While we were sharing our likes and thoughts on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg was on his mission to build a parallel universe; with shadow profiles, disentangled connections, absorbing more and more companies into the land of Facebook and bombarding you with even more push notifications to drag you back into the rabbit hole.

My guest is Steven Levy, named America’s premier technology journalist by the Washington Post. He dove into the history of the company that literally changed the way in which we communicate and Zuckerbergs’ mission to connect the world. In 2020 he published the book ‘Facebook: the inside story’.

“Mark Zuckerberg is inspired by people like Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar – and his favorite board game is Risk” Steven tells. In our conversation, we talk more about his experiences with Mark, some of the bigger scandals and developments at Facebook over the years and what the future of social media might hold for us.

Shownotes: https://stevenlevy.com

https://www.michalkosinski.com

https://studiojuliajanssen.com/whyilikegreen.html

With technology, we are exploring new types of intimacy. But, which one are we losing? The more we rely on technology to know who to like, love or find attractive, the more we might ignore our intuition – Maybe even distrust our own feelings. Will algorithms become a modern version of the arranged marriage? Will we unlearn how to flirt the more we use dating apps? And what is a smart orgasm? 

In this episode, I will be talking about data and intimacy with futures-anthropologist Roanne van Voorst. Currently, she’s working on a book about the future of love. We’re exploring this topic in three parts, the future of friendship, romance, sex. We already feel empathy for robot vacuums, and in 2050, it might be even normal that ten per cent of people will have sex with a robot and want to live with one; what does that mean for the future of human connections?

Big data increases inequality and threatens democracy – because the privileged are processed by people and the masses by machines. The promise was that algorithms and Artificial Intelligence would reduce discrimination in our society, objectifying decisions and freeing them from human emotions, biases and prejudices. But what if the historical bias is in the data? Or the model is prejudiced? Algorithms start looking for vulnerable targets and harm the powerless people in our society – People that don't understand or question the systems. And if they do, they got 'math-shamed'.

My Guest is Cathy O'Neil. In her highly-priced book 'Weapons of Math Destruction, she gave a voice to the victims of algorithms. O'Neil is an American mathematician, data scientist and algorithmic auditor.

https://studiojuliajanssen.com/nondiscriminationbydesign.html