by Eddie Lopez<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When our wonderful @Ishi Ghai came around trying to start a\u00a0Tech and Narrative Lab<\/em>\u00a0based podcast, I had to join. It was novel, cool, and just such a neat experiment to see how we \u2013 as people who will all potentially influence tech policy one day \u2013 grappled with explaining technology to people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have a confession though: up to that point, I didn\u2019t really know what podcast were. Like, I knew what they were by definition\u2026 but experience wise, I had none. Thus, when I looked back at my experience with our podcast, it was really hard to judge it as anything \u2013 success, failure, or otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By happenstance, that actually has changed over the last couple months! In a mix of class assignments, friendships, and my own love of sports, I have finally become exposed to the likes of many different podcasts (i.e. Revisionist History<\/em>, How I Built This<\/em>, Babbage from The Economist<\/em>, and What\u2019s Wright? With Nick Wright<\/em> to name a few). With such experience in hand, I thought it was finally right to revisit my experiences on Emerging in Perpetuity<\/em> \u2013 the good, the bad, and some thoughts on the way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is Emerging in Perpetuity<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emerging in Perpetuity <\/em>was the Tech and Narrative Lab <\/em>based podcast I mentioned earlier. At its core, it originates from the idea that technology, as it further integrates into broader society, affects a larger number of both people and industries. Consequently, the need for good tech policy rises, as well as the players that must be considered in such policies. And how does one do that? How do we, as a society, expand our understanding of the applications, implications, and ethics that are associated with emerging tech?<\/p>\n\n\n\n While not a complete solution, one of the ways that we thought to address this was in \u201cfuture scenarios\u201d \u2013 things that could possibly play out ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the line. Like, what happens if the gig economy becomes a more dominant force in the work industry? How does the world change around us? What would have had to happen? This exact scenario is what we walked through in our first podcast arc\u2026 and as you could imagine, the possible future scenarios are endless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How it worked<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To create each episode, our team developed and played \u201cinterviewees\u201d that existed in these future scenarios. As an example, we took a gig worker that existed within that \u201cscenario\u2019s\u201d gig industry and asked him various questions. The person who helped give rise to the gig industry\u2019s dominance (think LinkedIn <\/em>meets TaskRabbit<\/em>) was also interviewed. We also threw characters that did our current researcher roles into the mix\u2026 and slowly but surely, each episode came together. Discussions were recorded as reading scripts, and then edited and posted to the Tech and Narrative Lab <\/em>website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reflections<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we begin, please note that I am no longer on the podcast team, and thus, this only speaks to my experiences in working the first arc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As for actual reflections post-listening to other podcast, I think our idea definitely fits into the podcast category of listening. It is reflective, boasts engaging dialogue, and offers a similar level of analysis that I have tended to find in other podcasts. However, unlike other podcasts, ours was completely scripted. At the time, we deemed this necessary due to our lack of depth in such a topic. However, I think that also hurt us; it made our podcast lack that \u201cscripted and non-scripted\u201d dialogue dynamic that most other podcasts have. Granted, I think our premise is also very different than most podcasts\u2026 which consequently leads me to some lingering questions for our podcast specifically; what is the way forward?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Way forward<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Firstly, in creating scenario arcs, our podcast is relying on viewers remembering things from prior podcast to a significant level. This is a little different than other podcast I have listened to, as well as may deal with topics that aren\u2019t as familiar to the average podcast user. The question of \u201chow do we ensure ease of memory \/ jump that gap?\u201d is a big one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With regards to creating scenarios and our own expertise, I think the team may need to rely on something more than ourselves to establish the depth, as well as the podcast episode, release pace, that we wish. Luckily, RAND is known for having experts in all kinds of fields\u2026 so maybe we leverage our parent company relationship and informally consult some researchers for a little more subject expertise? Better yet, maybe at some point we could get RAND researchers as interviewees~ This could give us some of the non-scripted dynamic we are looking for\u2026 but may come at the cost of QA \/ academic freedom. It\u2019s an interesting cost-benefit analysis\u2026 and definitely a discussion for another time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, I do think our podcast is a work in progress\u2026 but in the end, that\u2019s just it! Work in progress means we are still working through it, and if we continue to do so, I think the path forward is only upwards. If interested, please feel free to listen to the latest podcast episode here<\/a>. I believe the team is on a new arc!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Eddie Lopez When our wonderful @Ishi Ghai came around trying to start a\u00a0Tech and Narrative Lab\u00a0based podcast, I had to join. It was novel, cool, and just such a neat experiment to see how we \u2013 as people who will all potentially influence tech policy one day \u2013 grappled with explaining technology to people.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,15],"tags":[41],"class_list":["post-6079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creativity","category-future","tag-eddie-lopez"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6486,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6079\/revisions\/6486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nostatic.com\/lab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}