was asked recently, to compare regulation of the printing press and of printing around that time and how long it took to get serious regulation as compared to trying to regulate the internet today. And I said, rather flippantly, well, people were arrested, and books were burned. That was how regulation worked initially in response to the massive impact of the printing press. And while I was being flippant when I thought about it afterwards, well actually, that is how they tried to regulate the printing press. And one of the reasons I looked back at the past of freedom of thought in the ways that we didn't really have freedom of thought historically. To me, that was important because it showed what a sea change, having human rights law has been for us as human beings. So you know, people may complain about cancel culture, but certainly in the UK cancel culture very rarely involves actually being put in prison. Certainly it doesn't involve being told to drink hemlock or certainly not being obliged to drink hemlock. Human rights have really put the brakes on the ability of the powers that be to control us. But they've also put an obligation to protect us from each other. Todd Landman 10:13 And there's a certain duality then because if I think about what you just said, the powers that be, let's translate that into the rise of the modern state, as it were. And you draw on reading some, you know, quite regularly through the book you draw on Orwell's 1984. You draw on Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism you draw on Huxley's Brave New World. So why did you draw on those sources? It seems to be you're alluding to the power of the state, the power of control, all those sorts of aspects. And yet, in order for human rights to work, we still need the power of the state. So there's two sides of the coin problem that we face in this quest to regulation. Susie Alegre 10:52 Absolutely. And drawing on those sources, in particular, in particular, Orwell and Huxley. I mean, perhaps because I'm a bit of a masochist, I spent the start of lockdown reading 1984. And just marvelling at how prescient it was, and how accurately it portrayed the developments of technology in our life. The Speak Write machine, the way that Winston Smith is employed to rewrite history, if you like, sort of creating in real time, disinformation in 1984, was somehow a real surprise to me having not read it since 1984, was just how accurately prescient it was. And similarly, reading Brave New World and the consumerism and the use of distraction as a means of social control, rather than the oppressive jackboot that you see in 1984. And seeing the ways that potentially commercial enterprises and a light touch can be used to have an equally corrosive and problematic effects on our societies. So the reflections of the images of Huxley and Orwell in particular was so stark that I felt that I had to use them because it seemed that rather than taking those as a warning from the 20th century, we've taken them as a template for the development of technology and consumerism in our lives. Todd Landman 12:23 So I suppose that really allows me now to segue nicely into your concerns over the digital world and how this digital world relates to human rights. And I guess my entry point is this famous line you have in the book where you say, you know, I told my daughter, she can't have Alexa. And she asked me why. And I said, you can't have an Alexa because it steals your dreams, and sells them to other people. Talk me through that. Talk me through your fears and worries around Alexa and what that means for the broader digital problem that we face. Susie Alegre 12:52 Yeah, Alexa is certainly a case in point. And as I'm sure anyone else with children has had the experience, your child comes home and their friends have got whatever technology it is, in this case, Alexa, and I know several people, several families where the kids do have Alexa in their bedroom. So you will always get these arguments as well sounds so has it so it must be great. For me the idea of Alexa the idea of actively choosing to bring a listening device into your home, that is constantly listening to what is going on in your home and sharing that with you have no idea who using that information in ways that you have no real idea how that's going to land up is something so astonishing. You know, having spent years working on human rights and counterterrorism, and also most recently, working in oversight on interception of communications, and how sort of allergic people or if you like, and quite rightly, to state intrusions to the idea that the state might be bugging your home, to then actually pay money and to let a private actor come in and listen to everything that's going on in your home for profit, just to me seems really astonishing. And yet somehow, it's become so normalised that as I said, I know lots of people who do have Alexa and are delighted to have Alexa. Plenty of people in the lockdowns suddenly sending around videos from their Ring cameras outside their doors, but this idea of constant control constant monitoring of our lives for someone else's profit. To me seems like something that is an really fundamental shift and something that we should all be really concerned about. Todd Landman 14:51 Now you're in addition to the Alexa example you're also very concerned about, shall we say the unregulated or the unleashing of and I will use the generic term algorithms in the digital world? So why are these algorithms problematic? From your perspective? What do they do? How do they affect people? Or is it a way that they're affecting people? And people don't even know? And is it that ignorance of the effect that concerns you? Or is it just the development of algorithms in the first place that concerns you? Susie Alegre 15:20 Now, I mean, algorithms are digital tools, if you like. So it's not the algorithm itself. There are two things really well, there are many. But let's start with two. One is the ability to understand why an algorithm is operating in the way it's operating. So an algorithm is effectively told to take information and translate that information into a conclusion or into an action, but understanding exactly what information is taken, how that information is being weighted, and then how a decision if you like, as being taken and what impact that decision will have, is often not very clear. And so where an algorithm based on huge amounts of data, for example, is being used to decide whether or not you might be fraudulently requesting benefits, for example, in the benefits system, that raises really serious concerns, because the outcome of not getting benefits or the outcome of being flagged as a fraud risk, has a really, really seriously detrimental impact on an individual life. Todd Landman 16:29 Yes. And you also give examples of credit rating. So if typically, somebody wants to get a mortgage in the UK, the mortgage company will say, well, we're gonna run a credit check on you. And they might go to one of the big data providers, that gives you a score. And that score is a function of how many credit cards you have any loans, you might have had any late payments you might have had on a loan or a mortgage in the past. And in the absence of a particular number. The company may reserve the right to say, you can't have a mortgage and I think you give the personal examples of your own struggles setting up a bank account after having lived abroad. Susie Alegre 17:03 Yeah. Todd Landman 17:04 Talk us through some of that. Susie Alegre 17:05 Yeah, absolutely. So as you say, I talk a bit in the book about returning from Uganda, where ironically, I've been working as a diplomat for European Union on anti-corruption. And I came back to the UK to work as an ombudsman in the Financial Ombudsman Service. But when I applied for a bank account, I was suddenly told that I couldn't have the bank account. Because the computer said no, effectively. The computer had clearly decided that because I was coming from Uganda or whatever other information had been weighed up against me, I was too much of a risk to take. The fact that I had been fully vetted as an ombudsman, and that the money that would be going through that bank account was going to be salary from the Financial Ombudsman Service was not enough to outweigh whatever it is the algorithm had decided against me. Eventually, I was able to open an account a few months later. But one of the interesting things then working as an ombudsman was that I did come across cases where people had had their credit score downgraded because the computer said so and where the business was unable to explain why that had happened. I mean, from an ombudsman perspective, I was in a position to decide what's fair and reasonable in all circumstances of a case. In my view, it's very difficult to say that a decision is fair and reasonable if you don't know how that decision has been reached. But those kinds of decisions are being made about all of us all the time, every day in different contexts. And it's deeply concerning that we're not often able to know exactly why a decision has been taken. And in many cases, we may find it quite difficult to even challenge those decisions or know who to complain to. Todd Landman 17:14 Yeah and this gets back to core legal principles of fairness, of justice, of transparency of process and accountability of decision making. And yet all of that is being compromised by, let's say, an algorithm, or as you say, in the book, the computer says no. Susie Alegre 18:49 Completely and I think one of the key things to bear in mind that even the drafters have the right to freedom of thought and opinion in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, discuss the fact that inferences about what you're thinking or what your opinions are about, can be a violation of the right even if they're incorrect. So when you find the algorithm, making inferences about how risky a person you are, whether or not the algorithm is right, it may still be violating your right to keep your thoughts and opinions to yourself. You know, you should only be judged on what you do and what you say, not on what somebody infers about what's going on in your inner life. Todd Landman 19:50 Not on what you might be thinking. Susie Alegre 19:52 Exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. Todd Landman 19:54 Right now, we've had a couple of guests on previous episodes that I would put broadly speaking in the camp of the 'data for good' camp. And when I read your book, I feel like I'm gonna broadly put you in the camp of 'data for bad'. And that might be an unfair judgement. But is there data for good here? I mean, because, you know, you cite the sort of surveillance capitalism literature, you have some, you know, endorsements from authors in that tradition. But if I were to push you, is there a data for good story that could be told nevertheless? Susie Alegre 20:23 I think there might be in public data. So for example, in the US, and I don't know if they are included in your guests, but there's data for black lives. And they've done really interesting work from public data, you know, flagging where there are issues of racial and systemic injustice. So that kind of work, I think, is very important. And there is a distinction between public data and private data, although how you draw that distinction is a really complicated question. But in terms of our personal data, one of the things that I think is important in looking at how to address these issues, is about setting the lines for the things that you can never do. And what I hope is that if you set down some barriers, some very, very clear lines of what can never ever be done with data. Then you will find technology, particularly technology related to data, and that includes the use of AI interpreting and working with data will develop in a different direction, because at the moment, the money is in extracting as much personal information as you can out of every single one of us and selling them. Todd Landman 21:40 And the degree of the extraction of that information is both witting and unwitting. So you also make the point in the book, if somebody signs up for a Facebook account, they just hit agree to the terms and conditions. But actually the time it takes to read the terms and conditions could be two or three days to get through to the fine print. And so people are just saying yes, because they want this particular account with not actually knowing the degree to which the sharing their personal information. Is that correct? Susie Alegre 22:06 Absolutely. And the other problem was the terms and conditions is that if you don't like them, what exactly you're going to do about it? Particularly if you're looking at terms and conditions to be able to access banking or access the National Health Service. If you don't like the terms and conditions, how exactly are you going to push back. But that point that you've made as well about the consent button, there's also an issue around what are called dark patterns. So the way that technology is designed, and that our online experience is designed to nudge us in certain directions. So if you're asked to agree the terms and conditions, the easiest thing is to hit the big green button that says I consent. Again, we see it with cookies, you know, often you've got a simple option where you hit I consent, or there's a complicated option, where you can manage your cookie settings and go through a couple of different layers in order to decide how much you want to be tracked online. And so that is clearly pushing you in the direction in time poor life experience, to hit the easiest option and just consent. Todd Landman 23:16 I feel that everybody you know, I read through Flipboard, which is a way of aggregating news sources from around the world by topic. And I sort of follow politics and law and international events, music and various other things. But every news story open up because of GDPR I get a pop up screen that says accept cookies, manage cookies. And I always say accept because I want to read the story. But what I'm actually doing is telling the world I've read this story, is that right? Susie Alegre 23:43 Yeah, absolutely. The cookies question as well as one where, actually, why should we be being tracked in all of our activities? All of our interests? And as you say, you know, telling the world that you've read this article is partly telling the world what you're interested in and what you're thinking about, not just that you've read this article in an abstract sense, you know, it's telling the world about your interests. One of the things that is also disturbing that people often don't realise is that it's not just what you read. It's even things that you may hover over and not click on that are equally being tracked. And it's not just on the page where you're reading the article. It's about being tracked all around your online activity being tracked with your phone being tracked, where you are not just what you're looking at on the phone. It's so granular, the information that's being taken, that I think very few of us realise it and even if you do realise that as individuals, we can't really stop it. Todd Landman 24:52 And I think for that reason I take a little bit of comfort because I wasn't targeted by Cambridge Analytica. I probably played some of the games on Facebook, you know the personality test stuff, but I never got ads as far as I was concerned that were being, you know, foisted upon me by the Cambridge Analytica approach. I use that as, let's say, a metaphor. But I know that there was micro-targeting based on certain profiles, because there was an attempt to leverage voters who had never voted before, or voters who were predisposed to in particular vote to vote for certain things. But again, it's that unwitting sort of profile that you build by the things that you hover over or the things that you'd like or the things that you at least read and accept that button on cookies. And of course, we now know that that microtargeting actually might have had a, you know, a significant impact on the way in which people viewed particular public policy issues. Susie Alegre 25:41 Completely, and I mean, I don't know whether I was or was not targeted by Cambridge Analytica or similar, around that time around 2016/2017. I don't know if you've come across a Who Targets Me, which is a plugin that you can put onto your browser to find out particularly around election times, who is targeting you. And I have to say that when I very briefly joined a political party for a couple of months, I signed off my membership after a couple of months, because I discovered that they were targeting me and people in my household through this, who targets me plugin. So even though theoretically, as a member, I was already going to vote for them. But that information was being used to pollute my online environment, as far as I'm concerned, which was a bit of an own goal, I imagine for them. Todd Landman 26:32 So that really does bring us to the question of what is to be done. So you know, I was waiting in the book for sort of what's the regulatory answer, and you do give some good practical suggestions on a way forward, because there is this challenge, particularly where we need services, you know, we do need mortgages, we need access to health care, we need public information, we need all the benefits that come from the digital world. But at the same time, we need to protect ourselves against the harms that digital world can bring to us. So what are the sort of three or four major things that need to happen to maybe mitigate against the worst forms of what you're worried about in the book? Susie Alegre 27:10 Well, one of the difficulties in the book was coming up with those things, if you like, what are the key things that we need to stop, and particularly in an atmosphere where we are seeing regulation happening, rapidly trying to play catch up, we've just seen the Digital Services Act in the European Union being agreed, we have the Online Safety Bill on the table in the UK, in Chile, we've seen in the last year legislation around neuro rights being introduced. And so it's a very fast paced environment. So trying to come up with suggestions that go to the heart of it while recognising the complexity and also recognising that it's in a huge state of flux. I wanted to really highlight the things that I think are the core of how we've got here and the core, very obvious things that we should not be doing. The first one of those is surveillance advertising. And that is advertising that is based on information, granular information, like we've been talking about about our inner lives, including how we're feeling potentially at any single moment in order to decide what images what messages we should be delivered. And whether those are political messages, whether that is commercial messages, whether it's just trying to drag us into gambling, when we're having a bad moment online. All of those kinds of things are part of this surveillance advertising ecosystem. And while surveillance advertising isn't the whole problem, I think that surveillance advertising is the oil that is driving this machine forward. If you don't have surveillance advertising, there isn't so much money in gathering all of this information about us. Because that information is valuable because it can sell us stuff, whether it's selling us a political candidate, or whether it's selling us a particular pair of socks tomorrow. And so surveillance advertising, I think is the key. And I think banning surveillance advertising would be the single most effective way to start change. Another thing that I think could make a real sea change in the way tech develops is recommender algorithms. And again, the things that are being recommended to us the way that we receive our information, whether that is on Netflix, whether that is on new services, potentially, very personalised recommendations of information are a way of distorting how we think and how we see the world based on information about our emotional states information about our psychological vulnerabilities, a whole raft of things that could lead to that. That I think is a real vehicle for social control. And so you may want occasionally, or even always, to have somebody suggesting what you should watch, when you're feeling tired, you don't want to make a decision yourself and you're happy to just be given whatever it is. But recommender algorithms and that kind of personalization of information feeds should never ever be the default. At the moment for most of us that is the situation. When we open up our laptops. When we open up social media, when we look at our phones, we're being given a curated personalised experience without necessarily realising it. So addressing that, and making sure that personalization is not the automatic choice would make a really big difference. Todd Landman 30:53 It's just an amazing set of insights. You've taken us from Socrates to socks here today. And it's been an incredible journey listening to you and so much to think about and so many unresolved issues. And when I listen to you, and I read your book, you know, I feel like I should get off the grid immediately, and put my hood on because I don't want anyone reading my mind and I don't want anyone selling me socks. But for now, Susie, it was just great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track and thanks ever so much. Susie Alegre 31:20 My pleasure. Thank-you so much for having me. Christine Garrington 31:23 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

