The Secret Life of Tech

Baby, the Internet, & Me

On today’s show, Eric Anctil talks to Katie, a married, 33-year-old high school teacher and mother of a 1-year-old baby girl who has lots to share about having a baby and raising a baby in today’s world. She calls it “internetting with baby” and she shares with us what “internetting” looks like for her, from her earliest thoughts about having a baby all the way to raising a toddler and then thinking about raising a child in our current technological world.  At 33, Katie is pretty much at the center of being a millennial and she shares what it was like growing up online herself and then getting married and starting a family with the internet as the backdrop to her life. From getting pregnant and being part of enormous communities and forums for expecting and new moms, to her insights into modern motherhood, especially as its influenced by the current social media age, Katie provides an inside look and perspective on what it means to create and raise a baby in the internet age. She mentions several books and resources which you can find on The Secret Life of Tech Instagram page and below.  We end our conversation with an exploration of the future of technology and what Katie thinks about and worries for her daughter’s place in it, especially in light of the stories and perspectives her high school students share with her about their current technological realities.  EPISODE RESOURCES:  What to Expect … community groups and forums @ https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/ [https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/] Emily Oster’s books @ https://emilyoster.net [https://emilyoster.net] Laura Danger’s website @ https://www.thatdarnchat.com [https://www.thatdarnchat.com] Fair Play, Eve Rodsky’s system to help couples balance household tasks @ https://www.thatdarnchat.com [https://www.thatdarnchat.com] Jessica Valenti @ https://www.jessicavalenti.com [https://www.jessicavalenti.com] CuboAi Plus Smart Baby Monitor, ⁠https://us.getcubo.com/products/cubo-ai-plus⁠ [https://us.getcubo.com/products/cubo-ai-plus]

AI Barbie Speaks Again

In 2015, the toy company, Mattel, partnered with ToyTalk, a technology company that specialized in conversational AI, to release a special edition Barbie doll called, Hello Barbie. Hello Barbie was WIFI enabled “smart toy” that incorporated speech recognition and artificial intelligence to engage in interactive conversations with children. Hello Barbie listened to what children said and responded accordingly, providing, what the companies called, “personalized interactions and storytelling experiences by using speech recognition and natural language processing.” Basically, Hello Barbie was a doll that looked like an ordinary Barbie, except it was connected to the internet and a user could talk to it and it would talk back, remembering things the user had said, details to keep the conversation going, etc and so forth. Overall, the experience wasn’t bad and you could kind of see where ToyTalk was going when it comes to embedding AI into dolls. Today, it feels like there is a kind of Hello Barbie 2.0 in the conversational AIs that are popping up everywhere. Large Language Models that sound so human, even with their imperfections. AI models that feel like a person can talk with them in ways that could only be imagined back in the Hello Barbie 1.0 days of the late 20-teens. And, unlike the Hello Barbie doll that was limited to talking about food, fashion, and family, the conversational AIs of today might be able to take on some of the thornier questions and discussions that someone could never have when the language models were in their infancy. Joining today’s show is Pi, which bills itself as a digital assistant designed to “help you with all sorts of things!” (which is a direct quote from Pi). “Whether you need a friend to talk to, a guide to help you navigate the world, or just someone to share a laugh with,” it says, “I'm here for you.” Pi was created by a company called Inflection AI, based in Palo Alto, California and their stated mission is to redefine human-machine interaction. Pi is being used for today’s episode and conversation is because it seems to have a much better “personality” with how it “talks” to a user, especially when compared to the Sky voice of ChatGPT’s conversational AI (featured in Episode 1 of The Secret Life of Tech). The voice sounds a lot like Aubrey Plaza and it even has her sass and sense of humor. In fact, Pi is willing to take on the personality or characteristics of many celebrities and it does a great Aubrey Plaza, even just natively and without being asked to speak in her style or manner. It's the perfect voice for Hello Barbie 2.0 and we hope you agree. Barbie Music Mix by Revive Music: https://youtu.be/CgjXWZcVGug?si=PWP19pYSxhwYzvnT Johnny Cash sings "Barbie Girl" (A.I.) by Justin Ullmann: https://youtu.be/HW1qjsqS1zM?si=moPTu189JZ0uCC1R

