Understand Folgen

Ros Atkins thinks technology is dramatically shifting what we value in the worlds of friendship, culture, finance and work. In this episode, he sets out to test whether that shift amounts to a crisis - or something else.He examines how technology has made our relationships more frictionless, and perhaps thinner as a result; whether an algorithm can tell the difference between what's good and what merely holds our attention; how in the world of finance, price has come loose from worth altogether; and how in the world of work, some of us are wondering how long our value will hold.Featuring contributions from philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, sociologist Sherry Turkle, journalist and broadcaster Zing Tsjeng, the New Yorker's Kyle Chayka, writer John Lanchester, Financial Times columnist Jemima Kelly, translator Ruth Martin, software engineer Andrew Hamilton and economist Daniel Susskind.A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

Technology is transforming what we value at breakneck speed. But is this really new?In this episode, Ros Atkins looks to four moments when earlier technologies forced a reckoning with value: the printing press, which flooded the world with words and upended who got to claim knowledge and authority; the Luddite rebellion, a skilled workforce fighting not technology itself but their own devaluation by it; the scandalous arrival of photography in Victorian England, when images could suddenly be captured, copied and faked; and the dot-com boom and bust of the 1990s, when a generation learned how quickly value can be invented, and lost.Featuring historian Ada Palmer, technology reporter Brian Merchant, cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins and New Yorker journalist John Cassidy.A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

In this episode, Ros Atkins asks whether AI is solving our ‘value crisis’, or making it worse.He takes the optimistic case seriously - that AI could deepen our relationship with the world around us, unlock new forms of creativity, strengthen human intimacy, and help us solve big problems. Then he tests each claim. If AI brings us closer to each other, what happens when that closeness is manufactured rather than real? If it can make us more creative, what happens when it's built on other people's work, taken without payment or consent? If it can solve our biggest problems, who benefits when the technology itself is owned by a handful of companies? And if it does our thinking for us, what becomes of the expertise we spent years building?Featuring economist Daniel Susskind, futurist Amy Webb, businesswoman Alex Mahon, New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka, writer John Lanchester, research adviser Roberta Pierfederici, musician Holly Herndon, Baroness Beeban Kidron, digital anthropologist Caia Hegel and sociologist Sherry Turkle. A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4