In this episode we talk with comedian Dave Ross about the ways the technology is impacting the world of stand-up comedy. We discuss how cellphone cameras are disrupting the age-old process of working out jokes in small rooms and about how, soon, virtual reality might be displacing or devaluing live performances. We discuss the problem of writing jokes via computer and a theory of humor called “Benign Violation Theory” that might animate the efforts of future AI comedians. Finally we discuss how technology provides new avenues to test jokes and be discovered, but simultaneously the massive amount of access and competition makes it harder than ever to rise to the top.

Relevant Links

• Video: Bill Burr in Philadelphia
• Article: Why Patton Oswalt tore into an audience member and why there are no winners
• Article: Chris Rock isn’t the only comedian who thinks cellphones are killing stand-up comedy
• Article: It’s Comedian vs. Computer in a Battle for Humor Supremacy
• The Joking Computer
• Slate series: The Humor Code
• Bo Burnham
• Dave Ross homepage | Terrified podcast

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In this episode we talk to guest Jason Ganz of Agora VR. You may know Jason from his role as a moderator on the Futurology subreddit and as a co-host on the Futurology podcast. He’s an enthusiastic VR supporter and we had a wide-ranging, informative conversation we think you are going to find fascinating. We cover some of the newest advances in the rapidly exploding VR space, including the Oculus rift and the Google Cardboard project, omnidirectional treadmills, haptics, new sensors from Leap Motion and the new fibre-optic in-eye monitor being developed by Magic Leap. We discuss the obvious upsides to better VR technology as well as the ways ephemeralizing experiences might add to technological unemployment and superstar economic effects. We also touch on age-old media canards like addiction and problems with realistic violence, and whether the coming VR multiverse is more likely to be an open-source competitive paradise or a nightmare walled-garden “Zuckerverse.”

Relevant Links

• Agora VR
• Futurology Podcast
• Google Cardboard | DodoCase
• Magic Leap | Leap Motion | Control VR | Jaunt VR
• Article: Legal Heroin: Is Virtual Reality Our Next Hard Drug
• Review the Future podcast 005: Are We Addicted to Technology?
• Wikipedia on Presence
• Virtuix Omni Omnidirectional Treadmill
• Thought Infection article: Real Growth from Virtual Economies
• Novel: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
• Novel: The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi

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In this episode, we review the new documentary THE IMMORTALISTS, which is out in New York and opens December 11 in Los Angeles. The film covers the efforts toward radical life extension of two prominent figures, Aubrey de Grey and Bill Andrews. We discuss the quality of the representation in the film, of both the science behind radical life extension and the people who are the film’s subjects. We decide this movie might not have a lot of new information for those who are already interested, but will introduce the concept of radical life extension to the uninitiated more fairly than most of what’s come before. We have some criticisms, but overall it’s a positive review: Proponents of life extension should welcome this film into the cultural dialogue.

Relevant Links

• Article: Partial reversal of aging achieved in mice
• WILTing
• SENS: A Reimagined Research Strategy for Aging
• Sierra Sciences
• Video: Dr Bill Andrews Explains Product B
• Michael Fossel on Singularity 1 on 1: Compassion is the reason to reverse aging!
• Review the Future Episode 015: What Would be the Cultural Impacts of Increased Longevity?
• The Immortalists movie website (with showtimes)

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In this episode we talk with guest John Danaher, a lecturer at National University of Ireland, Galway and blogger. He has coined the term ‘Algocracy’ to describe a future state of rule by algorithm. We define the term and talk about how modern day algorithms like dating websites, military drones, and tax fraud detection are growing in influence, creating the possibility for algorithmic decision making to unseat democratic institutions and even personal will. Can we really say we are in a democracy if opaque, incomprehensible systems are making many important choices for us? How can we be certain that the algorithm has our interests at heart?

