Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

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February 12, 2018: Bob Mankoff and Jamie Brew, co-founders of Botnik

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Movie night recap: Thanks to everyone who came out to Monty Hall last Saturday for our meetup and viewing of The Road Movie, a full-length documentary made from Russian dashcam videos. We hope to plan another meetup soon (this time with nametags!).

This evening, a conversation with Bob Mankoff and Jamie Brew, co-founders of Botnik, the AI-based humor-writing service. Previous to Botnik, Bob Mankoff was the longtime cartoon editor of the New Yorker - and Jamie Brew was the former head writer of The Onion's fake-clickbait site, Clickhole.

Botnik uses a predictive algorithm that suggests words based on a large enough text source - like the Harry Potter novels, or Star Trek scripts, or Radiohead lyrics, or Wired product reviews.

Links:

• Here's a fake Harry Potter chapter generated by Botnik. (This is also the chapter I read on-air during the special holiday episode of Techtonic, before I came across this better-sounding reading by a professional actor.)

• Here's a profile of Botnik's co-founders, Bob and Jamie, in Vice.

• Try Botnik yourself by choosing a source text and typing something with the predictive keyboard for that text.

But first...

Recent tech news:


• A pollster hired to follow Zuckerberg around has quit Facebook: "I worked there for six months and I realized that even on the inside, I was not going to be able to change the way that the company does business. I couldn’t change the values. I couldn’t change the culture."

• Intel has announced smart glasses, another attempt where Google Glass failed a few years ago. (I may cover this more in a future show.) Also in "smart" gadgets, see below...

• A report on "smart tech" in the home, from Gizmodo - "Smart coffee was also a world of hell":



• Last Tuesday, Accuweather predicted a tsunami for the Upper West Side of Manhattan:



...followed by the inevitable correction:



(source: West Side Rag)

• How Facebook is Killing Comedy: Splitsider's interview with Funny or Die's Matt Klinman is required reading. "There is simply no money in making comedy online anymore. Facebook has completely destroyed independent digital comedy and we need to talk about it. . . . It’s like eating locally or shopping locally. We need to think the same way about the internet. . . . every time you go and scroll through content on Facebook, you’re depriving independent media of a way to exist. . . . Facebook feels like this dingy, disgusting, rapacious place to me. And I want it to feel that way to other people so that when they go to a cool website, they are inspired: They see human beings putting love and care into something."

• Meantime, Brazil's largest newspaper just quit Facebook. Will U.S. and European newspapers start leaving Facebook? Stay tuned...



• It's time to break up Big Tech, argues Prof. Scott Galloway in this searing piece in Esquire. "Society is bifurcating into those who are part of the innovation economy (lords) and those who aren’t (serfs). One great idea will make a twenty-something the darling of venture capital, while those who are average, or even just unlucky (most of us), have to work much harder to save for retirement. . . . It’s painfully clear that the invisible hand, for the past three decades, has been screwing the middle class."

Galloway's conclusion: "A key part of a healthy economic cycle is pruning firms when they become invasive, cause premature death, and won’t let other firms emerge. The breakup of big tech should and will happen, because we’re capitalists. It’s time."

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Techtonic friends, here's my suggestion:
- Put down the screen.
- Avoid Google and Facebook.
- Support independent, non-monopolist services like these alternatives and, of course, WFMU.

P.S. Closing song tonight: credit to David Dichelle in Leipzig, Germany for pointing me to this on his most recent show. David hosts the always-excellent Continental Subway on Tuesdays at 4pm - 7pm Eastern on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio.

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