Episode 8 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of philosophy, Sara Goering.

Episode 7 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of Mal Ahern, professor of cinema and media studies.

Episode 6 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of cinema and media studies, Golden Owens.

Episode 5 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of Math and the Comparative History of Ideas, Jayadev Athreya.

Episode 2 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of International Studies, as well as law, societies and justice––Stephen Meyers.

Episode 2 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures Hamza Zafer.

Episode 2 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of French Richard Watts.

Episode 1 of Ways of Knowing -- Season 2, an audio series about the humanities. Made by The World According to Sound and The University of Washington. This episode features the work of professor of English and Data Science Anna Preus.

In the previous episode, we heard how so-called artificial intelligence is being sold to the public as a revolutionary, inevitable technology that is going to completely transform society. This claim is built around the misleading metaphor of “artificial intelligence,” which equates machine processes with human intelligence. Generative AI products are being marketed as proof that machines will very soon be doing everything a human can do, but better, faster, and more efficiently. We’re being told we can’t stop this technology. Only learn to live with it. In this episode, we’re going to show how so-called generative AI is not revolutionary. Instead, it’s an evolution of societal trends that have been a long time in the making and which were not inevitable…Things like the automation of labor, growth of mass media, and vast increases in monopoly power. By understanding this context we can get a much clearer picture of what so-called generative AI actually is, what the companies behind it are really up to, and all the ways it can affect our lives. This is Media Objects. A Ways of Knowing podcast. Produced by the World According to Sound, in partnership with Media Studies at Cornell University. Support from the college of arts and science and the society for the humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming. Guests include Cornell professors Steven Jackson, Mendi and Keith Obadike, Daniel Susser, Lee Humphreys, and Chris Csikszentmihalyi.

With today’s so-called generative artificial intelligence, we’re being told that we have finally arrived. We’re now beginning to build true “thinking machines,” machines that will do everything a human can do, only better, faster, and more efficiently. This will change every aspect of our lives, for good…or for bad. Either way, there’s no turning back. We can’t stop generative AI. Only learn to live with it. This is not true. Today’s machines are far more powerful than those in the past, but their so-called “intelligence” is not like yours or mine. The belief that they can or soon will is a myth being used to obscure what so-called generative AI actually is, how it works, and what the companies behind it are really up to. AI companies are using the hype around artificial intelligence to build computer infrastructure, rewrite laws, and alter norms that will fundamentally change how we work, recreate, communicate…And ultimately, how we think about what it means to be human. None of this is inevitable. The changes being brought on by so-called generative artificial intelligence are not the result of some forward march of technological progress, but instead of decisions and values that we all have a say in. This is Media Objects. A Ways of Knowing podcast. Produced by the World According to Sound, in partnership with Media Studies at Cornell University. Support from the college of arts and science and the society for the humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming. Guests include Cornell professors Gili Vidan and Chris Csikszentmihalyi.

Text written with a typewriter is not the same as text written by hand, composed on a computer, sent in a text message, or generated by artificial intelligence. Like all media, the typewriter does not just transmit what a person wants to write. It is its own particular medium. In the 20th century, it changed the way writers write and the way people read—profoundly altering warfare, commerce, literature, and, perhaps most dramatically, gender relations. Media Objects is produced in collaboration with Media Studies at Cornell University. With support from the college of Arts and Sciences and the Society for the Humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming.

While extensions are masculine coded and deal with tools that extend what human beings already do, containers offer a different and more feminine concept of media: something that selects, stores, and processes information. Containers primarily allow for preservation, but this goes far beyond things like food, water, or other materials. They also determine cultural and intellectual production. For a primer on how to think about the way objects around us select, store, and process information, we’re going to consider one of America’s most iconic objects of containment: Tupperware. Media Objects is produced in collaboration with Media Studies at Cornell University. With support from the college of Arts and Sciences and the Society for the Humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming. Guests in this episode include professors Brooke Erin Duffy and Jeremy Packer.

Some of the most iconic images we have of the universe closely resemble 19th-century landscape paintings of the American West. A big part of the reason has to do with how scientists interpreted visual data from telescopes like Hubble.

Media are increasingly monopolizing attention: Your mind is prevented from wandering, from generating thoughts, having associations, coming up with ideas. Over time, this dulls the creative faculties and weakens the power of imagination, which is essential for the creation of art…as well as for a clear perception of reality. Episode guest is Radhika Koul, professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College. Produced with the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies and the Salvatori Center at Claremont McKenna College.

"Somnium" is considered one of the first pieces of science fiction. The short story, written in 1608, recounts a trip up to the moon. There are magical beings, aliens, drugs, and a perspective of the stars that would fundamentally change how people understood the solar system.

In the 9th century CE, Mayan astronomers were able to calculate the period of Venus down to the minute. They were only able to achieve this unrivaled accuracy because they had developed one of the most important mathematical concepts in human history, the zero.

Near the end of the 11th century CE, there was a crisis in China’s Song Dynasty. The imperial calendars were filled with errors. To fix them, the imperial court would have to reform one of the most essential institutions in the empire: The Bureau of Astronomy.

In the 6th Century BCE, Ancient Greeks began thinking about the cosmos in a fundamentally new way. Their novel approach led them to believe the things they saw in the night sky were not ethereal, but solid bodies—balls of fire or rock that may even have inhabitants of their own.

Some four thousand years ago, Babylonians began collecting celestial data for what is arguably the longest-running project in the history of science.

We increasingly interact with the world through the binary, on/off medium of buttons—from keyboards and appliances, to the digital interfaces of phones and tablets; but it didn’t have to be this way. “There is nothing natural or inevitable about buttons or the act of pushing a button. Various constituencies over the years—especially advertisers and manufacturers—have marshalled tremendous resources to make buttons popular and alluring,” Rachel Plotnick, author of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing. Media Objects is produced in collaboration with Media Studies at Cornell University. With support from the college of Arts and Sciences and the Society for the Humanities. Editing and academic counsel from Erik Born, Jeremy Braddock, and Paul Fleming.