Relevant Links

• Rule by Algorithm? Big Data and the Threat of Algocracy by John Danaher
• Wikipedia entry on Human-in-the-loop systems
• Article: When Will We Have Unmanned Commercial Airliners?
• Article: Inside Amazon’s ‘Chaotic Storage’ Warehouses
• Evgeny Morozov
• Big Data, Predictive Algorithms and the Virtues of Transparency by John Danaher
• Interview with Frank Pasquale
• Danielle Keats Citron
• Nicholas Agar
• David Chalmers

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In this episode we build on our previous podcast on privacy by examining, from a philosophical point of view, what the instrumental and intrinsic benefits to privacy are. Is there some fundamental, moral reason to protect privacy, or is it simply a way to prevent various misuses of data? If misuse is the real issue, would a co-veillance society be trustworthy enough to simply give up privacy? Or is it intrinsically wrong, like torture? We also discuss how privacy and security are often at odds with each other, and how privacy can be understood as an issue of information flow.

Relevant Links

• Review the Future podcast Episode 003: Is Privacy Dead?
• The Snowden leaks; a meta-narrative by Charlie Stross
• The Wedding Album by David Marusek
• Upstream Color
• Ramez Naam’s Nexus
• Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It by Kevin Kelly
• Article: Philosopher Michael Lynch Says Privacy Violations Are An Affront To Human Dignity
• ‘Cybersecurity’ begins with integrity, not surveillance by Cory Doctorow

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This week’s episode is about the sharing economy. We discuss the term and try to decide if the companies that use it are really doing anything new or just using a buzzword to screw workers and evade regulations. We discuss Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Fold.it, Couchsurfing, Seti@Home, Streetbank, Zipcar, eBay, and craigslist. Are these sites really just sophisticated barter systems? If so, what about math trades and offer networks? Is the sharing economy, like outsourcing, just a stop on the way to the much more profound automation economy?

Relevant Links

• Against Sharing in Jacobin Magazine
• Uber’s CEO on Self Driving Cars
• Eight Sharing Economy Companies
• A ‘Math Trade’? WTF is that?
• Beyond Money by Ben Goertzel

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In this week’s episode, we wonder if it’s technologically possible to create eternal suffering and torture someone forever in a digital hell. We cover the question of why someone might torture a digital being or nano-enabled Prometheus. Punishment? Spying? Research? Is the persuasive power of hell justification enough? Is it unethical to cause pain to simulated people? Is a right to die connected to the desire to live forever? At the end of the podcast, we discuss and ultimately dismiss the proposition called Roko’s Basilisk (WARNING: some people are very disturbed by Roko’s Basilisk.).

Relevant Links

• Life Cycle of Software Objects
• Iain M Banks’s Surface Detail
• The 30 Years War
• Why I Hope to Die at 75
• Roko’s Basilisk

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Everyone knows by now that self driving cars are coming soon. Somewhere in the next 3-20 years, the human driver will become a thing of the past. What will happen when these capabilities come online? We talk through the obvious and not so obvious consequences of self driving car technology, from unemployment of taxi drivers to reclaiming parking spaces from idle vehicles — and ultimately theorize that the ownership model will change drastically.

Relevant Links

• Sebatian Thrun’s TED talk about driverless cars
• The Insurance Implications of Google’s Self-Driving Car
• Dispatch From The Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google
• How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class
• How self-driving cars will change cities
• Amazon’s drone delivery: How would it work?

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In this more conversational episode, we discuss the abstract dichotomy of wielding technology rather than yielding to it. We discuss this wielding/yielding metaphor with regard to form factors, for example how is using a smart phone different from augmented reality glasses, or what’s the fundamental difference between a high functioning AI assistant that can act for you versus an Intelligence Augmentation technology such as nanobots in the brain that can do your thinking for you. Ultimately we discuss how yielding feels creepier than wielding and how product and societal design can influence whether someone feels more like they are yielding or wielding.

Relevant Links

• Did Blowing on NES Cartridges really work?
• Review the Future Podcast 005: Are we Addicted to Technology?

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In this week’s podcast we list the top ten living futurists. These are people who are highly influential in the area of futurology, either for being skillful popularizers or originators of major new ideas. Listen and find out if you agree with our choices. And if you think we made any major mistakes (either misguided inclusions or omissions) please let us know via an email or a comment. We may not agree, but if you make a good case we’ll mention you in next week’s podcast.

