Dr. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR for short), an independent organization of academics, activists, and engineers who believe in technology that benefits everyone. Dr. Gebru is also the co-founder of Black in AI, a nonprofit that works to increase the presence, inclusion, visibility, and health of Black people in the field of AI, and is on the board of AddisCoder, a nonprofit dedicated to teaching algorithms and computer programming to Ethiopian and Jamaican high school students. She has received a number of accolades, including being named one of Nature’s Ten people who helped shape science and one of TIME 100’s most influential people.

The conversation moves beyond technological hype to focus on labor, automation, and political possibility. Rather than framing automation as a simple story of job replacement, Srnicek argues that digital systems reorganize work through surveillance, algorithmic management, and precarious employment structures. As platforms increasingly function as social infrastructure, questions of governance, ownership, and democratic accountability become unavoidable. This episode challenges listeners to see the digital economy not as inevitable, but as a political construction one whose future remains open to collective imagination and action.

In reference to her book, The Afrofuturist Evolution, this conversation explores Afrofuturism as an active world-building practice rather than a distant or purely speculative future. Womack reflects on living inside futures once imagined by thinkers like Octavia Butler, the role of imagination in shaping present realities, and how ancient cosmologies, rhythm, and storytelling can inform more humane technological systems.

Dr. Mansour is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at CU Boulder whose work sits at the intersection of architecture, spirituality, digital media, and AI. A former research fellow at the Princeton Center for Theological Inquiry, she has published widely across disciplines and is currently editing Religion and AI: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches, forthcoming with Bloomsbury.

A leading sociologist of media and culture, his work has been central to understanding how media and communications concentrate symbolic power and what that means for human solidarity. His recent research focuses on the ethics, politics, and social implications of Big Data and everyday data practices. He is the author or editor of 17 books, including Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (with Dr. Ulises Mejias) and The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What if It Can’t?

Galaz is the founder of Structured Knowledge, a nonfiction narrative consultancy helping creatives and thinkers translate complex ideas into meaningful public-facing work. She is also co-creator of Our Friend the Computer, a globally ranked podcast uncovering underrepresented histories of computing; an editor at the Millennium Film Journal; and co-founder of Superkilogirls, a creative research lab examining the material infrastructures of computing and their entanglement with women’s labor.

Her projects have been supported by the New Museum, the Nieuwe Instituut, Creative Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Media Archaeology Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder. In this episode, Galaz reflects on how storytelling, archives, and experimental media can reveal the hidden human histories behind our digital world.

Who will own the future of gig work? In this month’s episode of Looks Like New, MEDlab Associate Director Júlia Martins speaks with Minsun Ji, Executive Director of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, about empowering workers to reclaim control over their economic futures. Minsun and her team are pioneering efforts to democratize work ownership, including the launch of Colorado’s first driver-owned ride-share cooperative. Together, they examine the unique challenges of competing in the ride-share market, the innovative strategies behind worker cooperatives, and why these models are essential for building resilient local economies.

In this episode of Looks Like New, host Júlia Martins Rodrigues speaks with Warren Liu, a Media Studies doctoral student. Liu examines how video games shape culture—both by reflecting colonial legacies and by offering space to challenge them.

Their conversation explores how games can spark decolonial thinking and open new paths for cultural exchange. From reclaiming narratives and traditions to reimagining design and player agency, they discuss how gaming can become a tool for inclusivity, empathy, and social change.

Who gets to participate in society—and how do we build systems that serve everyone, not just the privileged few?

In this episode of Looks Like New, MEDLab’s Júlia Martins Rodrigues speaks with Dr. Nicol Turner Lee, a leading expert at the intersection of technology and social justice, about what happens when entire communities are left behind in our rapidly digitizing world. As Director of the Center for Technology Innovation and founder of the AI Equity Lab, Turner Lee has dedicated her work to making AI and internet access more inclusive, ethical, and equitable—from the U.S. to the Global South. We explore insights from her groundbreaking book Digitally Invisible and discuss how we can rethink AI governance to create a more just digital future.

