Programming Note: Darts and Letters is off. We are producing a new season on Cited Podcast, which is called “the Rationality Wars“.

Licking Elon’s Boot: The Politics of Technology

  • Thumbnail for EP50: Don’t hate the player (ft. Alexander Lee)

    EP50: Don’t hate the player (ft. Alexander Lee)

    Guest host (and regular lead producer) Jay Cockburn gets ready to enter the world of e-sports, with a lesson in Super Smash Bros from a top player and professional coach. Find out why he won’t make it (spoiler alert: he doesn’t have that reaction time he used to); but also, find out why he might not want to make it. Unfortunately, e-sports have many of the problems that ‘real’ sports do, and some are even worse.
    Listen now
  • Thumbnail for EP47: Lost Utopias: A History of World’s Fairs (ft. Rob Rydell, Jade Doskow & Jennifer Slack)

    EP47: Lost Utopias: A History of World’s Fairs (ft. Rob Rydell, Jade Doskow & Jennifer Slack)

    Welcome to 21st century  techno-utopianism. Driven by a new tech-bro/crypto culture, supported by online hordes of true believers, and couched in philosophies of meritocracy and technocracy, techno-utopianism is born anew. But this thinking, while different, is not really new.
    Listen now
  • Thumbnail for EP44: Gamify Everything (ft. Sebastian Deterding, Paris Martineau & Mostafa Henaway)

    EP44: Gamify Everything (ft. Sebastian Deterding, Paris Martineau & Mostafa Henaway)

    Setting goals for the new year? Learning a language? Going for a run? Delivering food? Picking packages off a warehouse shelf for delivery? There’s a game for that. Or, at least, a gamified system designed to nudge you in a series of pre-programmed directions in the service of the state, techno-capitalist overlords, or any number of other groups and entities that chart the course of our hyper-connected, cutting-edge, dystopian 21st century lives. This week on Darts and Letters, guest host Jay Cockburn and our guests take us through gamification of…everything.
    Listen now
  • Thumbnail for EP40: War Games (ft. Tanner Mirrlees)

    EP40: War Games (ft. Tanner Mirrlees)

    Why are there so many war games? They exploded in popularity post 9/11. Maybe you’ve played some of them. Or all of them. This week on Darts and Letters, Tanner Mirrlees, associate professor in the Communication and Digital Media Studies Program at Ontario Tech University and author of Hearts and Mines: The US Empire’s Culture Industry, joins us as we plunge headlong into the history of the militainment industrial complex, to understand the militarization of gaming and the gamification of war.
    Listen now
  • Thumbnail for EP37: Save the Whales (ft. Torulf Jernstrom, Mary Flanagan & Maru Nihoniho)

    EP37: Save the Whales (ft. Torulf Jernstrom, Mary Flanagan & Maru Nihoniho)

    We’ll save the Moby Dick puns for the episode itself, but suffice it to say that sinister game developers are on a whale hunt. This episode is about the sophisticated psychological tactics they use to hunt and capture their prey. On this episode of Darts and Letters, we take a journey to save the whales.
    Listen now