We are kicking off a podcast series! 

As we move forward with the individual projects, shared themes are emerging in response to our five big challenges.

To dive deeper into these themes, we have decided to launch a series of conversations in the form of a podcast series. In these conversations, our fellows engage with experts from industry and academia to explore today’s digital condition, identify where we need to rethink what when it comes to design, and discuss how as designers we can contribute to a more inclusive and sustainable digital futures.

The program includes:

Old interface, new acts of interfacing (Oct 27th)

Interfaces are not what they used to be. Reflecting on the histories and trajectories of digital interfaces, we look at how they have extended beyond surfaces, buttons and levers to something that cuts across infrastructures and entangles the planet, often beyond access and control. How can we navigate these new terrains?

Beyond values in algorithm design (Nov 2nd)

What are the opportunities and challenges of using human and moral values for the design of principled algorithms? Based on current trends for personalised urban mobility, this podcast engages three experts in discussions of optimizing routing algorithms, urban transparency and contestability, and the impact of values in designing alternative algoritmic futures.

Designing after fungibility (Nov 13th)

Fungibility is applied to money as a device to exchange practically anything, which has allowed us to disassociate any contextual information from a product or service, as it carries only an economic value with it. However, as data becomes smart by being ‘bound’ to blockchain, we find that currencies are forced to the remember where and who they came from, and what they were used to buy, a process that makes them non-fungible. This podcast contributes to questions of value in the context of design research within data-driven cultures and economies. 

The Politics of Values in Tech (Nov 23rd)

While value-alignment is the hot topic in the tech industry right now, how to account for the contexts, interests and temporalities that cause ethics to shift and morph in their meaning and translation remains contentious. How can we account for power relations and economic structures which influence who has the opportunity to impactfully influence what is considered relevant and important to the discourse, and the histories that influence perspectives and interpretations of which tensions deserve attention and how they might be addressed?

Democratic data governance (Dec 14th)

The intersection between data, democratic rights and design