Episode S2 | E6

21st Century Technology: More Harm or More Good?

Air Date: Jul 02, 2017

About this episode

In areas from alternative energy, to genetics, to nanotechnology, to artificial intelligence and robotics, among others, the pace of change is accelerating and the different streams of change seem to be moving towards a confluence, which a number of leading futurists have called, “the singularity”. Smart phones and the internet now link billions of brains and the growth curve shows billions more added to this connected human intelligence over the coming relatively few years. At the same time the pace of artificial intelligence quickens enormously. Together these trends accelerate the process of acceleration. But what does it all mean? How will our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren live, work, play? What will our technological future look like… man-made utopia, or the dystopias imagined by science fiction?

About the guests

Gregory Stock

Research professor of genetics and genomic studies & Co-Director of the Harris Center for Precision Wellness, Icahn School of Medicine, Mt. Sinai

Dr. Gregory Stock is a leading authority on the broad impacts of advanced technologies in the life sciences. He was co-founder and CEO of Signum Biosciences, a Princeton-based biotechnology company developing therapeutics for Alzheimer’s, and of Ecoeos, a personalized healthcare company with an at-home genetic test for susceptibility to mercury....

Dr. Stewart Prager

Director, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Stewart Prager was the sixth director of PPPL. He joined the Laboratory in 2009 after a long career at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. At Wisconsin, he led research on the “Madison Symmetric Torus” (MST) experiment and headed a center that studied plasmas in both the laboratory and the cosmos.

Edmund Lee

Managing Editor, Recode

Edmund Lee has been a journalist for two decades. He got his start at the Village Voice, where he wrote about everything from Asian gangsters to amateur arm wrestling tourneys. Before joining Recode, he was the media reporter for Bloomberg News and Businessweek magazine, and he occasionally jabbered on Bloomberg TV. He has worked for, or...