Oh, The Places We'll Go!

Welcome to?The?Art?of?The?Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces?of?content which I hope will both inspire?and?embolden you.

PODCAST

Today’s guest is David Auerbach, a former engineer at both Microsoft and Google and now a technologist, writer and author of two books – ?Bitwise: A Life in Code?and his most recent book,?Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, we talk about David’s background in software engineering and what it was like to work at Microsoft on MSN Messenger and then at Google in the relatively early days of the tech giant’s gargantuan growth.

We also discuss his latest book – he explains the meganets term that he coined and how As we increasingly integrate our society, culture and politics within a hyper-networked fabric, the interactions of billions of people with unfathomably large online networks have produced a new sort of beast: an ever-changing systems that operates beyond the control of the individuals, companies, and governments that created them. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

QUOTE

INTERVIEW

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Dame Stephanie Shirley some years ago and was overwhelmed by her story from refugee to tech entrepreneur and now philanthropist. She is truly phenomenal and this recent interview on the High Performance podcast is excellent.

Listen here.

READ

Why the Future Doesn't Need Us

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech—are threatening to make humans an endangered species.

In research for my interview with Kevin Kelly this week, I found a fascinating Wired article from 2000 which provided a rich well for both my conversation with Kevin, and the one with David Auerbach.

Twenty three years have passed but so much of the article written by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy seems so prescient.

Enjoy the full article here.

And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast here so you are the first to hear my interview with Kevin Kelly - should be out in 2 weeks!

WATCH

I enjoyed this meeting of (Nobel Laureate) minds. The 2022 laureates in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Economic Sciences talk to Zeinab Badawi and students in the audience at the Royal Palace in Stockholm about their discoveries and achievements, and how these might find a practical application.

Hoping in time to come we saw more diversity in these fields, and discussions too.

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Thank you for reading?the?newsletter?and?for listening to?the?podcast?this week.?And?If you enjoyed them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that they can be inspired too.

Thank you so much.

Until next time...

Danielle