Using prison data to reduce incarceration

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2022 22:22

In Episode 5 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Amrit Dhir, Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz – a team of technologists committed to getting decision makers the data they need to drive better criminal justice outcomes. Transcript Todd Landman 0:00 Welcome to the Rights Track podcast, which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Amrit Dhir. Amrit is the Director of Partnerships at Recidiviz, a team of technologists committed to getting decision makers the data they need to drive better criminal justice outcomes. He has previously spent over a decade at the intersection of technology and new business development, working, for example at Sidewalk Labs, Google for Startups and Verily. Today, we'll be exploring the practical uses of technology and data in the criminal justice system. So Amrit, it's great to have you on this episode of the Rights Track. Welcome from California. Amrit Dhir 0:44 Thank you so much, I'm really glad to be here. Todd Landman 0:46 It's great for you to join us. And I want to start with a simple question. We had a guest - Sam Gilbert - on our last episode, we made this distinction between the sort of data for good and data for bad and there's a very large sort of argument out there about surveillance capitalism, the misuses of data, you know, behavioural microtargeting and all these sorts of issues. And yet I see that where you're working at Recidiviz there's a kind of data for good argument here around using technology and data to help criminal justice systems and the healthcare sector. So just briefly, could you tell us about this data for good and data for bad distinction? Amrit Dhir 1:19 Yeah, well, as with most things, I think it's difficult to pigeonhole anything into one of those camps, everything it seems, can be used for good or bad. And so data itself is not one or the other. I think it's about the use, I think that's what Sam was getting at with you as well. With Recidiviz, you know, what we've understood is that data that's been collected over a long period of time, especially in the context of the United States, and our unfortunate kind of race to mass incarceration, from basically the 1970s until about mid-2010s. We've collected a lot of data along the way, and we're not actually using or understanding that data. And so what we do at Recidiviz is we bring that data together, so make it something that can be better understood and better utilised, to help reduce prison populations to help drive better outcomes. So we're focused on taking data that's been, again, collected over quite a long period of time and consistently collected, but also making it better understandable. Todd Landman 2:17 So this sounds like big, messy, disparate, fragmented data, is that correct? Amrit Dhir 2:22 Most of those things, most of the time. It's definitely fragmented most of the time, it's not always necessarily what we'd call big. Because, you know, coming from Google, I think of big in the terms of, you know, search query type volume. So in corrections, it's not necessarily that big, but it is certainly messy, and it is certainly fragmented. Todd Landman 2:42 You know we had a guest on Rights Track, some while back, David Fathi from the American Civil Liberties Union, he explained to us the structure of the American sort of prison system, not justice in itself, but prison system with, you know, 50 state prison systems, plus a federal prison system and a mix of public and private prisons. So it's a mixed picture in terms of jurisdiction, the use of incarceration and of course, the conditions of incarceration. So what's the sort of data that's being collected that you find useful at Recidiviz? Amrit Dhir 3:13 Yeah, I'll actually add a piece of that as well, you're exactly right to say, you know, every one of the 50 states has a different system, the federal system is itself separate. But then there's also county jails. And those systems are running completely separately from even the states that they're in. So it is messy. And the data also extends, by the way, so we're talking about what we consider the back half of the system. So once someone has already gone to prison, we think of that as the back half. Whereas there's a front half of the system as well, which is the courts, your prosecutor and defence attorneys, and up to policing. And so all of those different segments have their different datasets as well. At Recidiviz we're starting at the back half, largely, because we think there's a lot more impact to be had there, at least for now. And the data extends to many things. So it can be first of all, admissions data. When someone comes into a facility, what sentence did that person come in with? Where is that person going to be in the facility? As in like, where's that bed? And then, as often happens, there are transfers between prisons, within prisons. That's another set of data. There are programmes that the person may be participating in. Some of these are built with the spirit of rehabilitation and reintegration into society. Those are important and knowing how they work and when they work, and if they work is important. And then when someone gets out of prison, that's not the end either. We've whole infrastructure of supervision. And broadly, those are grouped into two categories - parole and probation. And someone may be back out in their community and still under a degree of supervision that's more than what someone who has not been in prison goes through. They have to check in with their parole officer. They have certain requirements, they have certain restrictions. All of those are data points as well. How are you checking in with your parole officer? Did you have to take a drug test? Did you ask for permission to leave the state, all of those things. And as you can imagine, even just by the list I've given you, which is just a very small percentage of it, all of those are sitting in different data silos and are interacted with by different people within the system and it gets pretty tricky. Todd Landman 5:21 And you collect data on the sort of sentencing? So you know an analysis of that plus demographic makeup of the prison population, time served? And also, the use of the death penalty and or deaths in custody - is that data that you can collect? Amrit Dhir 5:37 Yes, so we can do all that. And I'm glad you pointed out racial and demographic data, because that's a big part of what we do and what we highlight, because you may not be surprised to hear that in the US, there are like pretty severe disparities when it comes to race, ethnicity. And these are things that departments of corrections. So those are the executive agencies within each state, we usually call them department of corrections, although they'll have different names in different states. They have this data, and they want to make better sense of it. Their stakeholders want to understand it better. So generally, these agencies report to the governor, but they're also accountable to the legislature. So there's a degree of sharing that data or better unpacking that data that's important. Then we also have, I would broadly, categorise, and we say these kinds of things a lot where there's broad categorizations and then there's also much more detailed ones. But broadly, you can think of this as public data, and then departments of corrections data. So the public data is what's available anyway - we can go out there and find without any data sharing agreement with any agency. As these are government agencies where this data is required to be public. And so you'll find researchers and universities and different organisations accessing this data and publishing it or analysing it, we do that also. But we also get data sharing agreements directly with departments of corrections, and help them unpack that as well. So there's a kind of complimentary interaction there between the two datasets. Todd Landman 7:09 I understand. And how do you actually reduce incarceration through data analysis? I'm perplexed by that statement you made quite early on when you were talking to us. Amrit Dhir 7:18 There's a couple things and I'll categorise this. My broad categories into three categories. There are leadership tools, line staff tools, and then public tools. So let me start with public tools, because I think that's more related to what we just talked about in the previous question. The public tools are ones that are available to you and me. And so there's two that you can look on our website and find right now. One is a public dashboard that we call spotlight. As of the date of this recording there are two that have been published one for North Dakota and one for Pennsylvania. I encourage everyone to go check those out. If you just Google, you know our name Recidiviz and Pennsylvania, you'll see it come up as the first result. And there you can see that all the data in a accessible way. So the 'viz' in Recidiviz stands for data visualisation. We worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, to better represent the data that they have, so that the public can see it. And you can see the breakdown, by ethnicity, by district, by sex by other filters, and really get in there in some detail and see what's happened also over time. So that's one that's the public dashboard. That's largely to raise awareness. And it's something that when you talk to departments of corrections, you learn that they have lots of FOIA requests, which are Freedom of Information Act requests, so requests from media, from researchers, from the public, but also from the legislature. And so that's one thing that we do that just broadens the conversation. Another are what we call policy memos. If you go to our website, and or if you just type in Recidiviz.org/policy, these are one-page memos that we have our data scientists put together that assess the impact of a particular administrative or legislative policy proposal. So imagine that you are looking to Pennsylvania for example, wanting to make a change to geriatric parole, or if you want it to end the criminalization of marijuana, we can then and we have gone in there and analyse the data that's publicly available. And sometimes we also access our data with collaboration with the DOC. And we can tell you what the both impact on the number of basic liberty person years that are returned. How people will get out of prison earlier or not go to prison at all, as well as how much money the state in these cases will save. And so that's a great way to inform policymakers to say hey, this is actually a good policy or a bad policy, because it's going to get people out of prison and it's going to also save you money. Todd Landman 9:57 Yeah the concept it's like a variable called liberty person years that you use. And then of course, it's almost like a time series interrupted model where if you get new legislation, you can look at that liberty person years before the legislation and after to judge the degree to which that legislation may or may not have made a difference, right? Amrit Dhir 10:16 Exactly right. And I encourage folks just to go check, check some of those memos out, there's probably like 50 on there now. And they're very easy to understand, very easy to access. They're all one page. They're all very beautifully visualised. Because you can take this very, as you said, messy and fractured datasets, but actually come to some pretty simple insights. And I would say simple and actionable. And so that's what we do there. And that was a long description of public data, but I can go into the other two, if you're ready for it. Todd Landman 10:43 Yes, please. Amrit Dhir 10:44 Okay. So working backwards, we'll go to line staff tools. And so this line staff, meaning people who are working within corrections or on supervision. And let me take the example of supervision first, because one thing that's interesting and that I actually learned only while at Recidiviz is that half of prison admissions in the US every year, come from supervision. Meaning people who are getting their parole or probation revoked and are going back to prison. That's half of the emissions we get every year. And that's a huge number. Todd Landman 11:15 Wow. Amrit Dhir 11:15 And so this, you can think of this as the back end of the back end, it's the very last piece. And so for Recidiviz we were kind of assessing where we should start, that seemed like the right place to do so because the impact was just so great. Now, put yourself in the shoes of a parole officer. These folks have pretty difficult jobs in that they often have, you know, up to 100 and sometimes more, we've seen up to 120 people that they are I'll use a verb 'serving' as a parole officer. So the idea is you got people that have been returned to the community, they've been in prison, they now are trying to get jobs, they're trying to get job training. They're trying to reintegrate into their communities, and the parole officer is there to help them do that, and keep track of how they're doing. Now, that's one thing to do if you got 20 people, you want to keep track of and help and connect to the right resources, but if you've got 100, and you're supposed to meet with them every month, it becomes impractical. And that ends up meaning sometimes that parole officers aren't doing as good a job as they'd like to do. Because it's just too hard, just too much to manage. Todd Landman 12:22 You need a structured database approach. Amrit Dhir 12:24 Exactly. So that's where data can be very useful, because we can automate a lot of what a parole officer needs to do. And rather than having to check, you know, we've heard up to 12 different datasets to figure out where are the programmes my the people I'm serving are have available to them? When do I know if I need to do a home visit? Where do I find a list of employers that I can send them to? Where are housing options for them? All these are in different places, but we at Recidiviz, bring them all together, give them an easy-to-use tool, so that we can actually service them even you know, on their smartphones, in an app, to show them, hey, did you know that this person is actually eligible to be released from parole if they just upload a pay stub? And hey, do you want to just take a pay stub with your phone, and we can do it for you? I mean, how much easier that is than you having to go through all 100, figure out who's eligible based on your own recall or some other antiquated system and kind of struggle to try to help people. We can help you do that. And that's a big thing that we've done. Todd Landman 13:22 I mean it's almost like an E-portfolio approach that there's this way to archive parolees meeting certain milestones and conditions. And it makes the management of those cases so much more straightforward. Whilst there's also a record of that management that makes it easier for the parole officer to serve the people that they are serving. Amrit Dhir 13:42 Exactly. You got it exactly right. And by the way, there's, you know, a degree of nudging that can be done in this as well, if you're familiar with like the Cass Sunstein and others, behaviour psychology, but how, you know, instead of saying, hey, this person needs a drug test, and have that'd be the first thing that you prioritise. I mean you can say, hey, this person needs help finding a job. And here are some resources, here's some employers in the area that we know employ people who are formerly incarcerated. It's a great way to actually not only automate and make the life of the parole officer easier and better, but also to kind of encourage the better behaviours within those communities. Todd Landman 14:16 Now that makes sense. So what's the third channel then? Amrit Dhir 14:18 Ahhh the third one is leadership tools. And this is for the directors and their deputies, the most senior people in a department of corrections, they may come in. And actually what we're seeing now is that a lot of the people who are coming in today and are sitting in these roles are reformers. They believe that the size of our criminal justice system in the United States is just too large. And they are motivated to improve outcomes. And they're focusing on things like recidivism, which is a term for people coming back to prison after being released. And that's a number you want to have low naturally. But historically, what happens - actually not even you know what historically -what happens today. He is that these recidivism reports will come out maybe every three years. Yeah. So if you're a director, and by the time they come out, they're almost three years old. So you're almost like because the six year timelines, and you want to know, hey, I instituted this new reform this new programme, I want to know if it's been successful, you won't know until a couple years out whether it worked. And so what we do instead is to give you real time data, we can tell you what's happening on your team and in your agency on a real time basis. And also project out based on what we're seeing with some meaningful kind of population projections as well. So that helpful. Todd Landman 14:34 That's fascinating. And let me ask you just another technical question. So when people are released from prison, is it typical for them to also have a sort of GPS tag on their leg for a certain period of time? And does that form any of the data that you look at? Amrit Dhir 15:52 So it depends? It's a very good question. And it's one of the more controversial topics today in this space, and especially in the Reform Movement, there's a concern that we may be heading towards, from mass incarceration to mass incarceration, and that people will be monitored and supervised within their communities. And I think that is a very meaningful concern that we need to be careful of, because we don't want that to happen. But to broadly answer your question about the state of this today, it depends on where you are, it depends on the county depends on the state depends on all those things, in terms of whether you are wearing a device that electronically monitors, you know, we don't track that ourselves, that's something that we do or want to do. Our approach is to helping people get off of supervision and get into programmes and other kinds of initiatives that help them on their way. Todd Landman 16:43 Excellent. So this discussion really opened up into, you know, the bad side of the question, I guess, you know, you just have to go into this with our eyes open, I suspect that you're triangulating a lot of data. You're providing that in real time on dashboards, a lot of it's in the public domain. What are the risks around this? What are the pitfalls? What's the risk of re-identification? What's the risk of, you know, lapsing into kind of credit scoring philosophies? And just, as you said about the tags, there's worry about that kind of, you know, E-surveillance and E- carceration. Equally, someone could backward engineer some of your data and actually profile people. So, what's the downside of this approach? Amrit Dhir 17:21 Yeah, that was a great list. So there's certainly a concern of bias entering any analysis of a dataset. And we are very careful about that. So one thing to note is that everything that we do is open source. So it's open to the technology community to take a look at what's kind of under the hood. And that's important, because we would do want to make sure that we are not only participating and contributing to the broader ecosystem that are, in this case, tech and criminal justice ecosystem, but that we're also held accountable to them. So that's the first thing that we do, we also are very mindful and transparent about our data ethics policies, and how we handle those kinds of questions and sometimes ambiguities. So if you look at, for example, the spotlight dashboard that I mentioned that you'd find for Pennsylvania, North Dakota, you will see in the methodology that we explain what happens when there's a question. So for example, if someone puts down three different ethnicities, how do we manage that in the data visualisation that just shows them as one. Our approach there is transparency and engagement. Todd Landman 19:31 Have you done any links with the ACLU on this? Because they're quite interested in prison conditions. They're interested in incarceration, sentencing, etc. Do you do any kind of briefing with the ACLU? Amrit Dhir 20:16 Yeah, so two things actually on that. I will take them in reverse order. So first of all, we do work with ACLU. If you look at our website, on the policy page, which again, are those one page memos, the ACLU has requested a number of those. And there's naturally different chapters of the ACLU in different states in different parts of the country. And we work with different stakeholders within the ACLU as well on those. The other piece, though, get one of the back to what you said about three strikes. There's another piece of that I think people may not be as familiar with it. I certainly wasn't, which is this issue of technical revocations. So if you're on supervision, like I said, half of prison emissions every year are from revocation of your supervision, meaning you're going back to prison, from parole or probation. But half of those, so a quarter of all emissions every year are from technical revocations. And those are when someone breaks a rule, that is not a law for the rest of us. Right. So it's not that they stole something, it's not that they got caught breaking a law, that they broke a rule of their parole, and sometimes these are ones that you and I would feel horrified to learn of. So that, you know, we've got examples of people, for example, going to an open mic night where there was alcohol presence, and that person wasn't allowed to be around alcohol. Being in the wrong County. Being out past curfew. All of these things that are, and you know there are anecdotes all over the place of the kinds of things that send people back to prison that we as society would not tolerate. And those are also some of what we're reducing. Todd Landman 21:49 That's amazing, that sort of distinction to draw between, you know, breaking a rule and breaking the actual law, I guess the rules follow from the law. But I get your point in terms of, you know, how would somebody know if they crossed the county line, particularly if they're at an area they don't know well. So this has been a fascinating exploration with the ways in which you have triangulated datasets, made them more visible, put them into real time, and I have to reflect on what you said. I mean, I grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So I'm going to immediately read all your Pennsylvania data. I actually grew up near a prison in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, you know, so it'd be interesting to see how things have moved on from the time that I lived there many moons ago. I won't tell you how long ago that was. But, but this is a really good conversation for us to have around some of the ways in which different types of data can be leveraged for good. And also some of the challenges of that, or the misuse of that information, as well as the sort of things that you don't collect, you know, the fact that you don't collect data on these tags. And that that varies, of course, and the variation you see in terms of the population that you're collecting data on varies because of the fragmentation of the US prison system and the sort of federal system that the US is structured in, but also data that no one really brought together in one place before. And I think that when we hear this data for good argument, we hear a lot of people saying we're actually bringing datasets that haven't been brought together before in order to derive insights from those data and do something that is for good and brings about positive social changes result. So I just think this tour that you've given us today is absolutely fantastic. And on behalf of the Rights Track thanks so much for being on this episode with us today. Amrit Dhir 23:25 Oh, thank you for having me. It's been fun. Thank-you. Christine Garrington 23:29 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

An optimist's view: What makes data good?