AI is advancing at lightning speed—so fast that questions of ownership and data use often get left behind. What control do we really have over our data in these massive language models? And how can we rethink governance for AI?

On this episode of Looks Like New, MEDLab fellow Andy DiLallo speaks with Berlin-based artist, musician, and technologist Mat Dryhurst. Known for his work on collective ownership and digital governance. We hear how DIY music culture shaped Mat’s approach to technology, the importance of transparency in AI, and the role institutions can play in building ethical, trustworthy AI frameworks.

In this month’s episode of Looks Like New, hosted by MEDlab’s associate director Júlia Martins Rodrigues, we hear from Art Bamford, Ph.D., lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, a fellow at the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture, and co-author of Every Parent’s Guide to Navigating Our Digital World.

Art Bamford is currently researching the influence of Protestant revivalism on modern American advertising and public relations. In this episode, he shares fascinating insights into the historical relationship between celebrity, advertising, and scandal—and how these forces have shaped enduring trends in pop culture.

On this month’s episode of Looks Like New, hosted by MEDlab fellow Stephanie Abdalla, Anna Muller joins us all the way from Brazil to discuss the importance of data control, especially for individuals with uteruses.

Anna Muller brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation. She is a biomedical specialist in neuroscience and behavior, a health instructor focused on fertility, perception, and hormonal health, as well as a speaker and content producer specializing in menstrual education. Together, Stephanie Abdalla and Anna Muller dive into the world of fertility tracking apps, the risks and realities of data control, and possible safer alternatives—drawing from history, academic discourse, and personal insight.

Ehmke developed the Contributor Covenant, a code of conduct that is widely used across digital communities, as well as the Hippocratic License, a software license designed to protect human rights. She previously appeared on Looks Like New to explore why software development communities need ethical standards. This month, Ehmke returns to Looks Like New to talk about her work as a tech ethicist, experimental musician, and occult practitioner. As the Executive Director of the Organization for Ethical Source, Ehmke considers software’s real-world impacts and works to promote the fundamental rights and well-being of diverse communities affected by technology.

Ehmke’s writing appeared in the MEDLab publication “Change is in the Cards,” a zine that explores open-source governance through the lens of tarot. The zine is freely available for download here

Curious to hear more about Ehmke’s work as a tech ethicist? Listen to her previous appearance on Looks Like New here

On this month’s episode of Looks Like New, we’re bringing you a conversation between guest mentors from MEDlab’s Open Social Incubator, where community organizers from all over the world come together to explore alternatives to dominant corporate platforms. These innovators prioritize community building, safety features, and governance structures in their designs. The discussion featured Rudy Fraser, founder of BlackSky on Bluesky; Evan Henshaw-Plath also known as Rabble, a former Twitter developer now working on Nostr; and Christine Lemmer-Webber, a leading author of the ActivityPub protocol, software developer, and Executive Director of the Spritely Institute.

These speakers, alongside audience questions, shared insights into the challenges and opportunities of creating open social software. They explored ways to prevent the re-centralization of power and ensure the protection of marginalized users.

To answer these questions we spoke to Marjorie Kelly, a Distinguished Senior Fellow with the Democracy Collaborative, author of The Making of a Democratic Economy (co-authored with Ted Howard), Owning our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, and The Divine Right of Capital. For years Kelly has been a thought leader in the next generation of employee ownership, impact investing, and the construction of a community-rooted democratic economy.  

In this episode, we explore Marjorie Kelly’s long list of experiences and unique perspectives on the economic situation we all find ourselves in. MEDLab director  Nathan Schneider moderates a discussion with Marjorie Kelly and a cast of live audience members about our unique socio-economic challenges and what we can do about them. 

This month we interviewed Antoinette Kendrick, a second-year doctoral student and Instructor in CU Boulder’s department of Media Studies. She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and her master’s degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on the social impact of digital media use on children and how we can enable effective strategies for teaching media literacy.

