Techs on Texts

Nov 25 2024 10 ep. 83 mins 2
Techs on Texts Podcast artwork

Techs on Texts is a podcast featuring conversations with technologists about the literature that has influenced them. Hosted and produced by Jed Sundwall. Learn more at https://techsontexts.net

  Arts  Technology  Society & Culture
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Episode #10: Mark Coatney on A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

Nov 25 2024 91 mins  
Mark Coatney, long-suffering digital media pioneer, gets me to finally read a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin and I loved it. Topics include our changing world, what the world is for, preindustrial longing, why we should maybe recognize that media companies are ephemeral things, the pitfalls of power, lame AI, floating orbs of light, humans imitating machines, why humans like things, le

Episode #9: Esther Dyson on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Spike Jonze’s Her

Oct 29 2024 80 mins  
Esther Dyson, whose bio defies summarization (and who happens to be sister of previous guest George Dyson), discusses *Never Let Me Go* by Kazuo Ishiguro and Spike Jonze's *Her*. We discuss the substance of life, bioethics, why our senses aren't always reliable, institutions and culture, predatory business models, child labor, mortality, building communities, and gardening versus c

Episode #8: Jordan Tigani on The Analytical Language of John Wilkins by Jorge Luis Borges

Sep 21 2024 85 mins  
Jordan Tigani, duck herder and renowned "database person," gives us the gift of "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" by Jorge Luis Borges. We talk about about the potential of language, the limits of language, compression, sloppy ontologies, LLMs, what thing the universe is, simulated annealing, our vague comprehension of what embeddings are, and why it's unfortunate that ther

Episode #7: Max Lenormand on The Little Prince and Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Aug 30 2024 126 mins  
Max Lenormand, geospatial data scientist, podcaster, and continually curious frenchman teaches us about the fascinating Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and the background behind his books *Night Flight* and *The Little Prince*. We talk about humans' strange ambition, personal sacrifice, mortality, immortality, aviation, communication networks, and why love is a choice.

Episode #6: Io Blair-Freese on Borges

Jul 30 2024 66 mins  
Io Blair-Freese – philosopher, international development pioneer, and lover of maps and computers – guides us through "The Zahir" and "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" by Jorge Luis Borges. We talk about idealist philosophy, inevitable religions, identity, the power of attention, the limitations of attention, and the limitlessness of language.

Episode #5: George Dyson on The Voice of the Dolphins

Jun 29 2024 83 mins  
George Dyson, historian, boat maker, master human technologist, and friend of friends discusses the totally wild *The Voice of the Dolphins* by Leo Szilard who discovered the nuclear chain reaction. We talk about AI, geopolitics, alignment (lol), and humanity.

Episode #4: Chris Beddow on Jorge Louis Borges and Umberto Eco

May 30 2024 74 mins  
Chris Beddow, mapmaker, voyager, philosopher, and very good skier uses Borges's "On Exactitude in Science" and Umberto Eco's "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1" to go very very deep on the map–territory relationship. Listen and learn how to recognize how your experience on this planet is mediated by the maps you use.

Episode #3: Sean Gorman on Dune by Frank Herbert

Apr 23 2024 76 mins  
Sean Gorman, geospatial entrepreneur extraordinaire, uses Dune to explain security policy, geopolitics, capitalism, sustainability, common knowledge, the erosion of common knowledge, the importance of friction in political institutions, reasons to think harder about opening up data, and why the OpenStreetMap community are basically Fremen.

Episode #2: Jason Goldman on Dune by Frank Herbert

Mar 14 2024 79 mins  
Jason Goldman, one of the world's foremost Dune podcast pioneers, talks about all of the Dune books, all of the Dune movies, the Dune TV shows, democracy, institutions, the dangers of charismatic leaders, the (a)moral arc of technological progress, the potential of governing with data, and how so many technologists miss the point of the literature they love.

Episode #1: Tim O'Reilly on Dune by Frank Herbert

Feb 12 2024 73 mins  
Tim O’Reilly is our first guest, ostensibly to talk about Dune, but we end up talking about much more, including mysticism, poetry, philosophy, leadership, and our responsibility as humans to transcend our limits.