Tech Talk: Rethinking Technological Positivism with Cory Doctorow

Tech Talk: Rethinking Technological Positivism with Cory Doctorow

Author: Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer June 15, 2019 Duration: 1:01:12

Self-driving cars or armed autonomous military robots may make use of the same technologies. In a certain sense, we as software developers are helping to build and shape the future. What does the future look like and are we helping build the right one? Is technology a force for liberty or oppression.

Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors and also a public intellectual with a keen insight into the dangers we face a society. In this interview, I ask him how to avoid ending up in a techno-totalitarian society. We also talk about Turing, DRM, data mining and monopolies.

 

Website for Page


In CoRecursive: Coding Stories, host Adam Gordon Bell sits down with software developers to explore the human narratives woven into the technology we build. This isn't a technical interview focused on syntax or best practices, but a deeper dive into the pivotal moments, creative struggles, and personal insights that shape how code comes to life. Each conversation reveals the context behind decisions, the stories of failure and breakthrough, and the often-overlooked human elements that define our craft. As a software developer himself, Adam guides these discussions with genuine curiosity, pulling out anecdotes and reflections you won't hear anywhere else. The podcast lives in the intersection of News, Education, and How-To, but through the lens of lived experience. You'll hear about the origins of influential projects, the rationale behind unconventional solutions, and the personal journeys that lead developers to their philosophies. Listening feels like pulling up a chair with thoughtful peers, offering a richer understanding of the profession that goes far beyond the screen. This is where the abstract becomes concrete, through the stories and people behind the code.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

CoRecursive: Coding Stories
Podcast Episodes
Story: Apple 2001 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:08
David Shayer worked at Apple for 14 years, and he has a wild experience to share. Apple has a unique culture, and David will give us an insider view of what it was like for him at Apple during the 2000s, roughly between…
Story: Video Game Programming From Scratch [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:15
I'm not really a big gamer, but lately, I've fallen down this rabbit hole into the world of Casey Muratori, and this project that he started on Twitch in 2014. He is building a video game from scratch and explaining it a…
Story: Reinforcement Learning At Facebook with Jason Gauci [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 38:06
If you ever wanted to learn about machine learning you could do worse than have Jason Gauci teach you. Jason has worked on YouTube recommendations. He was an early contributor to TensorFlow the open-source machine learni…
Chat: 2020 Year End [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:27
Welcome to the year-end episode. Today is all the bonus questions. Often times I have questions that I want to ask guests, but they don't quite fit the overall theme of the episode. So today we're going to do a whole epi…
Story: Frontiers of Performance with Daniel Lemire [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:09
Did you ever meet somebody who seemed a little bit different than the rest of the world? Maybe they question things that others wouldn't question or said things that others would never say. Daniel is a world-renowned exp…
Story: The Birth of Unix with Brian Kernighan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:10
As Brian Kernighan said "UNIX since the start has become a vehicle for creating and using programming languages." Brian initiated work on what would become the UNIX system. He helped develop it to run on a minicomputer a…
Story: To The Assembly [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:20
How do CPUs work? How do compilers work? How does high-level code get translated into machine code? Today's guest is Matt Godbolt and he knows the answers to these questions. How he became an expert in bare metal program…
Story: Memento Mori [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 40:33
Preparing our minds for the inevitable - death is pressing. After facing terminal cancer, Kate Gregory reminded herself that this event can still become inspiring by focusing on the positive. In this episode, Kate is goi…
Story: We are teaching Functional Programming Wrong [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:40
Today Richard Feldman shares his story of going from javascript developer to elm developer to functional programming teacher. Along the way, Richard finds that people are teaching functional programming wrong. We are tea…
Story: Software That Doesn't Suck With Jim Blandy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:17
Building Subversion Software is just the tool and it should get out of your way. In this episode, we will discuss Jim Blandy's insights on how to build and recognize improvements for a great developer tool and find out h…