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In this week’s podcast we tackle Emotional (sometimes called Affective) Computing — when computers read and respond to human emotions. We discuss the types of sensory data computers can read, like faces and inflection but also heat-mapping and pupil dilation. We also discuss how this capability might lead to a future that’s worse for liars but better for the impulsive or depressed. Will better emotional computing lead to video games that adjust their difficulty to keep you from getting too frustrated or to movies that never let anyone get bored?

Relevant Links

• Unfair Advantages of Emotional Computing by Peter Diamandis
• Goose Bump Detector Senses Your Skin Crawling on IEEE Spectrum
• Bodily Maps of Emotions on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science site
• Nevermind, a game by Erin Reynolds
• USA Today article and video misreporting about that Facebook study

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In this second part of our review of Capital in the 21st Century, we look at Thomas Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of the criticisms of the book. Last week in Part 1, we covered the book’s basic ideas about how to measure and talk about inequality, so if missed that check it out first. In this follow-up we cover Piketty’s demographic projections and whether they hold up in a world of AGI or emulated brains, as well as whether Baby Boomers will live forever and perpetually own the world. We also cover criticisms such as Larry Summers’s and wonder whether his argument isn’t more Marxist than he indicates.

Relevant Links

• Review the Future podcast episode 027: Review of Thomas Piketty’s CAPITAL IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Part 1: Summary
• Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century
• Tyler Cowen’s review at Foreign Affairs
• NYT Upshot article: A New Critique of Piketty Has Its Own Shortcomings
• FT Alphaville article: Piketty and the case for land capital
• The Inequality Puzzle by Lawrence H. Summers

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In this part one of our review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century, we cover the book in detail and summarize its arguments and conclusions. In the next part, to be released next week, we will look at Piketty’s ideas from the point of view of speculation and futurism, and consider some of the criticisms of the book. But this part will cover the book’s basic ideas about how to measure and talk about inequality, its data sets, the illusion of meritocracy, “Vautrin’s lesson” from Balzac’s Pere Goiriot, and will explain the relationships Picketty theorizes among the capital-income ratio, the rate of return on capital, and the growth rate of the economy, as well as the savings rate.

Some of the formulas mentioned in the podcast might be easier to see spelled out:

First Fundamental Law of Capitalism

α = r x ß

Capital’s share of income equals the rate of return on capital times the capital/income ratio. For example, if ß = 600% and r=5% then α = 30%

Second Fundamental Law of Capitalism

ß = s/g

Over time (asymptotically) the capital/income ratio tends toward the savings rate over the growth rate. In low growth, the past eats the future.

Finally it’s key to mention the inequality:

r > g

Which Piketty says is not a law of nature but an observed constant throughout history. Despite drastic changes in the form and uses of capital r seems always to be higher than g.

Relevant Links

• Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century
• Tyler Cowen’s review at Foreign Affairs
• NYT Upshot article: A New Critique of Piketty Has Its Own Shortcomings
• FT Alphaville article: Piketty and the case for land capital

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We’d all like to live in a better future, and for ages men have imagined what a theoretical best future might be like. What would a utopian society truly look like? Does the answer lie in external approaches like abundance, decentralization and transparency, or internal approaches like drugs, wireheading and genetic engineering? Is it even possible to formulate a Theory of Fun for human beings, that would define the contours of a world that could exist in perfect equilibrium where the people living in that world never die or get bored?

Relevant Links

• Wikipedia entry on Sir Thomas More’s Utopia
• Peter Diamandis’s website
• The Hedonistic Imperative
• Wikipedia entry on David Pearce
• LessWrong article on Wireheading
• LessWrong article, the Fun Theory Sequence

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In this podcast we examine the issue of inequality from the point of view of game design and ask whether a variety of resources are likely to become more or less unequal in the future. In addition to the obvious monetary dimension, we also discuss inequality as it relates to fame, user base, creativity tools, communication, health, and other resources that affect quality of life. Ultimately we decide that inequality will increase in resources that by their nature propagate themselves, like money and fame, and will likely decrease in resources that are close to reaching a point of diminishing returns, such as food and communication.