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2022 30:18

In Episode 4 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Sam Gilbert, an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Sam works on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book – Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future – explores the different ways data helps us, suggesting that “the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us”. Transcript Todd Landman 0:01 Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In Series 7, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in the fourth episode of this series, I'm delighted to be joined by Sam Gilbert. Sam is an entrepreneur and affiliated researcher at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, working on the intersection of politics and technology. His recent book, Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Future explores the different ways data helps us suggesting the data revolution could be the best thing that ever happened to us. And today, we're asking him, what makes data good? So Sam, welcome to this episode of The Rights Track. Sam Gilbert 0:41 Todd thanks so much for having me on. Todd Landman 0:44 So I want to start really with the book around Good Data. And I'm going to start I suppose, with the negative perception first, and then you can make the argument for a more optimistic assessment. And this is this opening set of passages you have in the book around surveillance capitalism. Could you explain to us what surveillance capitalism is and what it means? Sam Gilbert 1:01 Sure. So surveillance capitalism is a concept that's been popularised by the Harvard Business School Professor, Shoshana Zuboff. And essentially, it's a critique of the power that big tech companies like Google and Facebook have. And what it says is that, that power is based on data about us that they accumulate, as we live our lives online. And by doing that produce data, which they collect, and analyse, and then sell to advertisers. And for proponents of surveillance capitalism theory, there's something sort of fundamentally illegitimate about that. In terms of the way that it, as they would see it, appropriates data from individuals for private gain on the path of tech companies. I think they would also say that it infringes individual's rights in a more fundamental way by subjecting them to surveillance. So that I would say is surveillance capitalism in a nutshell. Todd Landman 2:07 Okay. So to give you a concrete example, if I'm searching for a flannel shirt from Cotton Trader, on Google, the next day, I open up my Facebook and I start to see ads for Cotton Trader, on my Facebook feed, or if I go on to CNN, suddenly I see an ad for another product that I might have been searching for on Google. Is that the sort of thing that he's talking about in this concept? Sam Gilbert 2:29 Yes, that's certainly one dimension to it. So that example that you just gave is an example of something that's called behaviour or retargeting. So this is when data about things you've searched for, or places you've visited on the internet, are used to remind you about products or services that you've browsed. So I guess this is probably the most straightforward type of what surveillance capitalists would call surveillance advertising. Todd Landman 2:57 Yeah, I understand that, Sam, but you know when I'm internally in Amazon searching for things. And they say you bought this other people who bought this might like this, have you thought about, you know, getting this as well. But this is actually between platforms. This is, you know, might do a Google search one day. And then on Facebook or another platform, I see that same product being suggested to me. So how did, how did the data cross platforms? Are they selling data to each other? Is that how that works? Sam Gilbert 3:22 So there's a variety of different technical mechanisms. So without wanting to get too much into the jargon of the ad tech world, there are all kinds of platforms, which put together data from different sources. And then in a programmatic or automated way, allow advertisers the opportunity to bid in an auction for the right to target people who the data suggests are interested in particular products. So it's quite a kind of complex ecosystem. I think maybe one of the things that gets lost a little bit in the discussion is some of the differences between the ways in which big tech companies like Facebook and Google and Amazon use data inside their own platforms, and the ways in which data flows out from those platforms and into the wider digital ecosystem. I guess maybe just to add one more thing about that. I think, probably many people would have a hard time thinking of something as straightforward as being retargeted with a product that they've already browsed for, they wouldn't necessarily see that as surveillance, or see that as being particularly problematic. I think what gets a bit more controversial, is where this enormous volume of data can have machine learning algorithms applied to it, in order to make predictions about products or services that people might be interested in as consumers that they themselves haven't even really considered. I think that's where critics of what they would call surveillance capitalism have a bigger problem with what's going on. Todd Landman 4:58 No I understand that's, that's a great great explanation. Thank you. And I guess just to round out this set of questions, really then it sounds to me like there's a tendency for accumulated value and expenditure here, that is really creating monopolies and cartels. To what degree is the language of monopoly and cartel being used? Because these are, you know, we rattle off the main platforms we use, but we use those because they have become so very big. And, you know, being a new platform, how does a new platform cut into that ecosystem? Because it feels like it's dominated by some really big players. Sam Gilbert 5:32 Yes. So I think this is a very important and quite complicated area. So it is certainly the case that a lot of Silicon Valley tech companies have deliberately pursued a strategy of trying to gain a monopoly. In fact, it might even be said that that's sort of inherent to the venture capital driven start-up business model to try and dominate particular market space. But I suppose the sense in which some of these companies, let's take Facebook as an example, are monopolies is really not so related to the way in which they monetize data or to their business model. So Facebook might reasonably be said to be a monopolist of encrypted messaging, because literally billions of people use Facebook's platform to communicate with each other. But it isn't really a monopolist of advertising space, because there are so many other alternatives available to advertisers who want to promote their products. I guess another dimension to this is the fact that although there are unquestionably concentrations of power with the big tech companies, they also provide somewhat of a useful service to the wider market, in that they allow smaller businesses to acquire customers much more effectively. So that actually militates against monopoly. Because now in the current digital advertising powered world, not every business has to be so big and so rich in terms of capital, that it can afford to do things like TV advertising. The platform's that Facebook and Google provides are also really helpful to small businesses that want to grow and compete with bigger players. Todd Landman 7:15 Yeah, now I hear you shifting into the positive turn here. So I'm going to push you on this. So what is good data? And why are you an optimist about the good data elements to the work you've been doing? Sam Gilbert 7:27 Well, for me, when I talk about good data, what I'm really talking about is the positive public and social potential of data. And that really comes from my own professional experience. Because although at the moment, I spend most of my time researching and writing about these issues of data and digital technology, actually, my background is in the commercial sector. So I spent 18 years working in product and strategy and marketing roles, and particularly financial services. Also at the data company, Experian, also in a venture backed FinTech business called Bought By Many. And I learnt a lot about the ways in which data can be used to make businesses successful. And I learned a lot of techniques that, in general, at the moment, are only really put to use to achieve quite banal goals. So for example, to sell people more trainers, or to encourage them to buy more insurance products. And so one of the things that I'm really interested in is how some of those techniques and technologies can move across from the commercial sector, into the public sector, the third sector, and be put to work in ways that are more socially beneficial. So maybe just to give one example of that type of data that I think contains huge potential for public goods is search data. So this is the data set that is produced by all of us using Google and Bing and other search engines on a daily basis. Now, ordinarily, when this data is used, it is to do banal things like, target shoes more effectively. But there is also this emerging discipline called Infodemiology, where academic researchers use search data in response to public health challenges. So one great example of that, at the moment has been work by Bill Lampos at University College London and his team, where they've built a predictive model around COVID symptoms using search data. And that model actually predicts new outbreaks 17 days faster than conventional modes of epidemiological surveillance. So that's just one example of the sort of good I believe data can bring. Todd Landman 9:50 So it's like a really interesting example of an early early warning system and it could work not only for public health emergencies, but other emerging emergencies whether they be conflict, or natural disasters or any topic that people are searching for, is that correct? Sam Gilbert 10:05 Yes, that's right. I mean, it's not just in the public health field that researchers have used this, you just put me in mind actually Todd of a really interesting paper written by some scholars in Japan who are looking at citizens decision making in response to natural disaster warnings. So floods and earthquakes that that migration patterns I guess, would be the way of summarising it. Those are things that can also be detected using search data. Todd Landman 10:31 Well, that's absolutely fascinating. So if we go back to public health then. I was just reading a new book, out called Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID. And it's edited by Matthias Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer. And there's a really fascinating chapter in this book that transcends the nation state, if you will. And it talks about platforms and pandemics. And one section of the chapter starts to analyse Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and telegram on the degree to which they were able to control and or filter information versus disinformation or misinformation. And just the scale of some of this stuff is quite fascinating. So you know, Facebook has 2.7 billion daily users, it's probably a bigger number now. And you know, 22.3% of their investigated Facebook posts contain misinformation about COVID-19. And they found that the scale of misinformation was so large that they had to move to AI solutions, some human supervision of those AI solutions. But what's your take on the role of these big companies like we've been talking about Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram, and their ability to control the narrative and at least provide safe sources of information, let's say in times of COVID, but there may be other issues of public interest where they have a role to play? Sam Gilbert 11:57 Yes, I think this is such an important question. It's very interesting that you use the phrase, control the narrative, because of course, that is something that big tech companies have traditionally been extremely reluctant to do. And one of the things I explore a bit in my book is the extent to which this can really be traced back to some unexamined normative assumptions on the part of tech company executives, where they think that American norms of free speech and the free speech protections of the First Amendment that's sort of universal laws that are applicable everywhere, rather than things which are culturally and historically contingent. And for that reason, they have been extremely reluctant to do any controlling of the narrative and have tended to champion free speech over the alternative course of action that they might take, which is to be much more proactive in combating harms, including but not limited to misinformation. I think this probably also speaks to another problem that I'm very interested in, in the book, which is what we are concerned about when we say we're concerned about big tech companies' power, because I think ordinarily, the discussion about big tech companies power tends to focus on their concentrations of market power. Or in the case of surveillance capitalism theory, it concentrates on the theoretical power that algorithms have over individuals and their decision making. And what gets lost a bit in that is the extent to which tech companies by providing these platforms and these technologies actually empower other people to do things that weren't possible before. So in some work I've been doing with Amanda Greene, who's a philosopher at University College London, we've been thinking about that concept of empowering power, as we call it. And as far as we're concerned, that's actually a much more morally concerning aspect of the power of big tech, big tech companies than their market position. Todd Landman 14:11 Yeah. So I like it that you cite the First Amendment of the American Constitution, but interestingly, the international framework for the protection and promotion of human rights also, you know, has very strong articles around protection of free speech, free assembly, free association, which of course, the tech companies will be interested in looking at and and reviewing. But what it raises to I believe really is is a question around the kind of public regulation of private actors, because these are private actors. They're not subjected to international human rights law in the way that states are. And yet they're having an impact on mass publics. They're having an impact on politics. They're having an impact on debate. So perhaps I misspoke by saying control the narrative. What I'm really interested in is we seem to have lost mediation. We have unmediated access to information. And it seems to me that these it's incumbent upon these organisations to provide some kind of mediation of content, because not all things are true just because they're said. So it gets back to that question, what where's the boundary for them? When will they step in and say this is actually causing harm if there's some sort of a big tech Hippocratic oath about do no harm that needs to be developed? So that, so there is at least some kind of attempt to draw a boundary around what is shared and what is not shared? Sam Gilbert 15:34 Yes, so the idea of a Hippocratic oath for tech workers is definitely out there, the writer who has explored it more than I have is James Williams in his book Stand Out Of Our Light. I think that that is certainly something that would help. I also think that it is beneficial that at the moment, we're having more discussion about data ethics and the ethics of artificial intelligence, and that that is permeating some of the tech companies. So I think more ethical reflection on the part of tech executives and tech workers is to be welcomed. I don't think that's sufficient. And I do think that it's important that we have stronger regulation of the tech sector. And I suppose from my perspective, the thing that needs to be regulated, much more than anything to do with how data is collected or how data is used in advertising. Is this what sometimes referred to as online safety, or other times it's referred to as online harms. So that is anything that gives rise to individuals being at risk of being harmed as they live their lives online. There's actually legislation that is coming through in the UK at the moment called online safety bill, which is far from perfect legislation, but in my opinion, it's directionally right. Because it is more concerned with preventing harm and giving tech companies a responsibility for playing their part in it, then it is concerned with trying to regulate data or advertising. Todd Landman 17:13 Yeah, so it's really the result of activity that is trying to address rather than that the data that drives the the activity, if I could put it that way. So if we think about this, do no harm element, the mediating function that's required at least to get trusted information available to users. I, I wonder if we could pivot a little bit to the current crisis in Ukraine, because I've noticed on social media platforms, a number of sites have popped up saying we're a trusted source for reporting on on the current conflict, and they get a sort of kite mark or a tick for that. I've also seen users saying, don't believe everything you see being tweeted out from Ukraine. So where does this take us and not only COVID, but to something as real time active and horrific as conflict in a country, we can talk about Ukraine or other conflicts about the sharing of information on social media platforms? Sam Gilbert 18:08 Yes, well, this is a very difficult question. And unfortunately, I don't have the answer for you today. I guess what I would point to is something you touched on there Todd, which is the idea of mediation. And we have been through this period with social media, where the organizations, the institutions that we traditionally relied on to tell us what was true and what was false and sort fact from fiction, those organisations have been disintermediated. Or in some cases, they have found themselves trying to compete in this very different information environment that is much more dynamic in a way that actually ends up undermining the journalistic quality that we would otherwise expect from them. So this is not a very satisfactory answer, because I don't know what can be done about it, except that it is a very serious problem. I suppose just to make one final point that I've been reminded I've been reading stories on this topic in relation to the Ukraine crisis, is that the duality of this power that tech companies and that technology has given to ordinary users in the era of social media over the last 15 years or so. So if we were to rewind the clock to 2010, or 2011, the role of Twitter and Facebook and other technology platforms in enabling protest and resistance against repressive regimes that was being celebrated. If we then roll forwards a few years and look at a terrible case like the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, we are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum where the empowerment of users with technology has disastrous consequences, and I guess if we then roll forward again to the Ukraine crisis, it's still not really clear whether the technology is having a beneficial or detrimental effect. So this is really just to say, once again, when we think about the power of tech companies, these are the questions I think we need to be grappling with, rather than questions to do with data. Todd Landman 20:31 Sure, there was there was a great book years ago called the Logic of Connective Action. And it was really looking at the way in which these emerging platforms because the book was published some years ago about lowering collective action costs, whether it was, you know, for protest movements, or, you know, anti-authoritarian movements, etc, we did a piece of work years ago with someone from the German Development Institute on the role of Facebook, in, in opposition to the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and Facebook allowed people to make a judgement as to whether they should go to a protest or not based on number of people who said they were going and and so it lowered the cost of participation, or at least the calculated costs of participating in those things. But as you say, we're now seeing this technology being used on a daily basis, I watch drone footage every day of tanks being blown up, of buildings being destroyed. And you know, part of my mind thinks it's this real, what I'm watching. And then also part of my mind thinks about, what's the impact of this? Does this have an impact on morale of the people involved in the conflict? Does it change the narrative, if you will, about the progress and or, you know, lack of progress in in the conflict, and then, of course, the multiple reporting of whether they're going to be peace talks, humanitarian corridors and all this other stuff. So it does raise very serious questions about the authenticity, veracity and ways in which technology could verify what we're seeing. And of course, you have time date stamps, metadata and other things that tell you that that was definitely a geolocated thing. So are these companies doing that kind of work? Are they going in and digging into the metadata, I noticed that Maxar Technologies, for example, is being used for its satellite data extensively, and looking at the build-up of forces and the movement of troops and that sort of thing. But again, that's a private company making things available in the public sphere for people to then reach judgments, media companies to use, it's an incredible ecosystem of information, and that it seems like a bit like a wild west to me, in terms of what we believe what we don't believe and the uses that can be made of this imagery and commentary. Sam Gilbert 22:32 Yes, so there is this as an all things, this super proliferation of data. And what is still missing is the intermediation layer to both make sense of that. And also tell stories around it that have some kind of journalistic integrity. I mean what you put me in mind of there Todd was the open source intelligence community, and some of the work that including human rights organisations do to leverage these different data data sources to validate and investigate human rights abuses taking place in different parts of the world. So to me, this seems like very important work, but also work that is rather underfunded. I might make the same comment about fact checking organisations, which seem to do very important work in the context of disinformation, but don't seem to be resourced in the way that perhaps they should be. Maybe just one final comment on this topic would relate to the media, the social media literacy of individuals. And I wonder whether that is something that is maybe going to help us in trying to get out of this impasse, because I think over time, people are becoming more aware that information that they see on the internet may not be reliable. And while I think there's still a tendency for people to get caught up in the moment, and retweets or otherwise amplify these types of messages, I think that some of the small changes the technology companies have made to encourage people to be more mindful when they're engaging with and amplifying content might just help build on top of that increase in media literacy, and take us to a slightly better place in the future. Todd Landman 24:26 Yeah, I mean, the whole thing around media literacy is really important. And I I also want to make a small plea for data literacy, just understanding and appreciating what data and statistics can tell us without having to be you know, an absolute epidemiologist, statistician or quantitative analyst. But I wanted to hark back to your idea around human rights investigations, we will have a future episode with a with a group that does just that and it's about maintaining the chain of evidence, corroborating evidence and using you know, digital evidence as you, you know in ways that help human rights investigations and, you know, if and when this conflict in Ukraine finishes, there will be some sort of human rights investigatory process. We're not sure which bodies going to do that yet, because we've been called for, you know, like a Nuremberg style trial, there have been calls for the ICC to be involved as been many other stakeholders involved, but that digital evidence is going to be very much part of the record. But I wonder just to, yeah go ahead Sam. Sam Gilbert 25:26 Sorry I am just going to add one thing on that, which I touched on this a little bit, and my book, but I think there's a real risk, actually, that open-source intelligence investigations become collateral damage in the tech companies pivot towards privacy. So what some investigators are finding is that material that they rely on to be able to do their investigations is being unilaterally removed by tech companies, either because it's YouTube, and they don't want to be accused of promoting terrorist content, or because it's Google or Facebook, and they don't want to being accused of infringing individual's privacy. So while this is not straightforward, I just think it's worth bearing in mind that sometimes pushing very hard for values like data privacy can have these unintended consequences in terms of open source intelligence. Todd Landman 26:24 Yes, it's an age old chestnut about the unintended consequences of purposive social action. I think that was a Robert Merton who said that at one point, but I guess in closing that I have a final question for you because you are an optimist. You're a data optimist, and you've written a book called good data. So what is there to be optimistic about for the future? Sam Gilbert 26:42 Well, I suppose I should say something about what type of optimist I am first, so to do that, I'll probably reach for Paul Romer's distinction between blind optimism and conditional optimism. So blind optimism is the optimism of a child hoping that her parents are going to build her a tree house. Conditional optimism is the optimism of a child who thinks, well, if I can get the tools and if I can get a few friends together, and if we can find the right tree, I think we can build a really incredible tree house together. So I'm very much in the second camp, the camp of conditional optimism. And I guess the basis for that probably goes to some of the things we've touched on already, where I just see enormous amounts of untapped potential in using data in ways that are socially useful. So perhaps just to bring in one more example of that. Opportunity Insights, the group at Harvard run by Raj Chetty has had some incredibly useful insights into social mobility and economic inequality in America, by using de-identified tax record data to understand over a long period of time, the differences in people's incomes. And I really think that that type of work is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this enormous proliferation of data that is out there. So I think if the data can be made available to researchers, also to private organisations in a way that, as far as possible, mitigates the risks that do exist to people's privacy. There's no knowing quite how many scientific breakthroughs or advances in terms of human and social understanding that we might be able to get to. Todd Landman 28:52 Amazing and I guess, to your conditional optimism, I would add my own category, which is a cautious optimist, and that's what I am. But talking to you today does really provide deep insight to us to understand the many, many different and complex issues here and that last point you made about, you know, the de-identified data used for for good purposes - shining a light on things that that are characterising our society, it with a view to be able to do something about it, you see things that you wouldn't see before and that's one of the virtues of good data analysis is that you end up revealing macro patterns and inconsistencies and inequalities and other things that then can feed into the policymaking process to try to make the world a better place and human rights are no exception to that agenda. So for now, Sam, I just want to thank you so much for coming on to this episode and sharing all these incredible insights and, and and the work that you've done. So thank you. Chris Garrington 29:49 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find a detailed transcript on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes. Further reading and resources: Sam Gilbert (2021) Good Data: An Optimist's Guide to Our Digital Future. Bill Lampos' covid infodemiology: Lampos, V., Majumder, M.S., Yom-Tov, E. et al. (2021) “Tracking COVID-19 using online search”. Infodemiology Japan/natural disasters paper: [1906.07770] Predicting Evacuation Decisions using Representations of Individuals' Pre-Disaster Web Search Behavior (arxiv.org) On “empowering power”: Greene, Amanda and Gilbert, Samuel J., (2021) “More Data, More Power? Towards a Theory of Digital Legitimacy”. On the Hippocratic oath for tech workers: James Williams (2018) Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. Matthias C. Kettemann and Konrad Lachmayer (eds.) (2022) Pandemocracy in Europe: Power, Parliaments and People in Times of COVID-19. W. Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg (2013) The Logic of Connective Action; Digital Media and the Personalization of Contentious Politics.

covid-19 america tv american university amazon google uk ai guide japan ukraine data harvard cnn theory silicon valley series resistance cambridge telegram logic individuals parliament fintech public policy myanmar bing first amendment digital media tunisia optimists university college london icc personalization nuremberg conditional rohingya experian representations our future attention economy james williams yom tov hippocratic american constitution shoshana zuboff ben ali good data more power tracking covid paul romer raj chetty in series harvard business school professor opportunity insights bennett institute robert merton sam gilbert bought by many more data 3di lance bennett amanda greene chris garrington matthias c kettemann

Dizzying digital change: how is it disrupting our lives and our world?

