Has Tech Lost All Humanity? With Mark Little

Hello, I'm host Connor Boyle and welcome to Intelligence Squared, the podcast about ideas that matter. In each episode, we speak to some of the world's most interesting thinkers, not simply about what they've written or created, but about the ideas that drive their work and why they matter now. In this episode, I'm speaking to Mark Little, entrepreneur and journalist whose work seeks to understand the impact of technology on media and democracy. Mark has founded some really interesting companies, Kinzin, which he sold to Spotify, Storyful, which was the world's first social news agency, and prior to working in tech at all, he was an excellent foreign correspondent for RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster.

Today we're going to explore the question of whether tech has lost its humanity and try to imagine a world where perhaps we wrestle back control of tech and AI from the tech giants. and the big companies. These are ideas that Mark explores in his new book, The Last Good Day on the Internet, which is just out. And we hope that by the end of today's episode you might be feeling a little bit more hopeful about the possibilities the future has to offer. Mark, welcome to Intelligence Squared.

It's a pleasure to be here, Connor. Let's start off with the bait the obvious question, which is when was the last good day on the internet? So it was November 2015. And when you say it to people, they immediately get it. It was the day that we had this pointless but hugely entertaining debate about the dress.

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