On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, your usual host is in the hot seat! Guest host Benjamin Tan, PhD Candidate at Cambridge, asks Alina Utrata about her recent publication in the American Political Science Review about Silicon Valley's outer space colonization projects. They discuss what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as different as they may seem, what the history of the British East India Company can tell us about SpaceX...

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata speaks with Julia Slupska, Olivia Andrews and Hilary Watson about a recent report by Glitch UK entitled "Digital Misogynoir: Ending the dehumanising of Black women on social media." They discuss why Black women are uniquely targeted and harmed online, the importance of centering intersectionality in discussing digital harms, the difficulties of conducting (and finding funding) for this kind of research and why Glitch is calling on tech...

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke with Catriona Gray, a PhD at the University of Bath working at the intersection of sociology, politics, and law on the adoption of AI technologies. They discussed the political economy of data and whether frameworks like ‘data is the new oil’ are helpful to understanding these relationships; what is new about the technological structures or dynamics that have been created today; thinking about the inequities between the Global North...

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Matt Mahmoudi, the lead researcher on the Amnesty International report "Automating Apartheid" examining the deployment of facial recognition technology in Palestine. They discuss the report's findings, including how this facial recognition technology is being deployed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and consolidates existing practices of discriminatory policing; why these systems have been 'gamified' and how...

On this week’s episode of The Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke to Paola Ricurate, an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Tierra Comun Network, and Sebastián Leheude, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre of Governance and Human Rights and a Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Maha Atal is back to discuss feminism, reproductive rights and technology. Host Alina Utrata asks her: how has the legal landscape of abortion and reproductive rights changed since the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what are technology companies doing about it? Does your GP know who their cloud computing provider is (and do they have access to your sensitive health data)? How do the US and UK feminist movements differ? And why is feminism, gender and...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University and the author of the new book Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. They discuss whether Elon Musk acts like a religious leader, how imperial Christianity set the stage for capitalism, the ways science fiction has acted as a mythology for space expansionists, and the history of a Nazi rocket scientist turned Christian evangelical partnered...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Raymond Craib, professor of American History and a Latin Americanist at Cornell University, about his most recent book Adventure Capitalism, A History of Libertarian Exit from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age.They discuss the history of libertarian exit and the case of Michael Oliver's Republic of Minerva, why these exit projects seem to have found a new life among tech elites and if Silicon Valley will really be able to cede from the...

On this episode of the podcast, Alina Utrata speaks with Emile Torres, a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A history of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. They discuss their research into Elon Musk’s favorite philosophy, longtermism, and answer all your questions about the philosophy like: do longtermists really want to colonize space and create trillions of digital people? How does effective altruism, transhumanism and...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Julia Slupska, a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute researching feminist approaches to cybersecurity, and Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at Cambridge University studying surveillance, data capitalism and period tracking apps. They discuss whether you should be worried about your period tracking apps, how reproductive justice, eugenics and the carceral state intersect and what a feminist approach to cyber-security...

The Anti-Dystopians is back from its summer hiatus! In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths University of London, about his new book “Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They discuss how the dangers of automated bureaucracy and algorithmic cruelty, what Max Weber and Hannah Arendt can tell us about AI, whether AI might bring back eugenics in a new coat and...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Steph Diepeveen, a senior research associate at Cambridge University, research fellow in digitalization at ODI and the author of the book “Searching for a New Kenya: Politics and Social Media on the Streets of Mombasa.” They discuss the way social media use operates in Kenya, the difference between physical and digital public spaces, how Big Tech corporations’ designs affects political discourse and what we can learn about social...

Alina Utrata talks to James Muldoon, a senior lecturer at Exeter University and the author of “Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech.” They discuss how GDH Cole’s guild socialism can be applied to tech corporations, what platforms mean for the future of capitalism, whether we should implement local and democratic control of associations and some real ideas for how to avoid dystopia.  You can order Platform Socialism here...