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2022 27:23

In Episode 3 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Professor Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Bennett Institute joins Todd to discuss the dizzying digital changes over the last 25 years, how it has disrupted the economy and impacted on our lives. Transcript Todd Landman 0:01 Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In Series 7, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our third episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Diane Coyle. Diane is Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and co- directs the Bennett Institute, where she leads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her most recent book- Cogs and Monsters - explores the problems and opportunities for economics today, in light of the dizzying changes in digital technology, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. And today we're asking her, why is it that digital is so very disruptive? So welcome, Diane, it's wonderful to have you here on this episode of The Rights Track. Diane Coyle 0:49 It's a pleasure, I'm flattered to be invited. Todd Landman 0:52 Well, it's great. And you know, I was reading Cogs and Monsters over the holidays and enjoy very much your dissection of you know, the state of the discipline of economics and where it's going, and some of its challenges, etc. But I was really taken by the section on digital technology and digital transformation. And you, you reference your 1997 book, The Weightless World. And of course, that was 25 years ago. So the time between the publication of The Weightless World and Cogs and Monsters. And you know, factoring in Moore's Law of technological change, a lot has happened over these 25 years. So I wonder if I could just start by asking you, what are the sort of broad brush, absolutely huge changes in this area? And what has been their impact on economics? Diane Coyle 1:34 Well, where to start, as you say, it's 25 years since I first got interested in digital technology, and was always sure, it was going to be transformative. But for a lot of economists, that was not obvious for quite a while. And I remember talking to one very senior figure in the UK profession who said, well, this digital stuff, it's going to reduce transactions costs a little bit, but we know how to handle transactions costs in our models so, so what's so special about this? And I suppose they've been inflection points where small changes or what might seem to be small changes bring about very large consequences. One of those was the switch from dial up internet, to broadband. And simply the loss of friction in the sort of *dial-up joining sound* when the modem did the handshake, for those who are old enough to remember, it made a big difference in the kind of services and opportunities that people thought they were able to put online and expanding the audience for them. And then the other was 2007, and the smartphone. Steve Jobs at that iconic Apple press conference, holding up the first smartphone first iPhone, which converged with the arrival of 3G, so that data transmission became cheaper and more possible at volume and speed. And also the kind of market design ideas in economics that enabled the creation of apps and in particular, matching apps and digital platforms. And if you look at what's happened since 2007, both in terms of individual behaviour and economic transactions, the fact that we spend a whole day a week, whole 24 hours a week, I think it's 28 now, online. And the new kinds of business models and the way that markets have restructured, it has been absolutely extraordinary. And I think in many areas, we're only just beginning to think through what the consequences are, and what the implications are for politics and policy and regulatory choices. Todd Landman 3:38 Thank you for that. And you know, that rapid expansion just in terms of volume, scale, speed has fundamentally transformed our lives. I remember Steve Jobs, the announcement and I thought what am I ever going to do with that? Why do I need a phone that takes a picture? And equally when the iPad came out, I thought, I'm not sure how I'm going to use that now of course I can't live without one. And it sort of does. It changes our workflow, it changes our productivity, people who are amenable to multitasking find that these devices do help us and of course, being able to share information at rapid speed. As we know, through the pandemic, we've been able to communicate and stay on, on track in some ways in engaging with the sorts of things that we do. And so I wanted to focus a little bit on those that haven't really experienced this incredible transformation. I was recently at an event where a representative from one of the local housing association said well, we have about you know, 10,000 houses in our portfolio, if we add up all the housing associations in our, our portfolio plus other providers that might be 100,000 houses in this region, most of whom do not have access to these digital transformations. So what could you say about the sort of the left out, the left behind or the famous word about the digital divide? How do we address some of those issues, both economically but also maybe in policy terms? Diane Coyle 4:52 In different ways it's a different level of the digital divide, and one is just the sheer network infrastructure. And the economics of these networks is such that population density really makes a difference to their financial viability. So to get universal service at high speed, there has to be public subsidy for it. In this country, we've got a government that has since Mrs. Thatcher's time being focused on you try all the market solutions possible first, and then grudgingly, you have some public intervention. And I think there should have been public intervention long ago and much more focused on minimum universal service. Ofcom does set standards and I think the standards that they have set are now outdated by the technology. So that needs revisiting, and then the investments got to happen. And we've had, you know, more or less monopoly of Openreach having the core of the network. And that problem hasn't really been fixed. So there's a set of problems about network infrastructure, and who's going to pay for it, and universal services and utility. And then there's access to devices and the payment plans. And for that, you know, obviously, smartphones are expensive, we've got plans where you can get the handset subsidised if you sign up to a reasonably expensive data plan. But lots of people can't do that. And this is a universal problem in all countries, because they're all pretty unequal. And so the people who are best off have best access. During the pandemic that's been diabolically bad, in particular for schoolchildren who've been learning online. And if you've got a limited plan, limited data, and you've only got a phone, not a tablet or a computer, you're not going to learn, you're not going to learn that learning deficit is going to scar those individuals for the rest of their working careers. So that has been a problem. And I'm not sure I've got an easy fix for this except that this is a necessity of modern life. And if people need subsidising to get necessities, if we subsidise their energy, for example, then we should be subsidising their connectivity as well. And then there's this sort of whole digital literacy bit, which is a whole other kettle of fish. And how do we teach people to be properly sophisticated consumers of whatever it is, whether it's social media misinformation, or whether it's price comparison websites, and how to interpret the information that you're getting from those. Todd Landman 7:18 When I've listened to you, you know, it feels like you're making the case for digital connectivity as almost a public good like access to health care, education, social welfare, social, you know, the social safety net, if you will, is that your view that this really is, you know, akin to the provision of education and health and welfare? Diane Coyle 7:43 I think it is because it's about conveying information really. And this is the fundamental characteristic of information and how that drives economic growth, particularly in what we call the knowledge economy. And all of this is useful because it gives people information to do things that make their lives easier or better in some way that matters to them. A trivial example might be, you've got an app on your phone that helps you navigate around the city so that you don't waste time because your bus isn't running. So that's one kind of valuable information and the time saving that goes with that. But you know, that's, that's the fundamental point of it. It's accessing public services online is almost essential now, leading your daily life, making it more convenient, making it more enjoyable, in business, using the information that you can get to deliver better services to your customers. So it's all, it's all about information. And that is the key characteristic of information - it is a public good, it's non-rival. Todd Landman 8:38 Ah it is a non-rival public good and it's very interesting that that crosses over with a lot of discourse of the Human Rights field around rights to information, rights to be informed, etc. But also date obligations to progressive really realise that the fulfilment of social, economic and cultural rights. So there's a really interesting communication or conversation, if you will, that could take place between economists and human rights people around the provision of non-rival public goods. But the other thing that I was struck by what you said was this idea about digital literacy about not knowing in a way, how good all this can be for you, but also what some of the pitfalls are, how is one a good consumer of digital information, but also what's the unwitting phenomenon of people sharing tremendous amounts of information about themselves in the absence of that digital literacy, literacy? And I know you've done some work on you know, how much is your data worth? So how do we calculate what people's data is worth in the marketplace? Diane Coyle 9:36 Aha, how much time have you got? Actually, my colleague here in the economics department, Wei Xiong has done some work looking at Chinese data on how concerned users of one of the huge apps are about privacy. And the finding there that is really interesting. You know, there's this privacy paradox. People say they care and then they act as if they don't, and they found that people care more the more sophisticated a user they are. So people who don't go online very much or don't think about it very much don't care about their privacy, but the more people use it, and learn about the pitfalls, I suppose the more they care about, about the privacy questions. But this is this is a really interesting area. And it's an ongoing area of research for me. And, you know it operates at different levels. So one is just what's it worth to the economy? People think data is an asset, because it helps businesses tailor their services better, develop better products, serve their customers better, make more money, which is a good thing in a capitalist economy. And there's a growing gap between the most productive companies and all the rest. So the top 5% In most OECD countries are pulling further away in terms of productivity and also profitability. More and more research is suggesting that's because they are using digital tools better, they using predictive analytics, they are building their own software to use the data, growing databases. So all of those more digital firms are becoming more productive and sort of winning the competitive race, the competitive rivalry that takes place in market economies. So we would like more firms to do that, to grow the economy and grow jobs and make better products and services. But then there's also the individual point that you alluded to. And being an economist, I think about this in terms of externalities. And as the negative externality that you pointed to that your behaviour online, or the data that people accumulate about you online, can reveal things about you that you don't want to be known. Or you can do the same about other people, you can reveal things about people who are like you, or people who are connected with you that they don't want, want known. And there are also positive externalities that come from joining up data, because a lot of the value, a lot of the information value depends on putting data in context. And even something that seems very personal. Like, do I have a temperature right now? Obviously, has positive information value for the people around me. And so to make use of this, to give people, you know, better quality lives better information, we need to think about how do we get data shared in good ways that creates value for people and doesn't invade their privacy? So this debate, I think is in in a pretty terrible state. And I'd be interested to know what you think about this, I think part of problem is that it's always thought about in terms of individual rights, and actually, it's a data captures relationships and context. Todd Landman 12:38 Yes, and you know, so a lot of the human rights discourse is around the right of the individual. But of course, there are group rights and collective rights that are equally as important. So one can look at minority rights, for example, and other collective rights. So there is that tension in human rights discourse in human rights law between the absolute fundamental rights of the individual vis-à-vis the state then vis-à-vis non-state actors, including businesses, but also non, non, not for profit organisations. And then collective rights - does a group of people have a right to maintain a certain set of practices, or certain linguistic tendencies or textbooks in mother tongue language? Which is a it's a whole another podcast about that I'm sure. So yeah, I think you put your finger on a very interesting tension between these things. And I, I guess, I want to pivot to this idea of capitalism without capital. So you, you mentioned the idea about productivity, growing the economy, jobs, and which is good for capitalism, as you say, but a lot of people have observed that actually, you know, companies like an Uber or any other kind of online car provider, or Airbnb, these are property companies without property. These are taxi companies without taxis. So they're actually wiping out any of the kind of overheads by having to run a big fleet of cars. And yet, the markup on that is, is very high. I mean, I went to one of these data centres in London, where they command all of the data needed to run a successful taxi company. And they get 26,000 bookings a day, I think, at the time, and they were optimising to the point that even if one of their drivers was on the way home, they made sure that there was a fair in the car on the way home because that meant that that car was earning money on the way home. So this phenomenon of the capitalism without capital, I mean, it's it's a bit of a misnomer, because it still requires infrastructure. It still requires devices and cars, but it shifts, you know, who owns what, who does what and where the margins sits. So, what can you say about this changing nature of capitalism in the face of this new phenomenon of digital technologies? Diane Coyle 14:39 It's a big question. I think the relationship between the material and the immaterial is really interesting. And the scale of the physical investment needed in data centres, or the energy use is often overlooked, although people are starting to talk about that more. And as you say, some platform companies operate by pushing the need to invest both in whether it's cars, physical capital, but also their own human capital, they're pushing that out to individuals. And what that means is that we're getting under investment, including in human capital, if you're a gig worker, your incentive to invest in your own training, when you're bearing all of the risk of fluctuations in the business is diminished. So that's quite interesting, too. And then we've got this construct of intellectual property or non-material property, hugely valuable, the stock market value put on companies that hold a lot of data or have a certain kind of brand or reputation is absolutely immense. And yet, it doesn't act like normal, old fashioned physical kinds of capital. It's got very different depreciation characteristics, you can, it can lose its value overnight, if there's a hit to reputation, or if a secret gets gets out and get shared. And I think the construct of property, intellectual property, intangible property is just as an individual right to own the property or corporate right to own the property is just highly problematic. And I would much rather we start to think in terms of rights to access - who has rights to access what? And, you know, particularly going back to data, what can, what can who know about somebody? Because part of the privacy issue is that whether it's big tech firms or governments, they're in a position to start joining up all kinds of data about people. And that's the problem. You don't mind your doctor, knowing very intimate details about you and having that data. You don't mind your bank manager, knowing what your bank balances, but you wouldn't want the government to join up all of those different bits of information about you and get that synoptic view, the Stasi, the East Germans had this term glesano which meant transparent people. And that I think, is is a real problem. So I came across this concept that you probably know more about the idea of privacy in public that comes from other parts of social science literature. It operates offline, it doesn't operate online. So can we start to think about those sorts of access rights or permissions rather than absolute property rights? Does that make sense? Todd Landman 17:21 Yeah, that makes sense. And you know, I was thinking about one of the extreme examples of the the intangibles, which is this non-fungible trading regime. So people are creating digital assets, if you will, that are then trading and you know, a digital asset by a famous artists can can sell on the market for for millions of pounds. And it it again, it gets back to some of the fundamental questions you ask in your book Cogs and Monsters about faith in the economy, you know, we think about coins and currency. Why do I accept the fact that you hand me a £10 note, and I say, that's a £10 note, which is worth something, when actually, it's just a piece of paper. So a lot of the economy is based on that transactional faith that has built up over centuries of people trading. And now of course, during the pandemic, cash and coins weren't used as much, we're going to electronic payment. Apple Pay has lifted its its cap on, you know, pounds per transaction. You know, there's a whole new world of financial transaction that feels even more ephemeral than economics has felt like in the past, and what can you say about sort of where are we going with all of this? What What's the new non-fungible that suddenly is going to have value in the market? Diane Coyle 18:27 I don't really know. I mean, for NFT's, I can't help but believe that there's a bubble element to that. And that people, you know the art market is a pretty rigged market, if I can put it that way. So I think there are people in the market who are trying to create artificial value, if you like around NFT's. But I don't know the answer to your question and it sometimes seems that value has become so untethered, that surely it's unreal. And yet at the same time, there are people who haven't got enough cash to go and buy food, they're going to food banks, and how has that come about? Yet equally, there are intangible things that are really valuable. Trust is an intangible, and we wouldn't have an economy without it. Cultural or heritage assets, which I'm thinking about at the moment. You know, it's not that we assign value to the stones in Stonehenge in some normal economic sense, but, but there is an additional cultural value to that, and how should we start to think about that, and, you know, more and more of the economy is intangible. So we have to get our heads around this. Todd Landman 19:27 More and more, the economy's intangible. I'm gonna have to quote you on that. That's wonderful. I, I think then what the next thing I'm really interested in exploring with you is, is the role of the state and the way I want to enter this really is that you've already hinted at the idea that provision of no-rival public goods where there's clearly you know, a role for the state in that there is also a role for the state in the regulatory environment. And you know, of course, I was very sort of worried about your observation that the state can combine banking information with health information and know something about you in a connected way that re-identification but also that very private revelation about someone's individual circumstance. So what's that balance between the state helping, the state regulating and the state staying away? Because that's a big concern in human rights, we, we often say the state has a has a, you know, an obligation not to interfere in our rights, it has an obligation to protect us from violations of rights by third parties. And it has an obligation to fulfil its right commitments up to available economic capability and, you know, sort of state institutional capability. But boy, there's a tough balance here between how much we want the state to be involved and how much we really say, just stay away. What's your take on that? Diane Coyle 20:38 It's particularly difficult, isn't it when trust in government has declined, and when democracies seem to be becoming rather fragile? So you worry much more about these trade-offs with an authoritarian state, whose politicians you don't trust very much, I think these issues have become more acute than they might have been 25 years ago, I suppose. And at the same time, we need the state more than ever, because of the characteristics of the way the economy is changing. We've had this period since Thatcher and Reagan, when the pendulum in public discourse about economic policy has swung very firmly towards markets first state fills in the gaps corrects the market failure. And yet, we're in a period of technical innovation when we need standards. Just going back to data, we need somebody who will set the standards for interoperability and metadata so that we can enforce competition in digital markets, or technical standards for the next generation of mobile telephony. So we need the standard setting. And because of the non-rivalry, and because of the returns to scale, I think we're all much more interconnected economically than used to be the case. And those phenomena have always existed. They've always been, you know, big economies of scale, and autos and aerospace, but they are now so pervasive across the economy, that almost everything we do is going to affect other people, I think it's becoming a much more collective economy than it used to be. Or just think about the way that the productive companies are combining all of our data to use predictive analytics to do better things for us. So, I, my strong senses is that it's a more collective economy, because it's intangible because it's got this these elements of non-rivalry and scale. And so we're going to have to have a rethink of what kind of policy discourse do we have around that, and it's not markets first government then fixes a few problems. Todd Landman 22:40 Yeah and that idea of the collective economy really moves away from you know, the discipline of economics has often been characterised as residing in methodological individualism. And as long as you understand the individual rationality of people, you just aggregate that rationality and then you get market force, and you get supply and demand curves, you get equilibrium prices, and quantities, etc. But you're actually making a slightly different argument here that the interconnectivity of human behaviour is the interrelationships of one person's choices and the consequences or the as you say, the predictive analytics in a way talking about, well, we expect you to like these sets of products, and therefore you will go buy them, or we expect crime in this region, and therefore we put more resources there. That's a different enterprise. That's a much more holistic enterprise of looking at the, as you say, data in context, and it changes our way of thinking about modelling the economy, but also thinking about remodelling our relationship with the state. Diane Coyle 23:34 I think you're right, you know, we're in a world then of disequilibrium of non-linear, linear dynamics where things can tip one way or another very quickly, where decisions by state agencies will shape outcomes. And give a simple example in my kind of territory, if you've got digital markets that that tip so that there's generally one dominant company because of the underlying economic characteristics, then any decision that a competition authority takes about a merger, or dominant position is going to shape which company dominates the market. You know, if the merger goes ahead, it's one and if it doesn't, go ahead, it may be another one. So they become market shapers. And I think this is why there's more interest now in self-fulfilling outcomes and narratives which started to take off a little bit in economics more in some other disciplines. Because the narrative affects the outcome, it aligns people's ideas and incentives and points them all in the same in the same direction. So I often think about the Victorians and I think they, they had this kind of narrative of greatness, and legacy long-term prosperity, and so they built these huge town halls that you see in cities around the country. Joseph Bazalgette gave us 150 years' worth of capacity in the London sewers. So they had something going on in their heads. That was not the economics that we've had from 1979 up, up until just recently, they weren't doing cost benefit analysis or thinking about equilibrium supply and demand curves. Todd Landman 25:07 Yeah, it's a much bigger vision, isn't it? And you know, there's an observation now that data is the new oil. It's the oil of the future. And I wonder if, in closing, whether you could just say a few remarks about a) do you think it is the oil of the future? And what's that flow of oil going to look like? Is it just more and more data and more and more confusion? Or is there going to be some sort of consolidation, rationalisation and, and deeper understanding of the limits of the data enterprise and the digital enterprise? Or is it just too hard to say at this stage? Diane Coyle 25:36 Economists don't like that analogy at all because oil is a rival good and data is a non-rival good. So we in a very anoraky way say no, no, that's a very imperfect analogy. And I mean of course, the point is that it's going to be ubiquitous and essential. And people still talk about the digital economy. But before long, that will be like talking about the electricity economy. It'll just all be digital and data. But I think there's so much that we don't know. And so much of what will happen will be shaped by decisions taken in the near term, with, you know, the consequences for governance, really, we've talked a lot about the economics of it. But all of this has implications for governance and democracy and rights, which is where you come in. Todd Landman 26:18 Yes, absolutely and that's what we're exploring in this series of, of The Rights Track. So this has been a fascinating discussion, as ever, I really enjoy your insights and precision your use of language and correcting me about the, the rival nature of data that but that's an important correction and one that I absolutely accept. But you've also raised so many questions for us to think about in terms of governance, democracy, rights, individual rights versus collective rights. And this idea of the non-rival public good that will absolutely, our listeners will want to chew over that one for a long time. So for now, can I just thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Rights Track. Chris Garrington 26:55 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.rightstrack.org and don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

