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February 5, 2018: Christopher Potter, author of "Earth Gazers," on tech and our image of humanity

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Techtonic meetup THIS SATURDAY! Sign up for WFMU Movie Night at Monty Hall this Saturday, Feb 10 - doors at 7pm, show at 7:30pm. We'll be watching The Road Movie, a full-length documentary made from Russian dashcam videos.

This evening on Techtonic: Christopher Potter, author of The Earth Gazers: On Seeing Ourselves, discussing how technology can help us understand who we are. The American space program produced the first images of earth from space, leading to a new awareness about our relationship to the environment - and each other - and igniting an early interest in watching human activity from space.

At the same time, it is possible to know too much. Today's digital tech seems to give us images and data of everything, regardless of whether it's helpful or harmful. A good example is the latest dust-up from Strava, the app that maps your jogging route...



Above, a map generated by the mobile app Strava, showing the jogging routes of its users.

This Guardian piece quotes Strava's response: "We are committed to helping people better understand our settings to give them control over what they share." In other words: check your settings.

But first...

Recent tech news:

An amusing piece in Wired, by Robbie Gonzalez, argued that tech addiction might not even exist. There's just no "direct evidence." Uhh... OK, Wired. Last week's show quoted Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff arguing that addictive tech needs to be regulated like cigarettes... we've also heard from Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook, decrying the addictive tech he helped create - "God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains" - and YCombinator's Sam Altman, who wrote - what was it? Oh yes:



I look forward to Wired's followup article reporting on how Sam Altman, Sean Parker, Marc Benioff, and dozens of researchers are all totally wrong! Tech addiction just doesn't exist! (One past Techtonic guest would certainly agree: Nir Eyal, author of "Hooked," said as much in my interview with him.)

Meantime, the New York Times reports that health experts are pleading with Facebook to please turn off Messenger Kids, the new kid-oriented Facebook app trying to hook users while they're young. Turn it off? I'm sure Mark Zuckerberg will get right on that.

Finally, a great list of non-Google, non-Facebook alternative apps & sites for all your online needs, aka "How to Live Without Google." Written by Gabriel Weinberg, founder and CEO of Duck Duck Go (and last week's guest on Techtonic).

Put down the screen.
Avoid Google and Facebook.
And see you Saturday for our movie night meetup here at WFMU's Monty Hall.

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