On the episode, we discuss how Antoinette’s background in social work informs her approach to media literacy for youth. Tune in to listen as we discuss platform politics, how we can curtail exposure to graphic media, and reforms for educating children on digital media literacy.

On this episode, Dr. Klassen discusses with us her how she arrived at her dissertation research topic and process of conducting the research. Tune in to listen as we discuss Afro Futurism, Ethical Speculative Projects, and Black Mirror.

In this episode of “Looks Like New” Dr. Bell discusses how modern technology allows scholars and academics to turn to audiences beyond the classroom, both directly through content of his own making and as the informed voice of accountability in his role as culture consultant.

This month’s guest, Rudy Fraser, is the founder of Papertree, a resource that provides joint money accounts for communities. Papertree started as a crowdfunding system to help neighborhoods provide financial assistance for groceries to community members. Rudy chose to build Blacksky, his own feed on Bluesky, to create a space for Black internet users to build a safe and supportive community online. Listen to this month’s episode to learn more about the emerging opportunities in social media through Rudy’s experience building Blacksky—and how novel moderation systems are reaching for new ways of connecting people online.

What does it mean to be a fan in the digital age? What do fan practices look like?

In this episode Dr. Jenkins takes us through fan activism to purchasing practices in China as he discusses research on emerging fan cultures. In this episode we will learn all about the new landscape of global fandom in an increasingly digitally mediated world.

She serves as a lecturer in digital cultures at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland. Her first book, Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform, was published in 2023.

Rachel’s work digs into the complexity of financial exchange. How especially in the digital era, payment and the platforms and tools that we use to do it bring different social relations into being. Her work offers an ethnography of sorts, drawing on real-life research she’s conducted into money burners and Bitcoin fanatics.

She’s a bracing critic of the connection between big tech and big finance yet offers frameworks for a hopeful future.

In this month’s episode, we dive into what tokens are, what makes them different from regular money, and how they matter today.

As the director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the author of influential works such as “Textual Poachers,” Dr. Jenkins explored how audiences actively engage in shaping and reshaping media content.

He was the principal investigator for “The Civic Imagination Project,” a venture funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This project seeks to inspire creative collaborations within communities, emphasizing shared values and visions for the future.

Dr. Jenkins has been at the forefront of transformative projects like “Project New Media Literacies” and “The Education Arcade,” advocating for the educational use of computer technology and video games. As a public advocate, he has testified before the U.S. Senate, contributed to the legal struggles over fan-made films, and consistently championed the importance of media literacy.

Today, we have the unique opportunity to delve into Dr. Jenkins’ insights on emerging technology, such as AI, its impact on participatory culture, and on our evolving relationship with media and technology.

In this episode, Tara Coughlin interviews Benj on how to develop a new language to try and describe the new things happening in AI.

How can blockchain help build an ecosystem where artists and galleries support each other – one where creators have sovereignty over their data, and see it preserved for generations to come? In this episode, we hear from Kelani Nichole, the founder of TRANSFER Gallery, which exhibits digital art both online and IRL. She explains the challenges of preserving and maintaining media art, why “artist data sovereignty” is so important, and where blockchain fits into her vision of digital art’s sustainability. 

Many of these open social media platforms are also better aligned with nonprofits’ values than major tech companies have been. What are the best ways for non-profits to get involved?

How do nonprofits navigate this emerging space in an already dense social media landscape? In this episode, we will hear from nonprofit leaders and technologists on how the emerging social networks relate to their organizations’ goals.

This episode presents some of Open Social Media’s origin stories from three speakers who have been involved in the development, culture, and communities of their platforms: Christine Lemmer-Webber (co-editor, ActivityPub), Evan Henshaw-Plath (founder, Nos), and Golda Velez (early participant, Bluesky). We will explore how queer experiences and activist movements, for instance, have played a vital role in shaping the design and direction of emerging platforms.

Many of us assume everyone has access to the Internet. In light of the last few years of global pandemic, however, we observed headlines about the unconnected and the issues that were created in social, work, and educational daily experiences.