Die Trying

On today’s show, Eric Anctil talks with Ricky, a young professional working as an engineer who had a much cooler and better paying job than almost anyone else at his age. Ricky followed the capitalist maxim of “buy low/sell high” and he did exactly that. At his high-point, Ricky was selling more than $70,000 a year of collectable and high-end fashion wear, and netting about $50,000 profit. Clothes and shoes made popular by rappers and artists that could sell for hundred or even thousands of dollars. And, if you are someone like Ricky, who can spot an original or a deal, the profits are yours for the taking.  After listening to Ricky tell his story, you can appreciate why he was voted, "Most likely to get rich or die trying" in high school. Until the internet and the smartphone (and the hundreds of websites and apps that have sprung up to support all manner of commerce), the best a high school student could hope for was a well-paying grocery store job or maybe making money as a young entrepreneur, selling things to people in the neighborhood or across the city. Today, the sky’s the limit as we will hear from Ricky who bought and sold t-shirts, sweatshirts, sweatpants, sneakers, and more all over the world.  Ricky is using a pseudonym to maintain his privacy, although everything he did was legal. He was just a kid when he did it.

I'm 15, I promise.

Today's show is the first of an ongoing theme we will be exploring on The Secret Life of Tech, which is coming-of-age stories and experiences from people who truly "came of age" online or because of (and with) technology. First up is Marigold, a 22-year-old woman who shares her experiences exploring the internet with her first smartphone, her iPad, an iPod touch, and the family computer. Our conversation takes us from early exposure to pornography (Disney porn, who knew?), to pretending to be older, having an online-only first boyfriend, and explorations of sexuality, identity, and privacy. Marigold is open and reflective and is clearly a good soul in the world. We appreciate her being so open and trusting with us. Marigold is using a pseudonym and her voice has been altered.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Drug Dealer

Have you ever wondered just how illegal drugs make their way from wherever they’re produced in the world into the hands of ordinary people in the United States? If you haven’t, let’s considerate it together and let’s consider what fascinates me the most in all of it which is how drug dealers use technology in every stage of the drug selling process and how technology on a broad scale has made the illegal drug trade an international thing at all.  Technology has been used to sell illegal drugs for almost as long as drugs have been illegal. From the early days of the emerging telephone network service to the use of corner payphones to dealers carrying pagers and eventually mobile phones and burner phones and using apps like Snapchat or Instagram to reach their customers.  Even something as simple as a phone call or text message represents the final step in the secret journey of getting ecstasy from a manufacturer in the Netherlands into the hands of a music festival goer on a summer evening in Anywhere, USA.   Drug dealing and the drug trade has evolved right along side emerging technologies and will continue to do so into the future.  Phones - and eventually pagers - dominated drug dealing from its earliest days and into the 90s. The mid 2000s gave rise to the dark web and cryptocurrency followed shortly thereafter. The power and promise of anonymity and privacy with the popularization of encryption and communication apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram have given new rise to what it means to use technology to leverage sales completely in the dark.  On today’s show, I interview “Marcus”, (who is using a pseudonym and whose voice I have altered by request). He is a retired drug dealer who took advantage of every bit of technology available to sell almost every kind of drug you can imagine, from pot to MDMA (also known as ecstasy). He started selling in high school to fund his own smoking habit and it was something he continued into college and into his life as a young professional in the world of legitimate work.  Marcus used social media to find customers, the dark web to buy from overseas, and cryptocurrency to make it all happen.  If a technology was available to help Marcus move more product, and evade the feds at the same time, he was likely using it.  Joining me in my interview with Marcus is my co-producer, Dagny Battaglino. You will hear her asking questions and joining our conversation throughout as we get to know the secret life of tech as it’s being used to buy and selling drugs down on Main Street and all over the world.  One last note, and something that really stood out to Dagny and me, is how much care Marcus put into being the safest drug dealer he could be. He religiously tested everything he ever bought and sold and he intentionally avoided selling to young people. His honor code as your friendly neighborhood drug dealer shines through throughout.