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In this week’s podcast we talk about the big topic of Network Neutrality. We define the term and talk about the differences between neutral and biased (or ‘diverse’) networks. We cover the history of the phone network, the Carterfone, and neutrality regulations in the U.S. We also cover the two major reasons to prefer a neutral internet: the more commonly mentioned threats to innovation and free speech that biased networks engender, and the less commonly discussed technical reason that dumb networks are more efficient and therefore faster. With the FCC in the process of gutting what’s left of net neutrality in the U.S. right now, it’s important to understand this seemingly dry issue that, as the internet takes over more and more of our lives, gets more and more important. Will we wake up and require network neutrality through our political process? Is it possible to create neutral mesh networks through unlicensed spectrum? Will we simply accept the costs to freedom and innovation that biased networks will bring?

Relevant Links

• Tim Wu’s Network Neutrality FAQ
• Lawrence Lessig’s Code v2
• Christopher S. Yoo’s Beyond Network Neutrality
• NYT article on Netflix and Comcast deal
• Marc Andreessen on net neutrality
• Wikipedia article on Internet Transit
• Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

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On this podcast, we talk about games and the future. Eric Zimmerman has pronounced this the “Ludic Century” and has said the 21st century will be defined by games. We approach this idea from three points of view: first we talk about games as an entertainment medium and whether they might grow relative to passive entertainment like reading or watching video. Second, we talk about the emerging field of game design theory and what it can learn from, and teach to, existing social sciences like psychology and economics. Finally we discuss how life itself in the future might increasingly resemble a game in many ways.

Relevant Links

• Eric Zimmerman’s Manifesto for a Ludic Century
• The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits
• Fold.it
• Virtual Weimar: Hyperinflation in a Video Game World
• Sid Meier: “A Game is a series of interesting choices”
• Borderlands’ Randy Pitchford “Video Games Are Magic”

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In this very short episode we do a simple thought experiment set at a mathematics competition. Three characters, each with a very different apparatus of enhanced intelligence, compete. One is highly educated, one is enhanced to be able to learn more quickly, and one offloads the complex tasks to an AI or crowd-sourced network. We discuss the pros and cons of these three approaches and consider what that holds for future developments. What would you rather be: an educated, enhanced, or offloading mind?

Relevant Links

• Decline of Scarcity Article: Three Types of Intelligence Augmentation
• The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky
• Wikipedia entry for Nootropics

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What is the future of television? Will today’s golden age continue? We discuss the current television model and why TV hasn’t been disrupted to the degree film and other media have, the real scarcity and artificial limits that are keeping it there, and make a prediction about the next ten years of television content. We also discuss charging viewers on a cliffhanger, superstar effects after unbundling, and bifurcation of budgets. Will serial video lose its flow as it moves online? Or might a combination of recommendation algorithms and massive online film libraries create a deadly-compelling flow similar to “The Entertainment” from David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest?

Relevant Links

• Please, Keep Paying $80 a Month for Cable So I Can Enjoy Cheap TV by Wade Roush
• Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
• Breaking Bad series finale had 10m viewers
• Super Bowl had 110m viewers

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There is no doubt  decentralized powerful technologies are coming, and the conventional wisdom is that you cannot control these things easily. In this episode, we discuss drugs, security, and general purpose computing as decentralized technologies that resist control. Will it be possible to control nearly invisible life-logging technologies of the future? What about gun control in a world of 3-D printing? What do surveillance and piracy have in common? What do you think would allow us to keep our freedom while protecting against existential risks? Why do they freeze the pre-criminals in Minority Report? This topic gets big fast, so hold on to your hats! Keep the emails and comments coming, we love to hear from you!

Relevant Links

• The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing By Cory Doctorow
• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
• An article about Comcast and Apple; and one about Comcast and Netflix
• Moore’s Law of Mad Science
• David Marusek
• Transparent Society by David Brin

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