A podcast about the end of personal computers as we know them, and what comes next. Each episode we talk with people who are doing work at the frontier of computing, people who are challenging assumptions about what computers are and what our relationship to them should be.
Augment
A collection of essays on the future of personal computing — specifically, on the kind we’d like to see more of in the future, and the ideas that might help us get there.
Oh no, Google is turning everything into a podcast
Paul Frazee on Bluesky and the AT Protocol
Podcast Episode · Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers · January 17, 2025 · 1h 8m
ben guo 🏇 on Twitter / X
i gave this talk last night at @southpkcommons about why the personal computing revolution never happened, and what we can do about it. pumped about the feedback afterwards: "it's giving early tumblr", "you guys are like punk apple", "i want more early internet mixtape vibes" pic.twitter.com/0Lwz3CaWBX— ben guo 🏇 (@0thernet) November 6, 2025
» Apple, Carmen Sandiego, and the Rise of Edutainment The Digital Antiquarian
If there was any one application that was the favorite amongst early boosters of personal computing, it was education. Indeed, it could sometimes be difficult to find one of those digital utopianists who was willing to prioritize anything else — unsurprisingly, given that so much early PC culture grew out of places like The People’s Computer Company, who made “knowledge is power” their de facto mantra and talked of teaching people about computers and using computers to teach with equal countercultural fervor. Creative Computing, the first monthly magazine dedicated to personal computing, grew out of that idealistic milieu, founded by an educational consultant who filled a big chunk of its pages with plans, schemes, and dreams for computers as tools for democratizing, improving, and just making schooling more fun. A few years later, when Apple started selling the II, they pushed it hard as the learning computer, making deals with the influential likes of the Minnesota Educational Consortium (MECC) of Oregon Trail fame that gave the machine a luster none of its competitors could touch. For much of the adult public, who may have had their first exposure to a PC when they visited a child’s classroom, the Apple II became synonymous with the PC, which was in turn almost synonymous with education in the days before IBM turned it into a business machine. We can still see the effect today: when journalists and advertisers look for an easy story of innovation to which to compare some new gadget, it’s always the Apple II they choose, not the TRS-80 or Commodore PET. And the iconic image of an Apple II in the public’s imagination remains a group of children gathered around it in a classroom.
Basic | The Personal Computing Platform
We build products, tools, and standards to make computers more personal.
The $2.43 Billion Question: Podcast Advertising in 2024
An immersive data story exploring podcast advertising trends and the breaking point where ads drive audiences away.
triumph of the nerds
The Evolution of Software
Last week Chris Paik published a Google Doc titled, The End of Software, where he articulates the lowering cost of software development and potential implications. He ends the piece with a provocative statement: "Majoring in computer science today will be like majoring in journalism in the late...
Amazon Gets Into The AI Podcast Slop Business
Late last year we wrote about a new startup that was flooding the internet with AI-generated podcast slop. Featuring fake hosts having fake discussions, the startup proudly stated it was creating a…
Episode 5: Metaphors for AI, with Shannon Vallor
This week, Adam talks with Shannon Vallor, a philosopher of AI, about the metaphors we use to talk about AI and ourselves. They also dunk on libertarians and San Francisco billboards, and consider what kind of hope we can have for the future of technology.Messages: • Support the show at patreon.com/DreamingAgainstTheMachine • Follow us on Bluesky and Instagram • Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts! • Check out other great podcasts from Multitude like Wow if TrueAbout the show:Dreaming Against the Machine is a podcast about envisioning a realistic and hopeful future. Each week, the show’s host, journalist and astrophysicist Dr. Adam Becker, will have an earnest (and entertaining!) conversation with a guest about possible futures, seen through the lenses of history, science, and culture. In a world where tech oligarchs and their power fantasies are driving visions of the future, Dreaming Against the Machine aims to take back the terms of the public conversation about what our world can and should be.
This Is How the AI Bubble Could Burst
Podcast Episode · Plain English with Derek Thompson · 09/23/2025 · 59m
Notes from my Beginner Computer Literacy Class Part 1 - Alex’s Writing Journal
Helping the uninitiated navigate this brave new digital world
Amazon’s Alexa+ Now Produces AI-Generated ‘Podcasts’ Featuring Chats Between Two Robot ‘Co-Hosts’
The podcast industry suddenly has a big new player: Amazon's Alexa+ AI-powered voice assistant, which can now create extended 'podcasts' on any topic.
