For Tech’s Sake
by Elaine Burke & Kelly Earley
Latest episode
Tech Treehouse of Horror II
Tech Treehouse of Horror II
About this podcast
Join Elaine Burke and Kelly Earley for a weekly edition of the people’s tech podcast, where they demystify the news and help you decode your digital life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 120 episodes
- Tech Treehouse of Horror II · 43 min · Season 5 Episode 23We’re back with another Halloween-themed episode, this time sharing stories of the tech that scares us, like the terror of going viral, the shock of Sims making WooHoo on your…
- I know what you did last summit · 50 min · Season 5 Episode 22Elaine went to a week of AI summits and events and found the best conversations were happening outside of the sanitised headline event in Dublin, which felt like a day-long ad…
- Panopticontent · 53 min · Season 5 Episode 21The modern-day panopticon is not a circular prison with a central guard tower, it’s a network of connected devices capturing and tracking our every waking minute and collecting…
- What have data centres ever done for us? (with Patrick Bresnihan and Patrick Brodie) · 46 min · Season 5 Episode 20Are data centres central to the Irish economy? Or is that just some inflated bluster from the government on behalf of Big Tech? A recent report from Maynooth University has…
- How easy is it to scam a bot? · 34 min · Season 5 Episode 19This week, Kelly and Elaine are talking about the emergence of the ‘AI shelf’, where products are marketed specifically at large language models (LLMs) so that they are…
- AI’s doomer cult · 1 h 10 min · Season 5 Episode 18This week we dust off our corkboard and thread to connect the dots between problematic Silicon Valley ideologies and the doomsday AI talking points that have been gripping the…
- Game over for discs · 42 min · Season 5 Episode 17With the impending release of GTA VI looming large over the video games industry, Kelly and Elaine discuss how the trend towards disc-less gaming represents a loss of consumer…
- Back to school! · 42 min · Season 5 Episode 16We’re back, and the kids are back in school, so we are packing your lunchbox with some food for thought on tech in schools. We’re weighing up screen-free childhoods, debunking…
- What social media bans get wrong · 43 min · Season 5 Episode 15The UK’s upcoming social media ban for under 16s has been labelled an insufficient “political band-aid” that prioritises business as usual over online safety, and creates a…
- Are data centres a drain? (with Prof Hannah Daly) · 39 min · Season 5 Episode 14In this episode, Elaine is joined by energy researcher Prof Hannah Daly to discuss the energy strain data centres represent for Ireland, the greenwashing that enables their…
- Is technology making us lonely? (with Dr Colman Noctor) · 46 min · Season 5 Episode 13Are we in danger of becoming a contactless society? That’s the concern of psychotherapist Dr Colman Noctor, who joined Elaine to explain why we need to push ourselves beyond the…
- Get your clips out (with Aoife Barry) · 43 min · Season 5 Episode 12This week, Kelly has lost her voice! So Elaine is joined by cultural commentator, previous guest, and co-host of Get Around to It, Aoife Barry, to discuss why our feeds are…
- Do we like prediction markets? Yes/No · 37 min · Season 5 Episode 11Prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are rocketing in popularity and raking it in as users bet on everything from the day’s weather to major political manoeuvres. In…
- Hitting the AI kill switch · 44 min · Season 5 Episode 10This week, Kelly and Elaine have a chat about how all the AI hype and hate is pushing people to switch off. It’s a frank conversation about opting out of AI, where for some…
- Wikiphilia (with Amy O’Riordan) · 45 min · Season 5 Episode 9This week Kelly and Elaine are sharing their love for Wikipedia – its endless interesting links, dedication to niche topics, and, of course, the ‘Personal Life’ section. Amy…
- AI Ready… or not! (with Laura Grehan) · 58 min · Season 5 Episode 8This episode features an appearance from Elaine’s mam, who helped her review the new AI Ready platform from the Irish government (AIReady.ie) – and it did not go down well! We…
- Instagram’s end to encryption · 47 min · Season 5 Episode 7Pretty soon your private messages on Instagram will no longer be end-to-end encrypted. But you may not have even known they could be encrypted to begin with, as Instagram kind of…
- AI for good? (LIVE! with Dr Abeba Birhane) · 55 min · Season 5 Episode 6To celebrate our 100th episode, we invited our listeners to watch us in action live, with the return of special guest Dr Abeba Birhane, founder of the pioneering AI…
- The internet is coiled spaghetti (with Jane Ruffino) · 31 min · Season 5 Episode 5In this episode, Elaine tries to turn Kelly into a subsea cables stan with the help of Jane Ruffino, a PhD candidate who recently visited a ship in the midst of (literally)…
- Access to AT (with Patrick Fitzgerald and Sarah Boland) · 44 min · Season 5 Episode 4This week, Kelly and Elaine are talking about AT, assistive technology, and how we can all have nicer digital experiences because of it. Our expert guides to AT in this episode…