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Getting to grips with the grammar of human rights

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2022 26:19

In Episode 2 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Martin Scheinin, British Academy Global Professor at the University of Oxford and a member of the Scientific Committee of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency joins Todd to discuss whether the grammar of human rights law can cope with multiple challenges of the digital realm. Transcript 00:00 Todd Landman Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in the digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our second episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Martin Scheinin. Martin Scheinin is the British Academy, Global Professor at the University of Oxford, and a member of the scientific committee of the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency. He is currently exploring whether the grammar of human rights law can cope with multiple challenges of the digital realm. So Martin, welcome to this episode of The Rights Track, it's great to have you here. Well, you know, in our first episode of the series, we had a discussion with Ben Lucas, who's a data scientist. And the one thing that he said to me that has really is stuck in my mind is that the regulatory framework has not been able to keep pace with technological change. And I wanted to use that just as an opening framing that when we consider the international human rights framework, the international human rights regime as a regulatory framework of sorts, as against this rapid expanse in technological change, and in the digital space, this gap between regulation and technology is something that's pretty enduring. But I wonder what your early thoughts are about how do human rights address this question of technological change? 1:14 Martin Scheinin Well, I think that human rights law is very much needed now. There, there may be a widely held perception that human rights law would be unable to cope, for instance, because so much is done by private actors that traditionally are not seen as bound by human rights law, or because the digital realm knows no borders between countries, and therefore it escapes the jurisdiction of any single state, often relied upon as a necessary precondition for the application of human rights law. I do believe that human rights law can cope. And I can see with, with some satisfaction, how both the United Nations and Council of Europe human rights bodies and mechanisms have understood the importance of the challenge and are trying to address it, that doesn't mean that they would already have found a way but at least there is a good faith effort, I would say. 02:13 Todd Landman And you know, human rights is often criticised as being state centric, where the primary duty bearers is the state, and then therefore private actors are not part of that frame. But what has changed since you know this early perception of state centric human rights framework in your mind that might address some of the gaps that you've, you've already raised with us? 2:31 Martin Scheinin Well, I'm currently running a four-year research project as British Academy Global Professor at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. And I framed the project as dealing with the grammar of human rights law and how it can address the challenges of the digital realm. And this, this framing signals need to go back to the foundational concepts and structures and to see how new phenomena new challenges can be spoken about in the language of human rights law. And just to take one example, one of my first journal articles in this project, still in the process of being finalised is about new EU level and national laws about taking down internet material that is seen as terrorist online content. It's a whole wave of legislation in European and other countries. And there is an EU regulation which is directly applicable EU law in all EU member states. It's a striking example of the challenges. We are speaking of something intangible, ultimately, information, images, video, text in digitalized form, which is produced by one private actor in one country, published by someone else, another private actor in another country, and perhaps using a medium of a server located in a third country and operated by a third private party. Under this EU regulation, which as I said, is valid law, national authority in a fourth country, in any EU member state, can ask the authority of the third country where the server is located to give an order to take down the material. And that national authority has one hour to act, which usually means an order for the private server operator to take down the material. And then that private actor has one hour again to implement the request or the order. What we see here is a whole chain of private actors. 04:41 Todd Landman Yes It's an incredible reach and, and also what happens if they don't comply within the hour? That's an extraordinarily short time period. 4:49 Martin Scheinin Well, there are, of course, sanctions and enforcement mechanisms, penalties, etc. But we see here a whole chain of private actors in, in production and publishing of this information. And the challenges to human rights law are, firstly, the civil jurisdiction, the actors, the private actors are located maybe located in different countries. And the order comes from at least two different states where the server is located, and then the initiator of the actual requests. And neither one necessarily has any jurisdiction in relation to the person who actually is behind the message, who uploaded the so called terrorist online content, and is subject to a measure that constrains freedom of expression. And that relates to jurisdiction, and then we have the question of mechanism of redress, that there's a there's a vague clause saying there must be access to judicial remedies, but in what country? In what language by whom? Is the, is the question. So we risk the situation of putting people in a legal limbo. And here we need human rights law to navigate through this mess and and to provide some kind of guidance to what is permissible and where where to draw the limits both as to the substantive issue of what is terrorist online content? And also to the procedures what kinds of remedies will be required? 06:15 Todd Landman Yeah, and you know, I'm going to pick up on this freedom of expression, maybe add freedom of speech alongside it with the, you know, rather famous cases of former President Trump and now representative Marjorie Taylor Green having been banned from certain social media platforms. One was about misinformation with respect to COVID-19. The other was just about misinformation more generally, in a view to mobilising supporters. But what's your take on this ability for private organisations like a Facebook or a Twitter to ban people for life for something that they've posted on their own platforms? 6:52 Martin Scheinin Yeah, the traditional view, of course, is that a medium, a newspaper, has no obligation to publish every opinion, they exercise their freedom of expression, by choosing what message they want to carry. And as such, that belongs to freedom of expression. But then when we have the emergence of let's say, Facebook or Twitter as something that can be called public goods, or common goods, we have to ask the question, whether access itself is a freedom of expression issue and how can the mediation of content be done so that freedom of expression of the of the of the users is reflected. I see a certain asymmetry in the sense that those holding a public office, if they have a Twitter account, they shouldn't be allowed to block other voices who may be critical of them. So that critics couldn't respond to their messages, but can then Twitter block them by banning them from using the service? I think we are in in quite a challenging situation. Here, I do believe that some kind of extension of human rights obligations to private actors is necessary. It may happen through their own regimes of redress, as Facebook is trying to build. And I'm optimistic, not of the model itself, but of the possibility of perfecting the model so that we can have genuine human rights mechanisms, also within private actors. Ultimately, there could be something like a World Human Rights Court with jurisdiction over those private actors who have accepted it as a as an appeal court, in respect of their own internal mechanisms. 08:51 Todd Landman That's fascinating Martin. You know, back in all way back in 1998, I was on my way to Venice, to teach on the European master's degree in Human Rights and democratisation. And I think I was in the air when the British authorities arrested Augusto Pinochet from Chile and put him under house arrest, which I believe was about 18 month's worth of time when British Parliament debated the legality of his arrest in his detention. And there was an appeal made and often this case is cited as one in which the application of universal jurisdiction applied, and it really advanced the argument for universal jurisdiction. I wonder to what degree what you're exploring and talking about here today is the application of the principle of universal jurisdiction for digital technologies. 9:36 Martin Scheinin I think there's a need for a distinction in the sense that the Pinochet case was about enforcement jurisdiction, the powers of the state to do something over an individual who is is primarily subject to other country's laws. Whereas here we hold a state to account for something that happened outside its borders, because of the causal link to human rights harm elsewhere. And states have been very careful in not accepting extraterritorial jurisdiction in respect of human rights violations that materialise elsewhere, when they were not there themselves and the European Court of Human Rights has been struggling, we know the bombing of Belgrade, the Bankovic case where the European Court of Human Rights threw it out, because it was outside the legal space of Council of Europe. Subsequently, it has taken the view that if you take possession of a person through arrest, then you are there with human rights obligations, which is, of course a bit paradoxical that dropping bombs is not jurisdiction, but but handcuffing is. We are we are trying to impose upon States a broader notion of jurisdiction, which is simply based on their causal links with what happens in the digital realm. For instance, in curtailing freedom of expression, by actors outside their own territory. It is necessary that we do this because the internet knows no knows no borders, and there are causal links, which create the human rights harm we are addressing. And as we see in the EU terrorist online content regulation, there are multiple countries involved. And one country asks for the takedown, another country implements it that the server can be located in a third country and the actor himself/herself in a fourth country, there's a whole chain of action, but somebody must be held accountable. And that requires the extension of the notion of jurisdiction. 11:44 Todd Landman Okay, that that distinction between the two makes, makes perfect sense to me. And you know, the complexity and complication of that is, is very salient. I wonder beyond expression and freedom of speech, etc. What other human rights are at stake in this particular agenda? 11:58 Martin Scheinen Well, I don't think people realise how broadly their human rights are actually at issue, when dealing with new developments in the digital realm. When we say expression, of course, easily what follows is freedom of assembly and association. Their exercise has largely shifted to happen online, especially in the times of the pandemic, but we also can say at elections and democracy. And public accountability have become phenomena that take place online. And this issue of democracy is especially important because of the vulnerability of electoral systems to malicious operators in cyberspace. So democracy is facilitated by moving online, but also but also subject to new kinds of risk. Our intimate sphere happens, to a large extent, online, even if the most important manifestations, of course, are still interpersonal. That brings up a whole range of privacy issues. Data protection is of course the human right which is most often referred to simply because of the passing of lots of sensitive personal data, but the mother right, right, the right to privacy is equally important. Here we go to issue such as surveillance. And if I now may mentioned another article I'm working on within my British Academy Global Professor project, I've been looking into the privacy related developments during the pandemic. And of course, there are very important and very different developments over these 22 months. We, we have totalitarian control with countries like China, which erode totally the privacy of the individual, and utilise and exploit health information for social control. It is true that digitalized control tools are in a sense rational because humans are vectors of the virus. The epidemic is not simply a question of a virus that that keeps replicating. It is human society, which transforms the virus into an epidemic in democratic countries. We see innovations such as contact tracing apps, digital contact tracing apps, and COVID passports. Both are potentially privacy intrusive, but here we see a certain kind of paradox in that in order to function, they must be human rights compatible or at least must have human rights compatible features, because they will only work if they are widely accepted. So, here the issue of legitimacy comes to the defence of human rights. Solutions, technological solutions, that would be best simplistically will not work, because they will not be widespread enough, whereas, where privacy, by design is inbuilt in the solutions, they will have much better success. We get into new paradoxes however, because for instance, when the, when the contours of the epidemic change with new variants like the Omicron variant, we are speaking on today, the scope of for instance, a COVID Passport can be rapidly overnight changed. So previously, having a COVID passport did not reveal your actual health information. It only told that this person is at this moment, carrying a valid COVID passport. But it didn't tell whether they were vaccinated, whether they had COVID, or whether they were tested in the last 24 hours, 72 hours. Now, when the, when the requirements are being made more narrow. The COVID Passport suddenly starts to reveal health information. It was sold under a different label. But now it is transforming to, let's say worse for human rights in the sense that it breaks the promise of not revealing health information. 16:09 Todd Landman Yeah, and it really does hit the question of liberty versus public health and involves this question of proportionate response, right. And so the human rights framework often talks about proportionality, as well as reasonableness as well as of a certain, you know, time bound duration. So it's possible to rescind on particular rights commitments for a particular period of time, if that rescindment of rights is or taking away rights is proportionate to the threat that one faces. And of course, massive debates here in the UK about this, there's a very strong lobby that's advocating against the passports, another lobby that's advocating for them, and it is down almost to the individual user to give consent to those passports and move about planet Earth. But those who do not give their consent and want to move around planet Earth without demonstrating whatever status they have, they may in themselves be putting others at risk. But the probability of that risk is different, you know, because I could have all the passports I like and still be a contagion. And somebody couldn't have any of the passports or not be a contagion. So it's these huge tensions throughout this whole debate. 17:16 Martin Scheinin You mentioned, you mentioned proportionality, and I think there's an important issue that I want to address in the sense that many a human rights laws scholar is happy with proportionality. Ultimately, human rights would be a question of balancing between the competing public interest and the intrusion that results into an individual's human rights. But I belong to the, let's say, more fundamentalist school of scholars who say, there are also bright lines, there's something called the core or the inviolable ethics of every human right. So proportionality just does not justify every intrusion. And and that's an important task also in the context of COVID, that we must first define the ultimate limit up to which proportionality is taken into account. And there are applications of this approach include, including the two Max Schrems cases by the European Court of Justice, the highest EU court, where they did not conduct a proportionality assessment because they said this is mass surveillance, which is prohibited as as a bright line. I endorse that approach, that human rights are not only about balancing of competing values, they are also about protecting the inviolability of certain foundational principles and they belong to what I call the grammar. 18:39 Todd Landman I see, so this word grammar then becomes very important for you. And I suppose it almost invites you to deconstruct the grammar, and then reconstruct the grammar. So what can you tell us about the grammar of human rights? I'm very interested in this concept. 18:54 Martin Scheinin Well, my British Academy project lists ten antinomies or challenges, which are related to human rights in the digital realm, but at the same time, go back to these foundational principles, concepts, structures of human rights law, and what I mentioned about the essence inviolability of the essence versus proportionality is one. There's the question of the private versus the public actor as agent, and also as the duty bearer. There's the question of territorial versus extraterritorial action by states. And there's also the distinction between derogation and limitation. Limitations are in normal times. And they must be proven proportionate, whereas derogations are exceptions in times of crisis. And I think COVID has provided us an opportunity, us an opportunity to look once again into the question, are there different limits, a different definition of the inviolable core, for instance, when a country is in a state of emergency? These are just examples. 20:04 Todd Landman Yeah, they're great examples. We interviewed an anti-terror expert, Tom Parker in the last series, and he made this reference very similar set of things that you just said there. And, you know, this notion of limits is really important. But also he's worried that there's a kind of state bureaucracy, a state apparatus that has been developed for this particular public emergency. And he's worried that that will become permanent, that that that it won't fade away, it won't be brought back down again, after a period of duration, and that we are in a sense, living with a new kind of surveillance that will will not go away. What do you say to that? 20:40 Martin Scheinin I have worked on surveillance in an earlier EU funded research programme called SURVEILLE, which developed multi-dimensional and multidisciplinary methodology for assessing the utility of surveillance technologies versus their human rights harm. And we could show that the most intrusive methods of surveillance often were only marginally effective in actually producing the legitimate aim or benefit towards the legitimate aim. It was a semi-empirical, largely largely based on hypothetical or modelling situations. But nevertheless, we had the multidisciplinary teams working on it and could show that this technological hype around surveillance is unfounded, that traditional methods of policing, footwork and human intelligence deliver a much better proportionality approach to assessing the Human Rights harm in relation to the actual benefit obtained toward national security. There are many reasons why surveillance technology and other digital innovations tend to perpetuate then. And we can speak on the surveillance industrial complex. And I'm also sure that there as issues of mission creep and function creep, and many of the changes we see in the realm of treatment of sensitive health data will remain after COVID-19 is over. So something is lost. Or at least there's a risk that something is lost every time a special situation justifies resorting to exceptional measures. 22:31 Todd Landman And just in closing, I want to ask you a final question, which is you spend your time as Global Professor, you engage with academics at Oxford and the rest of the world in this area, and you come up with a new grammar for human rights - what next? What's the goal here? Is it to then advocate to the United Nations system, the European system to change laws, regulations and practices? Do you think you could have that kind of leverage to make the changes required to address the very deep issues that you've raised with us today? 22:59 Martin Scheinin Well, I, I did mentioned the surveillance project where I was involved. That gives a good example of what an eternal optimist who is a serious academic can achieve. So we developed this methodology for the multidisciplinary assessment of surveillance technologies. And we delivered our reports and on 29th of October 2015, the European Parliament adopted a resolution where they commended the methodology developed in the SURVEILLE project and recommended it for use. Two weeks later, happened Bataclan, one of the most dreadful terrorist attacks in Europe and everything was forgotten. Nothing came out of it. And that's the pendulum, especially in issues of terrorism, that there are all kinds of good efforts to develop constraints safeguards and make proposal about human rights compatibility. But when panic strikes, it goes down the drain. I am an eternal optimist, and I think that human rights law has to engage has to evolve and that it will be able to deliver outcomes that both make meaningful difference as to the facts on the ground, and at the same time, are able to correspond to the intuitions of ordinary people with a common sense, there is a certain legitimacy requirement that what we deliver must be backed by the people as acceptable. And I think we can cope with that. But we cannot cope with irrational panic. That's the big problem in this work. 24:37 Todd Landman Amazing. Yeah, I share your optimism, I'm afraid. And you know, the incremental gains you do you do face setbacks from these external threats panics, as you as you call them, and the perception of the disruption that's coming, but at the same time holding true to human rights and the philosophies that sit behind human rights, and then also this thing just about legitimacy, I think, you know, if we go back to Max Faber and his legal rational sources of authority, in where legitimacy comes from that acceptance that people think this is reasonable, proportional and something we can live with, but as you say, if there's overreach, mission, creep, panic and and other elements of state action and non-state action I might add, then the acceptability and legitimacy comes into question. So it's just been unbelievable talking to you and hearing your insights about this in the direction that you've taken our conversation today. So much to think about, you're in the middle of the project. We look forward to, you know, the results that you get at the end of the project and really seeing that that output and those conversations that will come from what you discover, but for now, I just want to thank you for appearing on this episode of The Right Track. 25:53 Chris Garrington Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

