logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2021
29 m

Fleeting

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Aleks Krotoski asks if how we use technology has affected our attitudes to ephemerality and the transience of things.

Producer: Peter McManus

Up next
Feb 2024
Update from the Digital Human Team
The Digital Human is pausing to focus on what everyone's talking about - AI. Join Aleks and her co-host Kevin Fong for The Artifical Human from BBC Radio 4, listen on BBC Sounds. 
1m 7s
Nov 2023
Reminiscence
‘I asked myself this very question after a family member was affected by dementia. In her later years, the only person my grandmother still remembered was her husband – but he had passed away several years earlier. She asked about him every morning and finding out that he had die ... Show More
29m 4s
Nov 2023
Permanence
Aleks Krotoski explores a story which sought to be forgotten, but wasn't. Agrippa (A Book of the Dead), was published in 1992. It was a book designed to decay from its very first use. It was an unusual conceit, and played into our fears about malfunctioning technology ahead of th ... Show More
27m 57s
Recommended Episodes
Mar 2024
Being Human Now - Play
What does play mean in a digital age, when so much happens on our all-consuming phones, and tech erases the boundaries between work and play? 
54m 8s
Oct 2024
Can we keep AI out of human only spaces?
The arms race is over and we lost. All those increasingly annoying little puzzles to prove "I am not a robot" from how many buses can you see to the invisible behavioural analysis going on behind the screen, AI powered bots can now pick every lock designed to keep them out. Aleks ... Show More
29m 29s
May 2023
Tech Life
How is technology changing our lives? Search for Tech Life wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe or follow if you can. 
34s
Dec 2020
Tactics, tools and technologies
The role of technology in life and work has grown immensely in the midst of the pandemic. In our final episode, we speak with Dr Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California, about the strategies that people can take to remain focused and try to increase ... Show More
30m 41s
Jan 2022
Your Brain Is Being Strip-Mined
<p>Cell phones, social media, messaging software, and multitasking are robbing our attention, as our monkey minds jump from one notification to another. Mickey McManus, a BCG senior advisor and leadership coach, explains how these distractions strip our cognitive capacity and eve ... Show More
23m 5s
Apr 2024
The Jackie Show
Our interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. We scroll through wildlife feeds on TikTok. We use Instagram to plan hikes. Even in the wilderness, we religiously bring our phones to document the experience. And then there are animal cams. Since the 1990s, p ... Show More
25m 13s
Jul 2020
Aleks in Wonderland: Attack of the Zombie Baby Monitors - Episode 3
Can we Control the Dark Side of the Internet? The Internet is the world's most widely used communications tool. It's a fast and efficient way of delivering information. However it is also quite dumb, neutral, treating equally all the data it passes around the world. From data tha ... Show More
28m 56s
Apr 2024
Space junk
This week on Tech Life we are looking at the problem of space junk, the man-made debris hurtling around our planet. Could it threaten some of the everyday tech we all rely on?Also this week, don't you just hate it when stuff doesn't work? Are internet and social media outages bec ... Show More
26m 29s