Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of products and platforms define smart as routine automation and friendly digital ki ... Show More
Today
The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged t ... Show More
54m 19s
Yesterday
David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)
For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American poli ... Show More
1h 7m
Apr 20
Adrian Woolfson, "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2026)
Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are alive, clothing has opinions and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.To achieve this, says Ad ... Show More
54m 30s
May 2023
2390: NordicNinja - Deep Tech and Sustainable Transformation
In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I am joining forces with Rainer Sternfeld and Tomosaku Sohara, the powerhouse Managing Partners of NordicNinja. This unique joint venture between Japan and Estonia is at the forefront of cultivating an international, collaborative tech environ ... Show More
31m 31s
Apr 2021
Lisa Björkman, "Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories" (Association for Asian Studies, 2020)
Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research in the Indian city of Mumbai, Waiting Town: Life in Transit and Mumbai's Other World-Class Histories (Association for Asian Studies, 2020) is an unconventional little book – experimental in form – about how we come to know the worlds a ... Show More
55m 49s
Jan 2020
Ben Green, "The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future" (MIT Press, 2019)
The “smart city,” presented as the ideal, efficient, and effective for meting out services, has capture the imaginations of policymakers, scholars, and urban-dweller. But what are the possible drawbacks of living in an environment that is constantly collecting data? What importan ... Show More
33m 51s
May 2023
Colin Hoag, "The Fluvial Imagination: On Lesotho’s Water-Export Economy" (U California Press, 2022)
Landlocked and surrounded by South Africa on all sides, the mountain kingdom of Lesotho became the world's first "water-exporting country" when it signed a 1986 treaty with its powerful neighbor. An elaborate network of dams and tunnels now carries water to Johannesburg, the subc ... Show More
59m 23s
Feb 2022
The Power of Green Hydrogen in Sharjah with Dr. Mustafa Khamis and Dr. Mehmet Egilmez(31.01.22)
The Sharjah Research, Technology, and Innovation Park (SRTI Park) revealed an ambitious plan to be executed in cooperation with the American University of Sharjah (AUS), targeting to launch an Applied Research Ecosystem for sustainable energy solutions to develop new technologies ... Show More
33m 55s
Dec 2023
Joanna Zylinska, "The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI" (MIT Press, 2023)
A provocative investigation of the future of photography and human perception in the age of AI.
We are constantly photographing and being photographed while feeding machine learning databases with our data, which in turn is used to generate new images. Analyzing the transformatio ... Show More
1h 2m