Human rights in a digital world: the pitfalls and positives

THE RAGGED EDGE RADIO ....with Russ Dizdar

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 10, 2021 24:18

In Episode 1 of Series 7 of The Rights Track, Todd is in conversation with Ben Lucas, Managing Director of the University of Nottingham's Data-Driven Discovery Initiative (3DI). Together they discuss the threat to human rights posed by aspects of a digital world and the opportunities it can create for positive change. Transcript Todd Landman 0:00 Welcome to The Rights Track podcast which gets the hard facts about the human rights challenges facing us today. In series seven, we're discussing human rights in a digital world. I'm Todd Landman, in our first episode of the series, I'm delighted to be joined by Ben Lucas. Ben is Managing Director of 3DI at the University of Nottingham. A hub for world class data science research, and a funder for this series of The Rights Track. To kick off the series, we're talking about some of the challenges and opportunities created in a data driven society, and particularly what all that means for our human rights. So welcome on this episode of The Rights Track. Ben Lucas 0:37 Thank you so much for having me. Todd Landman 0:38 It's great to have you here, Ben. And I guess I want to start with just to kind of broad open question. We've been living with the internet for a number of years now. When I first came to United Kingdom, we barely had the internet and suddenly the web exploded, and it is a wonderful thing. It's transformed our lives in so many different ways. But it's also created major challenges for human rights, law and practice around the world. So my first question really is, what are the key concerns? Ben Lucas 1:04 I think that the internet is perhaps not bad in and of itself, and in that regard, it's very similar to any other new and emerging technology. We look at something like the automobile there's obviously dangers that having cars on roads introduced into society, but there's also a lot of good as far as a boost in quality of life and economic productivity and so forth. I think the central challenge and one that's perhaps getting exponentially more challenging is the fact that often more now than ever, digital technologies are moving a lot faster than what the regulatory environment can keep up with. And also very importantly, humankind's ability to fully understand the potential consequences of misuse or what happens when things go wrong. Todd Landman 1:50 So in some ways, it is interesting, you could look at Moore's Law for example, technology increases exponentially and this point you're making about the inability for the regulatory environment to keep up with that. I think that's a crucial insight you've given us because human rights in a way is a regulatory environment. We have international standards; we have domestic standards. Ben Lucas 2:08 Correct. Todd Landman 2:09 We have de jure protection of rights, de facto enjoyment of rights, but oftentimes, there's a great tension or gap between those two things. And when new issues emerge, we either need a new standard, or we need a new interpretation of those standards to be able to apply to that new thing. So, we're going to call the Internet a new thing for now and it actually, this dual use of technology is also interesting to me. When barbed wire was invented it's a great thing because you can suddenly close off bits of land and keep animals in one place. And it's wonderful for agriculture, but it's also a way to control property. And as we know, the enclosure laws in this country led to quite a lot of political conflict. But if we get back to the questions then about, you know, positive and negative aspects of the Internet, what else can you share with us? Ben Lucas 2:50 There are examples such as work that colleagues in the Rights Lab are doing, for example, on the use of the Internet and in particular social media, for exploitation. So, child exploitation, for example. There's also terrible examples of migrant exploitation. People who join groups thinking it's going to be a community to help them to get a job in another place. And that turns out to be quite dodgy, so that there's examples that are just blatantly you know, bad and terrible and terrible things that happen on the internet. But then there are other examples that are, I think, much more complicated, especially around the transmission of information and new emergent keywords we're seeing around misinformation and disinformation. The power that user generated content can have to help mobilise activists and protests for good for example, to get information out when journalists can't get in. Then the flip side of that is the potential exploitation by nefarious actors who are obviously spreading information that potentially damages democracies and otherwise stable and important institutions around the world. The other thing I would sort of cite here would be work by our colleague, Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick with his book, The Good Drone. That's a really interesting contrast here. So, a book about the use of UAVs and where on the one hand, if we think about a UAV that's armed. Todd Landman 4:12 That's an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for our listeners. Ben Lucas 4:14 Yeah, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. And if we think about one of those drones that's armed and also potentially autonomous moving forward to some that's potentially you know, very, very scary. On the other hand, this same basic sort of technology platform could provide cheap and accessible technology to help mobilise social movements to help journalists for example. And so I think any debate around the good and bad of technology, that there's some really interesting and very complicated contrast involved. Todd Landman 4:43 And you know, you see drones being used for beautiful visual displays over you know, presidential inaugurations, for example. Ben Lucas 4:48 Exactly. Todd Landman 4:49 You see this big, colourful display, but that same swarm technology of UAVs can actually be used for combat for warfare, etc. And we know from the work on human rights, modern slavery and human trafficking that, you know, taking pictures of the Earth using satellites with swarms of satellites is very good, but then that can also be used for for ill as well and I think that challenge of the dual use of technology will always be with us. I wonder now if we could just turn to another set of questions, which is, is the difference between life online and life offline. Do we think that human rights rules are different for online and offline life or roughly the same? Ben Lucas 5:25 A lot of people argue that online is a mirror of offline, although there are those potentially really negative amplification effects involved in the bad stuff that happens in the real world so to speak, when you move it online because you can take something that's very small and suddenly make it very big. I think there's a degree of it really just being a mirror and potentially an amplifier for the offline. Again, I think the central problem when we talk about human rights and the general protection of users of the Internet, is again really this fact that the technology is just moving so fast. That regulation both it's you know, how it's developed, initiated, interpreted going forward, the tech just moves so much faster. And then I think what we're seeing now is really kind of a shock that internet users get after the fact but it's maybe the sort of Newton's third law effect. You know, tech moved so fast was so aggressive and so free in the way it kind of there was sort of a wild west of how we, you know, captured and used data. And now we're just sort of experiencing the backlash that you would expect. One other sort of complicated dimension here is that we really need regulation to protect users of the internet but of course, that's then balanced against examples we see around the world of the way the internet's regulated being used to oppress and suppress populations. There's a really important balance that we need to achieve there. We need to protect everybody online. We need to preserve freedom of access to information, freedom of speech. We don't want people to get hurt online, but we also don't want to do that in an oppressive way. Maybe one thing that's really different as far as human rights online and offline, will emerge in the future around artificial intelligence. The big question I think that researchers in artificial intelligence are dealing with be they folks who are working on the algorithmics or be they the colleagues in law who are working on the ethics and the legal side of it. The really big question is around sort of transparency and tractability what's actually happening in this magic algorithmic box? Can we make sure that people can have appropriate checks and balances on what these you know this this new class of machines is doing? Todd Landman 7:32 Well, it's interesting because there is this observation about people who, who who use AI and design those algorithms that the AI solution and the algorithm that's been designed reflects many of the biases of the coder in the first place. Ben Lucas 7:44 Exactly. Todd Landman 7:425 And who are these coders? Well, they come from a particular social demographic and therefore you're replicating their positionality through AI, yet AI is presented as this neutral machine that simply calculates things and gives you the best deals on whatever platform you might be shopping. Ben Lucas 7:58 Precisely. And a lot of these you know, if we think about machine learning in general, where we're training an algorithm, essentially a type of machine to do something it involves a training set that involves a training data set. Where is that coming from? Who's putting it together? Exactly what biases are present in that? And now, and this is probably one of the most pronounced differences when we think about sort of human rights offline and online. I think a really big issue going forward is going to be that of AI discrimination, basically, and we're seeing that in everything from financial services - you know a machine is making a decision about does somebody get a loan, does somebody get a good credit score, applications and facial recognition technology. Who are they trying to find? What are they trying to do with that tech? And this AI discrimination issue is going to be one of the, one of the key things about that online/offline contrast. Todd Landman 8:50 Yeah, you know running right through all of our human rights law discourses, one about you know no discrimination, right that there should not be discrimination by type of person. Ben Lucas 8:59 Correct. Todd Landman 9:00 And yet, we know in practice, there's law discrimination already. And in a way AI can only amplify or maybe accelerate some of that discrimination. So it's a good cautionary tale about you know, the, the, shall we say, the naive embrace of AI as a as a solution to our problems. I wonder if I might just move forward a little bit about the cross-border nature of the internet, one of the promises of the internet is that nation state boundaries disappear, that people can share information across space and time we've just lived through a pandemic, but we're able to talk to each other in meetings all around the world without having to get in any kind of form of transport. But what sort of things should we thinking about in terms of the cross-border nature of the internet? Ben Lucas 9:38 I think that I would encourage all listeners today to go back to Alain de Botton's book, The News; a User's Manual, and also some of the talks he gave around that period, I think around 2014. We can have a totally new interpretation of some of those very relevant ideas, where we are now in the present and I'm talking about what some people are calling the threat of the post truth era. We've seen a completely unprecedented explosion in the information that we have access to the ability to suddenly take somebody's very small idea, good or bad, and project to a massive audience. But with that comes, you know, the vulnerabilities around misinformation and disinformation campaigns and the threat that that leads to, you know, potentially threatening democracies threatening, you know, various populations around the world. And another important branch of work that we're doing is studying campaigns and user generated content, and actually studying what's being said, at scale within these large audiences. We've done quite some work, Todd and I are with the Rights Lab for example, looking at analysing campaigns on Twitter. And this really comes down to trying to get into, exactly as you would study any other marketing campaign, looking at how do you cut through clutter? How do you achieve salience? But then also through to more practical functional matters of campaigns such as you know, driving guaranteed region awareness, policy influence donations, but we're just doing that at a much larger scale, which is facilitated, obviously, by the fact that we have access to social media data. Todd Landman 11:16 It's unmediated supply of information that connects the person who generates the content to the person who consumes it. Ben Lucas 11:23 Yeah. Todd Landman 11:24 Earlier you were talking about the media you're talking about academia and others, you know, there's always some sort of accountability peer review element to that before something goes into the public domain. Whereas here you're talking about a massive democratisation of technology, a massive democratisation of content generation, but actually a collapse in the mediated form of that so that anybody can say anything, and if it gains traction, and in many ways, if it's repeated enough, and enough enough people believe it's actually true. And of course, we've seen that during the pandemic, but we see it across many other elements of politics, society, economy, etc, and culture. And yet, you know, there we are in this emerging post truth era, not really sure what to do about that. We see the proliferation of media organisations, the collapse of some more traditional media organisations, like broadsheet newspapers and others have had to change the way they do things and catch up. But that peer review element, that kind of sense check on the content that's being developed is gone in a way. Ben Lucas 12:18 Yep and it's potentially very scary because there's no editor in chief for, you know, someone's social media posts. On top of that, they probably have or could potentially have a far greater reach than a traditional media outlet. And I think the other thing is, I mean, we were kind of for warned on many of these issues. The NATO Review published quite some interesting work on Disinformation and Propaganda in the context of hybrid warfare, I think around sort of starting in 2016, or ramping up in 2016, which is, you know, also very fascinating read. And then the flip side again of this connectivity that we have now, I guess the good side, you know, is when user generated content is used in a good way. And again, that's examples like, you know, examples we've seen around the world with the mobilisation of protests for good causes or fighting for democracy, grassroots activism, and in particular, that ability to get information out when journalists can't get in. Todd Landman 13:15 You know it's interesting we did a study years ago, colleagues and I, on the the mobilisation against the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and we were particularly interested in the role of social media and Facebook platform for doing that. And it turned out that a. there was a diaspora living outside the country interested in the developments within the country but within the country, those who were more socially active on these platforms more likely to turn up to an event precisely because they could work out how many other people were going to go so it solves that collective action problem of you know, my personal risk and cost associated protesting is suddenly reduced because I know 100 other people are going to go. And you know, we did a systematic study of the motivations and mobilisation of those folks, you know, try, trying to oust the Ben Ali regime, but it gets to the heart of what you're saying that this this you know, user generated content can have a tech for good or a social good element to it. Ben Lucas 14:08 Exactly. And I think another important note here, that's maybe some sort of upside is that, you know, there are a lot of academics in a lot of different fields working on understanding this massive proliferation of connectivity as well. In a kind of, I guess, strange silver lining to many of the new problems that this technology may or may not have caused is that it's also given rise to the emergence of new fields like so we're talking about Infodemiology, now we've got some amazing studies happening on the subjects of echo chambers and confirmation bias and these types of type of themes and I think it's really given rise to some really interesting science and research and I have some some confidence that we've got, even if we don't have those, again, editors in chief on social media, I have confidence because we certainly have some, you know, wonderful scientists coming at this scenario from a lot of different angles, which I think also helps to sort of moderate and bring some of the downsides to the public attention. Todd Landman 15:04 Yeah, and let me jump to research now, because I'm really interested in the type of research that people are doing in 3DI here at the university. Can you just tell us a little bit about some of the projects and how they're utilising this new infodemiology as you call it, or new grasp and harnessing of these technologies? Ben Lucas 15:23 Yeah, so 3DI as the data driven discovery initiative, we're basically interested in all things applied data science. We have, I think, quite a broad and really wonderful portfolio of activity that we represent here at the University of Nottingham, in our Faculty of Social Science. Faculty of Social Sciences. This is everything from economics, to law, to business, to geography, and everything in between. We take a very broad exploratory approach to the kinds of questions that we're interested in solving, I would say. But we do tend to focus a lot on what we call local competitive advantage. So we're very interested in the region that we operate - Nottinghamshire - sectors and industry clusters where they have questions that can be answered via data science. Todd Landman 16:08 What sort of questions? What sort of things are they interested in? Ben Lucas 16:11 This is everything from the development of new financial services to really driving world class, new practice in digital marketing, developing and sort of advancing professions like law, where there is a very big appetite to bring in new sort of tech and data driven solutions into that space but a need to achieve those new sort of fusions and synergies. So that, that side is obviously very, you know, commercially focused, but very importantly, a big part of our portfolio is SDG focus. So Sustainable Development Goal focused, and we've got, I think, some really fascinating examples in that space. My colleagues in our N-Lab, which is a new demographic laboratory, based in the business school, are working on food poverty, for example. And they're doing this in what I think is really exciting way. They've teamed up with a food sharing app. So, this is very much driven by the start-up world. It's very much a marketplace offering. The platform is set up to combat, hopefully both hunger, but also food waste. So, we're talking SDG 2, and we're talking SDG 12, sustainable production and consumption. And they've then been able to expand this work not just from understanding the platform - how it works, not just helping the platform, how it can work and function better. But they've been able to take that data from the private sector and apply it to questions in the public sector. So, they are doing a lot of wonderful work. Todd Landman 17:37 So, people have a bit of surplus food, and they go on to the app and they say I've got an extra six eggs, and someone else goes on the app and says I need six eggs and then there's some sort of exchange, almost like an eBay for food. Ben Lucas 17:47 Exactly. Todd Landman 17:48 But as you say, people who are hungry get access to food for much less than going to the shop and buying it and. Ben Lucas 17:55 Or free. Todd Landman 17:56 And people with the extra six eggs don't chuck them out at the end of the week. They've actually given them to somebody right? Ben Lucas 18:01 Exactly. Todd Landman 18:02 And then from that you generate really interesting data that can be geo-located and filled into Maps, because then you can work out where the areas of deprivation then where people have, say, a higher probability of seeking less expensive food. Ben Lucas 18:15 Precisely. Yeah. And I think that's also a good segue into you know, so one of the other flagship projects we have is 3DI, which is tracktheeconomy.ac.uk where we've been looking at, again, taking data from the private sector, but also government data and looking at how economic deprivation might have been exacerbated or not or how it changed. In particular focused on COVID and what sort of shocks that brought about, but with the intention of taking that forward. And the biggest sort of revelations that we've had working on that project have been really around the need for better geographical granularity. The fact that a lot of our national statistics or you know, marketing research assessments that are made by companies are based on you know, bigger geographical chunks. Actually, if we can get more granular and get into some of that heterogeneity that might exist at smaller geographical levels, you know, that's that's really, really important. That really, really changes a lot of policy formulation, sort of scenarios and questions that policy makers have. Todd Landman 19:19 One of the big problems when when you aggregate stuff, you lose that specificity and precisely the areas that are in most need. So I wonder in this research that your your colleagues been doing and that you've been doing, you know, what's the end game? What are we working towards here? And how is that going to help us in terms of it from a human rights perspective? Ben Lucas 19:41 I think speaking from a personal perspective, when I was a student when I was first taught economics, I was taught in a way that really highlighted that this is you know, economics was was just something that everyone as a citizen should know even if you don't want to become an economist or an econometrician, you need to know it as a citizen. The same now very much applies when we talk about technologies that might not be familiar to all folks like AI data science. I think there's a lot to be said, as far as what I would say is a big sort of mission for 3DI is to really boost the accessibility of technical skills to really benefit people in terms of prosperity, but also just in terms of understanding as citizens what's actually going on. You know, if machines are going to be making decisions for us in the future, that we have a right to understand how those decisions are made. Also, if we think about other challenges, in the sort of AI and automation space around, you know, potentially people losing jobs because it's become automated. I think we have a right to know how and why that is. I think another big sort of an extension of that point is really in learning and getting technical skills out there to people for you know, potentially benefiting prosperity and the labour market. We really need to keep that very tightly paired with critical thinking skills. You know, we're very good as academics, thinking about things and breaking them down and analysing them especially you know, we as social scientists, you know, coding is probably going to be language of the future to borrow your quote Todd, but who's going to use that coding and what for? So I think we need to keep people in a good mindset and be using this this this technology and this power for good. And then the last point would be as something that's been done very well on this podcast in the past, is getting people to think both researchers and again, definitely citizens to think about the inextricably intertwined nature of the Sustainable Development Goals. You know, so for us at 3DI we're looking for those problems at scale, where we have measurements at scale, where we can do data science and crack big challenges, but I think whether you're doing you know, much more focused work or work with the SDGs at scale, it's all really interconnected. An obvious example, what is climate change going to do for you know, potentially displacing populations and the flow on, the horrible flow on effects that's going to have? So I really, I think that's yes, sort of our our mission, I would say, moving forward. Todd Landman 22:07 That's fantastic. So you've covered a lot of ground, Ben, it's been fascinating discussion, you know, from the dual use of technology and this age old question of the good and the bad of any kind of new technological advance. You've covered all things around the, you know, the mobilizational potential problems with post truth era. The expanse and proliferation of multiple sources of information in a sense in the absence of of that mediated or peer reviewed element. And this amazing gap between the speed of technology and the slowness of our regulatory frameworks, all of which have running right through them major challenges for the human rights community. So we're really excited about this series because we're going to be talking to a lot of people around precisely the issues you set out for us and many more. In the coming months we've got Martin Sheinin who is a great human rights expert, former UN Special Rapporteur, but now a global, British Academy global professor at the Bonavero Institute at the University of Oxford working on precisely these challenges for human rights law, and this new digital world. And that's going to be followed by a podcast with Diane Coyle, who's the Bennett Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge. It's interesting because she wrote a book in 1997 called The Weightless World, which is about this emerging digital transformation coming to the economy, and has now written a new book called Cogs and Monsters. It's a great take on the modern study of economics and the role of digital transformation. But for now, I just want to thank you, Ben, for joining us. It's exciting to hear about the work of 3DI. We appreciate the support of 3DI for this series of The Rights Track. We look forward to the guests and I think by the end of the series we would like to have you back on for some reflections about what we've learned over this series of the Rights Track. Ben Lucas 23:50 Happy to. Thank-you for having me. Christine Garrington 23:53 Thanks for listening to this episode of The Rights Track, which was presented by Todd Landman and produced by Chris Garrington of Research Podcasts with funding from 3DI. You can find detailed show notes on the website at www.RightsTrack.org. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts to access future and earlier episodes.

