Note to Self

Chade-Meng Tan was employee number 107 at Google. And before he retired at the ripe old age of 44, he created a class there, Search Inside Yourself. It was about mindfulness, with an engineering twist. He never said go deep into your emotions, because engineers would ask “How do you quantify deep or shallow?” Which itself is kind of a deep question, really… Let’s create some calm as this year ends. It all starts with one deep breath.  

Preserving dead loved ones through AI. Social scoring and ranking. Hacking personal details for extortion. When Black Mirror’s Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones came on the show, we asked them how it feels to basically predict the future. And Charlie said he doesn’t. He just has a sarcastic vision of the present. Even if you've never seen Black Mirror, this episode is a good listen. Because their fictional stories seem to keep manifesting in reality. Season Four of the Emmy-award-winning Netflix show comes out December 29th. A perfect time to revisit this delightfully witty and optimistic conversation.  

This week, the tradeoffs we don’t see when we shop on Amazon. How the company’s dominance from retail to web hosting could create a dystopia of social profiling. Why the answer isn’t to cancel your Prime. And yes, I test drive the Amazon Look so you don’t have to. Amazon is the new Standard Oil, the “titan of twenty-first century commerce,” as rock star lawyer Lina Khan wrote in her viral law journal note. Which, incidentally, might be a nice thing to include with your packages this year. We made a handy printable card with a link to her 96-page blockbuster. Give the gift of light reading on modern antitrust policy, along with those colanders and scarves. (Note to Self) Download

Dylan Marron is internet famous. He makes clever and (actually) funny little Facebook-friendly videos about light topics like Islamophobia, masculinity, privilege. Which attract a *lot* of comments. Many loving and laudatory. Many… not. Like the message from a grandmother in North Dakota saying he deserved to die. The teenager saying he was the most pathetic human being he’d ever seen. A gay artist in Atlanta saying he was everything wrong with liberalism. At first Dylan was shaken. Then he was curious. So he started calling these people. And Conversations With People Who Hate Me was born. This week, the lovely Dylan Marron on the benefits of talking to our haters, and why it’s good for the country as well as your soul.      

An incomplete list of objects that are listening to us: Siri. Alexa. Google Home. The Nest. Our cars. Our smart TVs.  Cayla dolls. All these listening devices raise digital privacy concerns, of course. But recordings can be really useful, too. If only there was tape from a courthouse hallway in Alabama, circa 1979. A mall in Gadsden, Alabama, early 1980s. A Congressional office building, a USO tour. You never know when a transcript of your everyday life might come in handy. The transcribed life is closer than ever. In this repeat episode, one intrepid woman records every single minute of her life, for three straight days. And then lets us listen in. To a lot of mundane minutia, and one extremely uncomfortable interaction. Tape can change things. Knowing we’re being recorded can modify behavior. It can create accountability. But it doesn’t erase power dynamics. The Access Hollywood recording of then-candidate Donald Trump joking about grabbing women. The audio of Harvey Weinstein in a hotel hallway, admitting to groping Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. Sometimes, a tape doesn’t make a bit of difference. With guest co-host Rose Eveleth, of the Flash Forward podcast.  

Pictured above is Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, speaking in November 2017.  David Carroll is hunting for information. About himself. He knows himself pretty well. And so does a controversial marketing firm. Cambridge Analytica claims it holds up to 5,000 data points on over 230 million American voters. The company implied it was the secret sauce in the Trump campaign (then they took that back.)   But this company may share your online marketing profile with political campaigns, retailers, and potentially foreign governments. What if you, the profiled, wanted to have a look too? David, father of two, professor of tech-design and online ad researcher, made that request and now is suing for further information. This week, what David found. And didn’t find in his file. And what it could mean for our democracy.   You can request your own file from Cambridge Analytica. Let us know if you do and what you find. Feeling super creeped out about what marketing firms know about you? Turn that creepy feeling to action with the Privacy Paradox. Our series designed to help you reclaim your digital identity with easy, daily action-steps and podcasts.

The first chapter in our look at Cambridge Analytica. Back in March, we asked the controversial digital marketing firm what services they provided for Trump. And experimented with our own psychometric profiles.  Listen to our latest episode to learn about the new lawsuit that could shine a light on Cambridge Analytica.

When governments start pulling the strings of power with algorithms and bots... we ALL become political puppets. Listeners, it’s time to consider how online interference moves into the physical world. President Trump recently met with Russian president Vladimir Putin who told him that his country definitely didn’t meddle in the U.S. election last year, online or off. Good thing that’s cleared up. But if for some reason you’re not inclined to take either (or both) of those two men at their word, this week, some tips. How to spot a botnet. How psychometrics sells sneakers - and worldviews. And how to make sure you’re not the useful idiot. The final installment of our Nyet series, with information warfare expert Molly McKew.   Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  Listen to our first and second episodes. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.     

Russian spy tactics have gotten an upgrade since the Cold War. This week how they work now: bad actors, active measures, advanced persistent threats. Cyberwar has its own vocabulary. So we got ourselves a tutor. Join Manoush and information warfare expert Molly McKew, who puts the fun in fundamental assault on democracy.  Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  This is the second episode of our series on Russia. Listen to the first and last parts. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.   

