Techdirt Podcast Episode 148: The Lost Art Of Productive Debate

from the discourse-on-discourse dept

Even those of us who believe that the internet is overall a tremendous positive force when it comes to discourse and culture can admit that, in many parts of the online world (and really the world in general), having constructive and substantive conversations is... difficult. And that issue has most certainly come to the fore in the last couple of years. So this week, we're joined by author Barry Eisler (one of our first and most frequent podcast guests) to tackle the challenge of framing important debates in productive ways, and actually getting somewhere with them.

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Filed Under: barry eisler, debate, podcast

Techdirt Podcast Episode 147: Games That Tell Stories

from the the-play's-the-thing dept

Gaming is changing the nature of storytelling. Video games of course — but also the modern rise of board games, tabletop RPGs and other forms of analog gaming. A good game does more than just arbitrarily pair play with a veneer of narrative, it marries the mechanics and the theme to enable interesting new ways of conveying and exploring complex ideas. This week, we're joined by game designer Randy Lubin to discuss how games can tell stories in a way nothing else can.

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Filed Under: board games, gaming, podcast, randy lubin, storytelling, video games

Techdirt Podcast Episode 146: Can A Trivia App Resurrect Appointment Viewing?

from the the-hq-phenomenon dept

Normally, we wouldn't dedicate a whole episode of the podcast to talking about a single app — but every now and then something small comes along that contains innovations worth exploring. So this week, we're taking a look at the hit trivia app HQ, which is one of the first new things in recent memory to gain real momentum with "appointment viewing".

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Filed Under: appointment viewing, apps, innovation, podcast, television, trivia
Companies: hq

Techdirt Podcast Episode 145: Tom Wheeler Reacts To Trump's FCC

from the special-guests dept

If you're a Techdirt reader or just a general regular on the ol' internet, our topic this week — the current situation with net neutrality and the FCC — needs little introduction. And we've got two very special guests joining us to discuss it: former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler (author of the rules that Ajit Pai is currently undoing) and his former advisor Gigi Sohn (who joined us on the podcast in February to predict pretty much exactly what is now happening). There are few people as qualified to talk about these issues, so enjoy this week's episode looking at Trump's FCC and the future of the internet as we know it.

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Filed Under: ajit pai, donald trump, fcc, gigi sohn, net neutrality, podcast, tom wheeler

Techdirt Podcast Episode 144: The Perils Of Internet Platform Regulation

from the not-so-easy dept

We've been talking about internet platform regulation for a long time, but in the past year these issues have gotten a huge amount of increased focus — for a bunch of fairly obvious reasons. But a lot of people who are fairly new to the issue tend to make a lot of questionable assumptions and jump to some problematic conclusions, so this week we're joined by someone who has been studying these questions for many years — Annemarie Bridy, a law professor at the University of Idaho and Affiliate Scholar at the Stanford University Center for Internet and Society — to discuss the complicated consequences of various attempts to regulate online platforms.

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Filed Under: annemarie bridy, internet, podcast, regulation

Techdirt Podcast Episode 143: No Easy Answers: Facebook & The Election

from the it's-never-so-simple dept

I don't think I need to say much to introduce this week's topic — we're all well aware of the conversation about Facebook's role in the presidential election, including questions of filter bubbles, fake news, foreign influence, and so on and so on. As is always the case in situations like this, a lot of people seem to be looking for easy answers, and easy places to point fingers of blame, so in this week's episode we're discussing why it's just not that simple.

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Filed Under: election, podcast, politics
Companies: facebook

Techdirt Podcast Episode 142: Who Still Needs A Personal Computer?

from the and-for-how-long? dept

As smartphones and other mobile devices have gotten smarter and smarter, they've taken over more and more of most people's general computing needs, and the importance of the classic personal computer has waned. And so for some time the question has been: will the PC ever go away entirely? That's our topic this week as we try to figure out who really needs a PC these days, and when and if that will change.

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Filed Under: personal computers, podcast, predictions, smartphones

Techdirt Podcast Episode 141: Donald Trump, Howard Stern... And Copyright

from the it-shows-up-everywhere dept

This episode was supposed to come two weeks ago when the news was a little fresher, so by now you almost certainly know all about the copyright claims on Donald Trump's appearances on the Howard Stern show. Though delayed by an outage at our cloud recording provider, the episode is still an interesting listen, with frequent Techdirt contributor Cathy Gellis joining the podcast to discuss the deeper question of whether copyright truly even exists on the interviews in the first place. Sorry for the delay, and we hope you enjoy it!

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Filed Under: cathy gellis, copyright, donald trump, howard stern, podcast
Companies: sirius xm

Techdirt Podcast Episode 140: WTF With Tim O'Reilly

from the big-picture dept

The rapid forward march of technology has long bred two leading camps of onlookers: the techno-optimists and the techno-pessimists. Honest people on both sides, however, must admit that technological innovation has had both positive and negative effects. Internet legend Tim O'Reilly is one of the people who think a lot about these issues, and his new book WTF? What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us — which discusses in detail the world that we are building with technology — was released today, and we're pleased to have him join us on this week's episode to talk about the book and the future of innovation.

(Apologies for the lack of an episode last week — an ongoing outage at our cloud recording platform has left us unable to access the audio files. Though that episode is a bit out of date now, we're hoping we'll be able to get it out later this week.)

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Filed Under: podcast, tim o'reilly, wtf

Techdirt Podcast Episode 139: How Scandalous Are Facebook's Ad Scandals?

from the and-what-can-be-done? dept

Facebook is under a lot of scrutiny these days over its advertising and content moderation systems, especially since the high-profile revelation of Russia-backed ads during the election. But are things being blown out of proportion? And what, exactly, is to be done? This week we dig in to Facebook's ongoing advertising scandals, and debate what they really mean.

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Filed Under: advertising, podcast, politics, russia
Companies: facebook