Making Meaning with Dr. Lora Taub, Part 1

Making Meaning

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2021 18:32

Lora Taub, Dean for Digital Learning at Muhlenberg College joins host, Jordan Noyes to detail the history of digital learning initiatives at Muhlenberg and to introduce the 3DI framework guiding the work there.

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Making Meaning with Dr. Lora Taub, Part 2

Making Meaning

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 4, 2021 19:04

Lora returns to continue discussing the 3DI framework with host Jordan Noyes.

taub making meaning 3di

150: ROCK THE BOAT with Richard Hagan: Boating Industry News

Yachting Channel

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2021 17:47

This week, we check out a bunch of new boat models from manufacturers all over the world, including: The Technohull T7, the Sirena 68, the Vicem 50 Classic and the beast from Florida - the MTI V 50. And in industry news, we visit British yard Oyster yachts which has returned to profitability following its 2018 insolvency, and we check out North Sails and its revolutionary 3Di sail making tech that has just been selected for use in the Olympic games. Finally, we find out all about Plastic Odyssey: A globetrotting environmental mission to reduce plastic in our oceans!Did you know that Rock the Boat reaches roughly 10,000 enthusiastic boaters every week? You won't find that kind of exposure anywhere else! We are actively seeking sponsorships. Contact me or Yachting International Radio to jump on board and sponsor the show, we'd love to hear from you.I'm a specialist boating industry marketing copywriter. Contact me on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-hagan-47769683/Or visit my website for more info: https://richardhagan.com/Credits:Music: https://bensound.com/Mercury Marine: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIrW5ZZnd5oBXbvYIuXh6kgYamaha Outboards: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2mjYOYT1p3fqGgHK2R3HcAMarine Technology Inc: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-xVl1v74fA3uw_QwASwDlQNautical Network: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJIufsLllvA1W_XvbIBg9mgBalearic Yacht Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRTm9XK7UT2bprv4UrCrbcAOyster Yachts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWbKU0WXPwqj1GKaF2G6gngSimrad Yachting: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClRRYmBF56xzJU0FNSPhrVgGillette World Sport: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq8Hhh0A9qecdBtKP_OXA4AMackay Boats: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl_V5og03cwHQsnYA_I17qg49er Sailing: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7KntoIQ8v86IEhWQqHvBQOlympics: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTl3QQTvqHFjurroKxexy2QVicem Yachts: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVWspEcase_b1ai8A577AxgSouthern Wind: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA2tEWqM8vlfQLB86FNdVtwPlastic Odyssey: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4UNxaIW9ODIuLGJaTrhnowTechnohull: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCli74BiILS_4SNGhZQNt_3QNorth Sails: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiZBv95wXrxliIt-706aXHQRock the Boat airs every Wednesday night 19:00 CET.#yachting #yacht #yachtlife #sailing #yachts #boat #boating #luxury #superyacht #luxuryyacht #boats #boatlife #sea #yachtdesign #luxurylifestyle #yachtlifestyle #yachtworld #megayacht #yachtcharter #motoryacht #sail #travel #yachtinglife #superyachts #sailboat #sailinglife #ocean #yachtinglifestyle #vlog #yachtinginternationalradio

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Be Done With Being Defeated / Share This Podcast On Your Social Media

The Prodigal Son

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021 23:09

February 22 2021 Monday Be Done With Being Defeated / Share This Podcast On Your Social Media Ephesians 1:15-23 NLT 'Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance. I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church. And the church is his body; it is made full and complete by Christ, who fills all things everywhere with himself.' Ephesians 3:14-21 NLT 'When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God's love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.' Mark 10:29-30 100 Fold Return… Isaiah 52:12 God Will Go Before You And Watch Your Back As You Go... https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2015/07/07/top-7-bible-verses-for-when-you-feel-defeated/?back=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fclient%3Dsafari%26as_qdr%3Dall%26as_occt%3Dany%26safe%3Dactive%26as_q%3DI+am+done+with+being+defeated+Bible%26channel%3Daplab%26source%3Da-app1%26hl%3Den Matthew 23:37 God Desires To Protect Us(Get Into His Perfect Will For That Protection)… Romans 8:31 If God Be For Us Who Can Be Against Us… Galatians 3:13-14 God's Promise To His Born Again Children… Failure Is Not An Option... Romans 10:9-10 Salvation… Acts 10:34 God Is No Respecter Of Person… Luke 15:10 Heaven Rejoices Over One Person That Repents And Is Born Again… John 3:16 Believe On The Lord Jesus Christ Your Lord And Savior… Mark 10:29-30 100 Fold Return… Share This Podcast On Your Social Media Website https://the-prodigalson.com Email tstacyhayes@gmail.com YouVersion Bible App https://my.bible.comi iOS App https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prodigal-son/id1450529518?mt=8 … Android App https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.wizzard.android.prodical Social Media https://www.facebook.com/The-Prodigal-SON-209069136315959/ https://www.facebook.com/noreligion1511/ https://twitter.com/noreligion1511 https://www.instagram.com/noreligion1511/ https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCPx4s1CLkSYef6mp4dSuU4w/featured

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DAY 27 OF 31 DAYS ABLAZE SURVIVOR SRA

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2020 62:36

From the LIVE NOTES TODAY 1. ITS NOT YOUR FAULT • You did not do this • You could not stop it • A victim is a victim 2. YOUR NOT INSANE • The life • The voices • The evil • The memories • The feelings 3. THE BLAME IS LAID AT FEET OF EVIL HEARTS SIN & SATAN • Its all rooted in radical evil • Sin is real and always destructive • Satan, demons and their agenda is rea • They know the laws of engagement Auschwitz is a reminder and statue 4. SEEK THE REAL JESUS & ALL THAT HE HAS • The real Jesus knows injustice, pain, rejection • The real Jesus is their reason against you • The real Jesus has come for you • The real Jesus has triumphed • The real Jesus knows you as creator and redeemer 5. THE CHURCH MAINLY …. DOESN’T KNOW • Jesus warned ‘ an evil one would come in the dark’ • The church is made up of the forgiven, healed saved • Can become the power house it is meant to be • You can tell them, they will learn and some will rise 6. PAY DAY SOME DAY FOR THOSE WHO DID ALL THIS • God knows every detail • Like in Ezekiel 8… what they did is an Abomination • God would forgive them… the only way to deal with it • No one gets away… now and the great white throne 7. DO ALL YOU CAN • Know who did this • Know who can totally REDEEM and lead you to glory • Trust • Be honest • Be safe • Repent • Remember ………God will lead you to triumph Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many lives. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=i+am+a+survivor+zac&&view=detail&mid=4B024E3755313B81D4D14B024E3755313B81D4D1&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Di%2520am%2520a%2520survivor%2520zac%26qs%3Dn%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D-1%26pq%3Di%2520am%2520a%2520survivor%2520zac%26sc%3D4-19%26sk%3D%26cvid%3D0DFE9A286CCD4D53B9201EDB89A2B833

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Income vs. Outcome on YouTube [S2E07]

The Enthusiasm Project

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2020 47:07

Over the past 2.5 years my YouTube channel has started to organically generate revenue, which is kind of amazing. So this week I go through the ways Heather I make money on YouTube and the different ways you might be able to effectively monetize your own channel. We also dispel a few myths about that sweet sweet ad revenue.Heather's Channel:https://youtube.com/heatherjustcreateLeave a message and be included in a future episode! https://anchor.fm/enthusiasm—— Gear of the Week ——Last week I highlighted the Edelkrone Sliderone, and this week I've been experimenting with the 3D printed version of Edlekrone's FlexTILT head. Basically, for $30 you get a box of parts and access to downloadable print files to make your own awesome tripod head.Here's a link to that: https://edelkrone.com/products/flextilt-head-3dI also made a video about the process (it was a really fun project!):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVi2hQfoR7o

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Ajay Dhaka PhD

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 7, 2019 36:01

Ajay Dhaka (UW) talks about distinctions in itch (pruritis) and pain (nociception) somatosensation, and his discovery of overlapping mechanisms for these sensations via direct activation of different populations of TRP channel-expressing somatosensory neurons in zebrafish. He also talks to us about developing zebrafish larvae as a behavioral screening tool for analgesic drug discovery. Duration: 35 minutesDiscussants:(in alphabetical order)Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA)Lindsey Macpherson (Asst Prof, UTSA)acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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Michelle T. Diaz PhD

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2019 35:56

Michelle Diaz (Penn State) discusses how language features might be organized in the neural architecture and her structural and behavioral studies of how language production changes over the lifespan. Duration: 35minutesDiscussants:(in alphabetical order)Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA)Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA)Nicole Wicha (Professor, UTSA)Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA)acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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Ottavio Arancio MD PhD

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2019 41:49

Ottavio Arancio discusses the problematic aspects of therapeutic strategies built upon the amyloid hypothesis of Parkinson’s disease, and his work defining the synaptic effects of soluble beta amyloid and tau oligomers in the etiopathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. Duration: 39 minutesDiscussants:(in alphabetical order)Hyoung-gon Lee (Assoc Prof, UTSA)Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA)George Perry (Semmes Chair, UTSA)Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA)acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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Brian Kaspar PhD

Podcast Orange – meinsportpodcast.de

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 10, 2019 45:36

Brian Kaspar (AveXis Inc) talks about the realities and promise of building a single dose gene transfer therapy for treating the prime gene defect in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type I. He discusses his company’s modified adeno-associated virus 9 approach to human gene therapy that is currently in highly promising clinical trials, for SMA, and in development for Rett syndrome and one variant of Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. Duration: 45 minutesDiscussants:(in alphabetical order)Jenny Hsieh (Semmes Foundation Chair, UTSA)Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA)Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA)acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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#29 | Steiger- oder Tempelwald