On this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Paris Marx, host of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, about their upcoming book “Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.” They discuss the history of the automobile industry, how Tesla is not a “green company,” why Silicon Valley is lying to you about the self-driving car and their vision for the future of public transport.  You can order Paris’s book here. You can follow Paris Marx on Twitter @parismarx, the...

Alina Utrata chats with Nanna Saeten, a PhD candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge about her research on time, temporality and technology. They discuss how technologies of time have been used as tools of nation-building, why high-frequency trading and blockchain depend on human understandings of time as well as algorithms, whether technology is really “speeding up” or changing our experience of time and how social media has changed the way we experience...

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Jennifer Cobbe, a senior research associate in the computer science department at Cambridge University. They discuss everything that’s wrong with surveillance capitalism, what the Tesco club card has to do with the surveillance state, the incoherent approach of the EU to regulating tech, how Brexit affected the UK’s ability of to control technology corporations, and how the law got us to where we are now. You can follow Jennifer on...

Alina Utrata sits down with John Naughton, a technology columnist at the Observer, senior research fellow in CRASSH and co-founder of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge, and Josh Simmons, a postdoc in technology and democracy at Harvard University. They discuss Elon Musk’s recent bid for Twitter, what it shows about the power of digital platforms and wealthy men, and how to think about the challenges of reigning in Big Tech. You can follow, John Naughton on Twitter...

David Runciman is a professor of Politics at Cambridge University and the host of the critically acclaimed podcast Talking Politics. In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, he speaks to Alina Utrata about why corporations are robots, how singularity might have already come about, why we should think seriously about the political philosophy of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, and what technologies he worries about in the future. You can follow, Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the...

Alina Utrata speaks with Lauren Bridges, a PhD candidate at the the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania who studies big data infrastructures and surveillance regimes. They talk all about Amazon Ring: Why does Amazon want footage of your front door anyways? How is this surveillance shared with law enforcement agencies across the country? Where does this surveillance fit in with racialized notions of crime and policing? And what happens when Amazon Ring is...

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Siân Brooke, a Leverhulme Fellow in the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and an associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Alan Turing Institute. They discuss gender, memes and hackathons: What exactly is a meme? Do geeks have toxic masculinity? How does gender and femininity get marginalized in tech spaces? And how do fedoras lead down the road to incels? You can follow Siân Brooke on Twitter @SianJMBrooke, Alina Utrata @alinautrata...

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Trishant Simlai, a conservation researcher studying the politics and geographies of wildlife conservation in India, who just received his PhD in the Department of Geography at Cambridge. They discuss wildlife surveillance in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, as well as conservation’s colonial origins, how camera traps can be used to uphold the patriarchy, and when workplace surveillance technologies literally lead to tiger attacks. You can follow Trishant...

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Rowena Squires, an ancient historian, asks Alina Utrata everything you ever wanted to know about Amazon. How did Amazon go from online bookstore to commercial empire? Is Amazon Alexa really recording everything you say? How was AWS cloud computing invented? And why is the Library of Alexandria such a good origin story for the Amazon Alexa? You can follow Rowena Squires on Twitter @RowenaSquires, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast...

On this week’s episode, Alina Utrata talks to Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD in Gender Studies at Cambridge University, and Muskan Shafat, an MS in Data and Society at the London School of Economics, about gender and technology. They discuss the myth of neutral tech, how technology is embedded in systems of oppression, why using a dishwasher isn’t considered “technological innovation” and whether some AI is just machine learning for eugenics.  You can follow Stefanie Felsberger on Twitter...

Alina Utrata talks to Dr Maha Atal, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow who studies the political economy of corporate power and was previously an award-winning journalist reporting on the tech industry. They discuss how the history of company-rule and colonization relates to the tech industry, how tech companies exert power in the Global South, why Silicon Valley’s “Janus faces” allows it to escape state regulation, and whether the perception of technology corporations has changed, from...