During the presidential campaign, Daily Beast executive editor Noah Shachtman opened up Twitter, saw all the vitriol and fake news and conspiracy theories, and thought 'Man, is this really my country?'  Then Noah and his team started to investigate Russian interference in the election. Videos made in Russia, purporting to be from the American South. Activist groups invented in Russia, prompting Americans in Idaho to attend real-life protests. Is this his country? Yes. Also, maybe no.   As Facebook, Twitter and Google’s parent company Alphabet sit down before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Note to Self is separating conspiracy from reality. Connecting the dots without turning the office into a scene from Homeland. With Noah Shachtman and reporter Spencer Ackerman of The Daily Beast. Plus, a look back at what we knew all along. We started in November 2016 with tech under the Trump administration. In March, we questioned Facebook’s responsibility for fake news with former ad executive Antonio Garcia Martinez. Exploring the Trump campaign’s use of psychometrics, we interviewed the chief product officer of data-profiling company Cambridge Analytica. April brought a foray into the alt-right corners of Reddit, and the origins of the word cucked. And in May, we talked to Phil Howard, an Oxford University professor among the first to research the armies of Russian bots spreading garbage and confusion on Twitter. Turns out, almost without realizing it, we’ve been assembling pieces of this puzzle all year. Become a member today and support our work. Just visit NotetoSelfRadio.org/donate.  This is the first episode of our series on Russia. Listen to the second and third parts next. For more spy terms explained, reasonable/sensible coping strategies for when democracy is under threat, and Nyet more puns.   

Manoush is a nice human being. Polite, punctual, present. But man, is she a rude robot. Recently, Manoush attended a conference as a telepresence robot. (Imagine an iPad, on top of two brooms, with a Roomba as the base.) And she careened around interrupting conversations, sideswiping people and disrupting panels. Literally an out-of-body experience. We lose track of our bodies every day now. We spiral into some Instagram stalking mid-commute and bump into someone on the street. We surface from a text at dinner to a peeved friend, still waiting the end of our sentence. We follow the blue ribbon of our GPS right off a cliff.  This week, the big and small ways we’ve put ourselves on autopilot. What we gain, and what we’ve lost. Because there was a time when humans were guided by the stars, not the satellites. With researchers Allen Lin, Johannes Schöning, and Brent Hecht, who have their own embarrassing robot stories. And Greg Milner, author of Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds. The problem with GPS isn’t the machines, guys. It’s you.  

If you’ve ever played video games, or swapped tiles around on Candy Crush, you know the feeling of winning. Like a light in your brain, a mental fist pump. But you probably also know that guilty feeling after realizing you've spent 30 minutes plugged in. That worry, when your kid spends hours on the console. Jane McGonigal, game researcher and futurist, is here to take away some of that guilt. She’s a champion of gaming as a form of self-help. Because, Jane says, that light you feel when you unlock a level - that's your mind being altered. Slightly.  Jane is optimistic about that power. Mind alteration can be a beautiful thing, and with games it is substance-free. But it also takes self-control to keep it healthy. This week, we set some ground rules. We first talked to Jane last year and we're revisiting the conversation with some added insights.   

Eugenia Kuyda and her best friend Roman had a habit of texting back and forth all day. When he was killed in a car crash, the void was enormous. So she put her technical skills to use. She gathered all his texts, his emails, his entire digital footprint, loaded them into a system that finds patterns in data, and created a bot version of Roman. Then she started hearing from other people who had lost loved ones. They wanted to make a bot too. And Replika was born. Replika works mostly by texting with you. Through your chats, Replika learns your speech patterns and habits, thoughts and hopes and fears. It uses them to become you. To use the same emojis you do. Laugh (well, type “lol”) at the things that make you laugh. What could go wrong with a filter bubble of one? Mike Murphy, a reporter for Quartz, spent months talking to Replika - talking to himself. He wrote a strange and powerful article about the experience. It turns out, he didn’t know himself as well as he thought he did.

We used to RSVP to events. Now, invitations live in our Facebook notifications and group texts. And we just ignore them. It’s so easy to forget there’s a human on the other end. Asking you to show up. Renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel says we’re suffering of aloneness. Our phones create distance and intimacy at the same time. Esther has a way out of this strange paradox - some ideas for how we can treat each other better. We do, too. Well, Esther’s idea, our tool. Take five minutes and ask yourself - who do I owe a phone call to? Who do I need to check in with? Who did I leave hanging and never got back to? We know that sounds daunting, so we’re here to help. You can text GHOST to 70101. We’ll reply (well, our textbot will), then we’ll check in a week later to see if you faced facts and made that list.   Correction: In the episode Manoush refers to Esther Perel as Dr. Esther Perel. Perel isn't a doctor, she is a psychotherapist.   

So you’ve finally matched with someone you like on Tinder. Your chats are funny, smooth, comfortable. When you meet in person, you sit at a bar for five hours without noticing the time. “That was so fun! Let’s do this again!” “Yeah, sure!” “How about next Tuesday?” Then… radio silence. Ghosted. Or maybe the fadeaway is more subtle. You try to make plans, and they’re into it, but they’re so busy. A project needs to be finished at work, then friends are in town. Yeah, you’re being simmered. Online dating has given us a lot of new ways to get dumped. Or, you know, not. Esther Perel is our guide to this treacherous terrain. She is a renowned psychotherapist and author. Her new book is called The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity, and her podcast is Where Should We Begin. She's giving us a two-part therapy session on how tech is changing romance, relationships, and our expectations of each other. So listen in, even if you’re like Manoush and met your partner over 10 years ago, when things weren’t so complicated.