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2019 50:17

Über die Zukunft der BSG Wismut Gera gibt es derzeit viele Gerüchte aber nur wenige Fakten. Dies versuchen Remmidemmi, Calli und Paparazzo Orange in der 29. Ausgabe des PODCAST ORANGE zu ändern. Die drei BSG-Fans diskutieren die geplanten Satzungsänderungen sowie die Auswirkungen der aktuellen wirtschaftlichen Situation. Shownotes Christl aus der Oberliga in die Landesklasse West (7. Liga) SV Merkur 06 Oelsnitz: Der 19-jährige Maximilian Christl ist der einzige Neuzugang bei Merkur Oelsnitz in der Winterpause. Auf seine Geraer Zeit angesprochen winkte der Schwarzschopf ab und möchte nicht drüber reden. Er sucht eine neue Herausforderung, möchte Merkur im Abstiegskampf helfen und sich damit wieder für höhere Aufgaben ins Gespräch bringen. Denn das der Junge Potenzial hat, steht außer Frage. Dies bestätigte auch der Geraer Trainer Frank Müller in der Ost Thüringer Zeitung (OTZ), in dem er Christl als guten Fußballer mit entsprechender Grundausbildung bezeichnete. https://svmerkur.de/index.php/aktuelles/133-nachrichten-hinweis/655-nur-ein-neuzugang-bei-merkur Weis trifft zur Premiere für Preußen Thüringer Allgemeine (Markus Fromm): Trotz eisiger Abendtemperaturen hat Fußball-Verbandsligist FSV Preußen BadLangensalza seinen zweiten Test vor Rückrundenstart erfolgreich gemeistert und Landesklässler FC An der Fahner Höhe II klar und deutlich mit 10:1 besiegt. Gegen die mit fünf Ex-Preußen Ehegötz, Martin, Zitschke, Rost und Heukrodt angetretenen Gäste, erzielte Neuzugang Carsten Weis ( Wismut Gera ) in der vierten Minute seinen Einstandstreffer. Er hatte einfach aus 22 Metern abgezogen und den Ball im linken unteren Eck versenkt. https://muehlhausen.thueringer-allgemeine.de/web/lokal/sport/detail/-/specific/Weis-trifft-zur-Premiere-fuer-Preussen-988334393 Testspiele Sa., 26.01.19 | BSG Wismut Gera vs. 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig 0:6Mi., 30.01.19 | ZFC Meuselwitz vs. BSG Wismut Gera 5:0Sa., 02.02.19 | BSG Wismut Gera vs. TSV Gera Westvororte 6:3Di., 05.02.19 | ZFC Meuselwitz II vs. BSG Wismut Gera 1:3Sa., 09.02.19 | BSG Wismut Gera vs. SV Blau-Weiß 90 Neustadt/Orla 5:0 Sa., 16.02.19 | FSV Martinroda vs. BSG Wismut Gera 1:5 TA Arnstadt: Zu ungeduldig gegen abgebrühten Oberligisten Zwar fiel das Ergebnis um ein, zwei Tore zu hoch aus, das Spiel zeigte aber auch, was zwischen beiden Spielklassen liegt. Martinroda erreichte zumindest optisch Gleichwertigkeit, in Sachen Cleverness im Abschluss zeigten die Wismut-Männer ihre Klasse und deckten einige Deckungsnachlässigkeiten des ambitionierten Fischer-Teams auf. https://arnstadt.thueringer-allgemeine.de/web/lokal/sport/detail/-/specific/Zu-ungeduldig-gegen-abgebruehten-Oberligisten-1636582842 OTZ Gera: Mit Zuversicht ins Punktspieljahr Das war eine überzeugende Vorstellung. Mit etwas mehr Konzentration im Abschluss können wir hier noch höher gewinnen. Wir haben viele richtig gute Spielzüge gesehen, äußerte sich Torwarttrainer Alexander Just. https://gera.otz.de/web/lokal/sport/detail/-/specific/Mit-Zuversicht-ins-Punktspieljahr-1634582728 Wismut Szene 51: Oh BSG, wohin wird uns`re Reise geh`n? Genau diese Frage muss gerade wieder gestellt werden. Wähnte man sich doch in ruhigen Fahrgewässern, so sickerten in den letzten Wochen doch so einige Hiobsbotschaften durch die sehr engmaschigen Gefilde. Die Gerüchteküche brodelt ordentlich und das leider im negativen Sinne. Wie? Davon habt ihr noch gar nichts mitbekommen? Ja genau da fängt es an. Keiner weiß so recht, wo unsere BSG im Augenblick steht und wohin unsere Reise eben gehen wird! Von den Verantwortlichen hört man nicht viel. Das kennen wir ja aus der Vergangenheit, von der wir dachten, sie hinter uns gelassen zu haben. Und so wundert es sehr, dass von Außenstehenden Szenarien beschrieben werden, die an düstere Jahre sicherlich in anderen Dimensionen und unter anderen Rahmenbedingungen erinnern. Nur mal zwei Schlagworte die immer wieder auftauchen: große wirtschaftliche Probleme und Verzicht auf die aktuelle Spielklasse. Fürstenwalde-Stellungnahme an NOFV MOZ (Kai Beißer): Stefan Prager aus Gera war schon nach etwa vier Minuten beim Anzeigen eines Eckballs für die Gastgeber an der seitlichen Rasenbegrenzung umgeknickt wenig später humpelte der 31 Jahre alte Linienrichter vom Platz Stattdessen wurde über das Stadionmikrofon nach einem Unparteiischen gefahndet worauf sich René Grübel meldete. Der pfeift sonst für den TSV Lobstädt in der Kreisoberliga Leipziger Land Im Fall des verletzten Assistenten will der FSV Union aber eine Stellungnahme beim Nordostdeutschen Fußballverband abgeben, auch wenn Spielleiter Wilfried Riemer sagt, nach seiner Kenntnis haben die Verantwortlichen alles richtig gemacht. Trainer André Meyer: Auf das Ergebnis hatte das keinen entscheidenden Einfluss. Aber wenn der neue Assistent in den sozialen Netzwerken als bekennender Lok-Fan auftaucht, dann hat das zumindest einen Beigeschmack. https://www.moz.de/landkreise/oder-spree/fuerstenwalde/artikel6/dg/0/1/1710823/ Volksstimme: Fußball-Manipulation im großen Stil? Volksstimme: Doch das Halberstadt-Spiel in Babelsberg ist möglicherweise sogar nur ein kleines Puzzleteil eines noch viel größeren Manipulationsskandals, der die gesamte Regionalliga Nordost nachhaltig erschüttern könnte. Nach Volksstimme-Informationen soll nämlich ein deutsch-chinesischer Sport-Vermarkter ebenfalls am 30. November den Versuch unternommen haben, den Regionalliga-Spitzenreiter Chemnitzer FC für eine Zusammenarbeit zu gewinnen. Demnach sollten dauerhaft gemeinsam Spiele manipuliert und Spieler bestochen werden. Volksstimme: Noch pikanter wird der Fall beim genaueren Blick auf den Sport-Vermarkter: Dieser kooperiert nämlich ganz offiziell mit Germania Halberstadt und zwar seit dem 30. November 2018. Der Verein spricht ganz offen von einer langfristig angelegten Kooperation mit dem chinesischen Sportvermarkter. https://www.volksstimme.de/sachsen-anhalt/fussball-fussball-manipulation-im-grossen-stil Stadtverwaltung Halberstadt: Der VfB Germania Halberstadt e.V. hat kürzlich eine langfristig angelegte Kooperation mit dem chinesischen Sportvermarkter Star Movement geschlossen. Ab sofort soll durch diese Zusammenarbeit die Förderung des Nachwuchses noch stärker und effizienter vorangetrieben werden. VfB-Präsident Erik Hartmann: Mit einem derart erfahrenen und international agierenden Vermarkter zu kooperieren ist für den gesamten Verein aufgrund des interessanten Betätigungsfeldes von Star Movement eine große Ehre. Es zeigt aber auch, welche Potentiale hier in der Region noch schlummern. https://www.halberstadt.de/de/presseartikel-details/vfb-germania-schliesst-strategische-kooperation-mit-chinesischem-sport-vermarkter-star-movement.html Lustreisen Spiegel: DFB-Funktionäre haben über Jahre hinweg mit Lustreisen, Zuschüssen zu privaten Feiern und undurchsichtigen Beraterverträgen die Gemeinnützigkeit des größten Sportfachverbandes der Welt gefährdet Trotz der drastischen Kritik hielt der DFB während der Weltmeisterschaft 2014 in Brasilien eine Präsidiumssitzung vor Ort ab. Gesamtkosten: 370.848 Euro. http://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball/dfb-lustreisen-von-funktionaeren-gefaehrden-die-gemeinnuetzigkeit-a-1252291.html Tennis-Borussia-Fans suchen per Annonce neuen Verein Tagesspiegel: Rückmeldungen kamen prompt, den Zuschlag zum Start bekam Blau-Weiss Friedrichshain. Kiezklub, besonderer Sportplatz auf dem Dach der Metro, Kapitän Lauer hat eine Binde in Regenbogenfarben das kam gut an bei den vom eigenen Verein frustrierten Anhängern. Viele tragen in Friedrichshain ihre TeBe-Fankleidung. Und sie haben Durst! Emsige Helfer bringen zweimal Nachschub an Getränken. Anzeige in der heutigen FuWo. #tebe #tebemv pic.twitter.com/5t8Lu4SYz4 DenisRoters (@DenisRoters) February 4, 2019 https://www.tagesspiegel.de/sport/topkulisse-fuer-kreisligist-bw-friedrichshain-200-tebe-fans-steigen-aufs-dach/23969350.html Service für Fans mit Mobilitätseinschränkungen Eintracht Frankfurt startet zusammen mit einem Fahrdienstunternehmen einen ostenlosen Service für schwerbehinderte Fans, die sich ein Bundesliga-Spiel in der Commerzbank-Arena anschauen wollen. https://www.fnp.de/eintracht-frankfurt/eintracht-frankfurt-startet-einzigartigen-service-fans-mobilitaetseinschraenkungen-11738451.html Sieg für Heracles gegen Ajax Musik Wir danken Broke For Free für ihren Song Night Owl (https://brokeforfree.bandcamp.com/album/directionless-ep), der aufgrund der Lizens CC BY 3.0 | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ als Intro verwendet wird. Verpasst keine Folge mehr! Abonniert den PODCAST ORANGE und die neueste Folge wird automatisch in die App auf eurem Smartphone oder auf euren PC geladen. Keine Sorge, dieses Abo kostet nichts. Also nicht lange nachdenken, sondern jetzt auf den passenden Link klicken (RSS-Feed, itunes und Feedburner). Sagt uns Eure Meinung! Das machen ja schon einzelne von euch und wir möchten euch bitten, dass weiter und mehr zu tun. Es kann immer mal passieren, dass und was durchgeht oder Dingen nicht optimal ablaufen. Dann ist es gut, wenn ihr uns darauf hinweist. Am besten mit einem Kommentar auf unserer Internetseite unter der entsprechenden Folge. Dann geht es auch nicht unter. Auch wenn euch etwas gut gefällt, freuen wir uns auf euren Kommentar. Habt ihr Anregungen, Fragen rund um die BSG oder Themenvorschläge? Dann schickt uns diese über die bekannten Kommunikationskanäle oder lasst uns einen Kommentar hier. Natürlich suchen wir auch immer Vorschläge für den Schwachsinn und das Respektding der Woche. Du möchtest deinen Podcast auch kostenlos hosten und damit Geld verdienen? Dann schaue auf www.kostenlos-hosten.de und informiere dich. Dort erhältst du alle Informationen zu unseren kostenlosen Podcast-Hosting-Angeboten.

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Jon Sakata PhD

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2019 37:22

Jon Sakata (McGill) talks about songbird plasticity in the zebrafinch, and how brain circuits transduce social information to modulate the learning and control of birdsong.Duration: 37 minutesDiscussants:(in alphabetical order)Salma Quraishi (Res Asst Prof, UTSA)Todd Troyer (Assoc Prof, UTSA)Charles Wilson (Ewing Halsell Chair, UTSA)acknowledgement: JM Tepper for original music.

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Gravel le matin 23 avril 2018

Gravel le matin

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2018 62:14

Aujourd'hui à l'émission: Annie Gauthier, porte-parole de CAA Québec; Marie-Ève Maheu, journaliste et Pasquale Harrison-Julien, journaliste; Fabrice Gérard, journaliste pour RTBF à Bruxelles; Politique avec Chantal Hébert; Lucie Charlebois, ministre déléguée à la Réadaptation, à la Protection de la jeunesse, à la Santé publique et aux Saines habitudes de vie; Chronique de François Cardinal; Le billet d'humeur d'Eddy King; Alain Lefèvre pour le printemps nordique à la Maison symphonique.

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ASTR209 - Lecture 1 & Outline

ASTRONOMY 209 PODCAST

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 9, 2018

SORRY! NO VIDEO AVAILABLE!! Right off the bat I had technical issues and the video recorder kept crashing.In this lecture we explain the overall content and structure of the course and begin talking about some fundamental concepts in Astronomy

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25. Per Andersson’s Segeldesignresa

Horizontseglarpod

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2016 42:32

25. Horisont får ett samtal i Costa Esmeralda med Svensken Per Andersson numera värdslig Chief of Design på branchledande Noth Sails. Per som bor i USA berättar sin historia, ger oss en djupdykning i hemliga segelteknologier som Cuban Fibers, 3Di, 3DL inklusive en del sköna sidospår. Det här är en episod späckad med information för den som vill veta mer om seglens utveckling i modern tid. Som vanlig får du gärna gilla oss på Facebook, Instagram och intellektuella Twitter!

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Chub Creek 179 - That Lovely Coiffe

Chub Creek Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2015 27:23

After a brief hike somewhere I can’t remember, and some great music by Dustmotes called Insight, we visit with my buddy Gary and two of his daughters, Montana and Amy. Also Montana’s boyfriend Phil, who happens to be the Canadian Skeet Shooting Champion. We also talk about Kim Jong Un’s hair.

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Happy Colostoween!!

Rockett Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2014 51:10

Werrrrr’eeee Back!!! What an incredible show! Interview and Music from Matt Griffo, Bad Teenage Moustache’s New Song “Real Life”, Chris Zaucha guest stars on Winner of the Week, and a dramatic reading of an email about a colostomy bag! Us the Amazon Search Bar at http://www.rockettradio.com and help support your friendly neighborhood podcaster!

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Gold!!

Rockett Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 11, 2013 63:15

Here’s my interview/ get drunk and play bumper pool with my friend Scotty. He runs a successful jewelry store in Chicago. Scotty is both informative and funny....Funformative?Thanks for using the Amazon search bar at http://www.rockettradio.com

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Found Footage II

Rockett Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 26, 2013 31:25

What can one drunk man with an iphone record? Lots!Thanks for supporting the show by using the Amazon Search Bar!http://www.rockettradio.com

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Danl's first Mix!

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 29, 2008

So, I've been doing this thing where I take something that my friends do better then I do, but exploit my knowledge of knowing the blogger password to put MY stuff out there.Exhibit A: DJingI recorded a mix, it's dope, lot's of good songs. Give it a listen, feedback is ALWAYS welcome, reallyTired as hell, Danldownload

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Episode 25

Play Episode Listen Later May 29, 2008

I can't even tell you how long it's been since we've done a podcast (about 5 months). This episode, of average length (unlike the hosts), covers the new Indy, pr0n, and our reflections on the first full year of college. Thrilling.Enjoy, ya'll, it may be another 6 months til another episode!-Danldownload

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Episode 24

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2008

Here it is, back from a 4 month hiatus, the newest episode of the classic, awesome, totally hilarious all the time, 3DICast.We hope you enjoy this 34:40 behemoth as it recaps everything, and I mean EVERYTHING that's happened in the last 4 months.Please, enjoy,it's all for you, the fanscheers, Danldownload

3di

Episode 23

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 1, 2007

Hey ya'll, nother ep of the cast. Ready for your enjoyment. runs about 31 minutes and 30 of them are NOT about Harry Potter. ENJOY!-Danldownload

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Episode 22

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2007

What up ya'll, another fantastical episode comin atcha!This ep we talk about Harry Potter the 5th, two new albums by Fabolous and T.I. (or should I say, TIP), Halo 3, and thehoodinternet.com, couple emails, good timesruntime about 31:00 minutesenjoy!-Danldownload

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Episode 21

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2007

Hey guys, We just saw Transformers and couldn't wait to tell you all about it. Another shortish episode, run times about 21 minutes, maybe it's not that short, ANYWAYS it's a good one, hosts are Danl, Ian, and special guest-host Isabella Fard. Enjoy-Danldownload

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Episode 20

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 1, 2007

Hey hey hey! Another 3DIcast comin at ya from Danl and Ian. A shorter episode this week, runnin about 16:40, but chock full of movie, game, and gadget reviewsenjoy!-Danldownload

3di

Episode 19

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2007

Here's another episode of our world-famous (we've got two listeners in London and Switzerland) podcast. It's a whoppin 34 minutes long but it's definitely worth it, it's got 0% downtime and 100% awesome time. Hosts are Dan'l, Ian, and David, special guest host, Jaime(Jamie?) Rose Lowe. Enjoy!-Danldownload

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Episode 18

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2007

Hey folks! This is a post-a lot of stuff cast so just take a seat and listen. Hosts are Danl, David, and Kate. Runtimes about 21 minutes (i think)enjoy!-Danldownload

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Prom Cast #17

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2007

This is a recap of Prom, the morning after. A lot happened, it's a long episode...runtime's about 23:18...give or take...Enjoy!-Danldownload

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Episode 16

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2007

We done did it again! Pumped out another amazing podcast with Danl, Ian, and special guest Alex Vickers. We talk about summer movies, season finales, and prom stuff...I think...runtime's about 28 minutesenjoy!-Danldownload

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Episode 15

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2007

We're back! I know it's been like 5 months, but here it is, Episode 15! In this episode we cover Spiderman 3, Disturbia, Guitar Hero and all kinds of other crazy shit. Enjoy.Download

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Episode 14

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2006

Another fun filled episode. Just Ian and Dan'l this time but still loads of fun. Hope you enjoy discussions on video games, because Dan'l goes on a nice 9 minute tangent about the PS3 (THP8, and FEAR too I think).Enjoy!download

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Episode 13

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 24, 2006

Hey ya'll, after a long hiatus of doing college work (aka, putting it off), I've finally uploaded the last couple podcast's we did a little while back. Enjoy this 37 minute behemoth with Dan'l and Ian, guest hosts Maurice and Sam Skloff. We talk about a LOT, I mean, a LOT. Enjoy!download

3di

Episode 12

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2006

This is a fully UN-CUT, UN-EDITED, EXPLICIT podcast. Hosts are Danl, Ian, David. Guest host is John Leeson. Runs about...30 some minutes...i think...could be 27, we'll see now wont we! enjoy-Danldownload

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Episode 11