This week we interview author and tech reporter Claire Evans, author of “Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women who Made the Internet.” Since her book published, Evans has reported on the overlap between biology and computation, including ideas like living robots and slime mold computers. We talked the missed opportunity of hypertext, the science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s vision of 2024 and why social media has made our networks too big. You can listen to Evans discuss her book on today’s POLITICO Tech podcast. An edited and condensed version of our conversation follows: What’s one underrated big idea? I don’t think the true promise of hypertext was ever realized. I get into this in my book, but the original idea behind hypertext was to build systems that could help people turn data into knowledge, and to share that knowledge with one another. Early hypertext systems privileged learning, connection, attribution and meaning. That is to say, the nature of the connections between things. Before the World Wide Web, there were dozens of different systems in development at universities, at think tanks like Xerox PARC, and at companies like Apple, Sun Microsystems and Symbolics. They all had different applications—to structure knowledge, prototype ideas, link different items in a database, write, or navigate library archives—but they were all pretty much eaten by the Web, which opted for brute simplicity. Now when a link rots, a connection is lost forever, and I think our culture will come to regret that. What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? Social media. I think we were never meant to participate in community at such a large scale. Smaller, interest- or proximity-based networks seem much more humane at this point. What book most shaped your conception of the future? For better or worse, it might be the science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel Parable of the Sower. It takes place in Southern California in 2024—which used to be the future. In the novel, the state’s traditional problems, like water shortages, economic disparity, government corruption, fuel costs, are all violently exacerbated. Private armies of security guards protect the estates, enclaves, and businesses of the super-rich, while everyone else is left to fend for themselves, or else form self-sustaining micro-communities shut off from the outside world, perpetually fighting off raiders and pyromaniacs. This sounds bleak, and of course it is. But the novel is quite hopeful. It’s about refusing to accept dystopia, and instead attempting to shape the future rather than being overrun by it. Its protagonist, Lauren Olamina, leads a valiant mutiny against entropy, which Butler suggests isn’t heroism, just what you do. I think that mentality will come in handy in the coming years. What could government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t? Protecting us from invasive ad tech. What surprised you most this year? I doubt I’m the first person to say this, but the continued mainstreaming of conversational AI. I’m not surprised that the tech industry is all-in on AI, but I am surprised by how everyday people are integrating it into their lives. Not long ago I sat behind a man on a flight who chatted to GPT about his vacation for four hours. I have a friend who uses ChatGPT to re-write tricky emails to her mom “in the style of Esther Perel.” A novelist I know has been in a kind of Socratic dialogue with a bot for over a year. I have a lot of respect for users—I dedicated my book to them. We tend to celebrate, or condemn, the architects of new technologies, but it’s often the users who really drive what happens with them.
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Just how prepared is Intel to put its federal largesse to good use? POLITICO’s Christine Mui reported today on what might happen after the ribbon-cutting for the chipmaker’s new facility in Arizona, as it fights to deliver on its ambitious promise to restore the chip dominance the company, and the U.S., enjoyed in the 1990s. Sarah Kreps, a political scientist who directs Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute, cited lower costs, a talent gap and the steady migration overseas of chipmaking expertise as the headwinds Intel now faces. “It has to invest a lot in the short run to build these very, very expensive facilities, and then the customers will only come once the factories are built, more or less… Intel’s got a really long way to go,” said Chris Miller, assistant professor of international history at Tufts University and author of “Chip War.” Christine reported Monday for DFD on the nitty-gritty of Intel’s history and how AI has transformed the chip manufacturing race, including the “advanced packaging” techniques increasingly central to AI chipmaking.
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Spare a thought over the weekend, reader, for Sam Bankman-Fried, whose lengthy saga of fraud and huckstery came yesterday to its conclusion (for now) with a 25-year prison sentence. POLITICO’s Declan Harty reported on the sentencing, handed down by Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York yesterday in Brooklyn. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for his work with the crypto exchange FTX, with prosecutors alleging he stole billions of dollars invested there to finance his various political and technological projects (not to mention his lavish lifestyle). Bankman-Fried faced a maximum sentence of 110 years in prison. The message from the law to Bankman-Fried and his ilk was a familiar one, that could apply to a Bitcoin scheme, Enron, junk bonds or the innovator Charles Ponzi himself: “Anyone who believes they can hide their financial crimes behind wealth and power, or behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand, should think twice,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
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