Why are some Americans, especially in the rural Midwest flyover states, left without access or with incredibly slow Internet speed?

To answer these questions and explore policy failures, we speak with Dr. Christopher Ali, a Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications at Penn State University. Dr. Ali’s research and advocacy work focus on exploring the lived experiences and the implications of broadband policy.

Hari Anantharaman speaks with Austin Griffith to understand what it means to be a builder in web3. Based in Colorado, Austin is a member of the Ethereum foundation and an educator aiming to teach more people Web3 development. In this month’s feature, Austin talks about his curriculum SpeedRunEthereum and further discusses how the blockchain helps build a fair internet.

This month’s show features Kai Larsen, a researcher and professor at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business. Kai is an expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence and we discuss how ChatGPT might revolutionize the future.

Hosted by Brayden Mahdavi.

The Colorado Sun is a small but mighty digital news source for the state of Colorado. It is a Public Benefit Corporation making it first and foremost dedicated to serving the Colorado public, and setting it apart from traditional news sources. We talked to Eric Lubbers, in charge of Technology and Strategy for the Sun, to better understand how it operates.

This conversation explores lessons from the past that could help us make social media better today. Our guest is University of Virginia media studies professor Kevin Driscoll, author most recently of “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.” He brings us stories of an almost-lost era before the Internet became widespread, whose traces are still very much with us.

Jonathan Dotan directs the Starling Lab at Stanford University and USC, which uses emerging cryptographic technology to document human rights abuses, from the Holocaust to the current war in Ukraine. Dotan explains how his lab leverages tools usually associated with money and finance to preempt misinformation in the fog of war.

This month on Looks Like New, we have a conversation with Eli Pariser, whose career has involved building several influential online platforms, pushing into the status quo by rethinking our online spaces by reflecting on human engagement in other kinds of public spaces—libraries, parks, and the democratic process.

With online communities of millions spread across the world, esports has been rapidly expanding and encourages a volatile competitive environment. With a great familiarity with traditional sports, it’s easy to wonder, “just how real are esports?” We speak with Jake Kelton from XLNC whose work in media production centers around esports.

While algorithms might be used as a type of buzzword, knowing what they are and how they function can be really useful. In this episode, we have a conversation with Jessie J. Smith, a researcher whose work with algorithms spans from topics of literacy to fairness.

What happens when algorithms are unfair, and can they ever truly be fair?

This online exhibition is an interdisciplinary, artistic experience interrogating narratives of the past and working through future possibilities for the Internet. We had a conversation with MEDLab’s Darija Medić and Nathan Schneider to learn more about this work.

What is Black Twitter?

This month, we had a conversation with Shamika Klassen, a Ph.D. candidate and researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose recently published research reveals some powerful findings.

What are we missing when we see only images of spectacle? This month we hear from Marwan Kraidy, the dean of Northwestern University’s campus in Doha, Qatar, who helps us think past the headlines to understand what is really going on in his native country.

Where did public media come from? We explore these origins in the early 1900s with Dr. Josh Shepperd, assistant professor of Media Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

As we witness company leaders and engineers retroactively addressing issues, is there a way for forward thinking to happen within the industry? Dr. Casey Fiesler explores these questions and more.

Despite the rapid development of wearable technologies in the last few decades, this conversation explores how they might not be as new as they might seem.

Dr. James Gilmore explains the benefits, costs, and potential future implications of wearable technology in an increasingly digital, virtual world.

This month we are discussing archival footage documenting the Non-Aligned Movement, through images of African and Asian liberation and revolutionary leaders that defined the era of decolonization with Dr Mila Turajlić, award winning filmmaker and archival artist, working on the intersection of personal and national memories. With host Darija Medic.

What does this mean for people who rely on Colorado Community Media? How will this relationship change the news ecosystem in Colorado, and what consequences could it have for local media nationally? We will hear from leading people behind this deal, Melissa Milios Davis (Gates Family Foundation), Lillian Ruiz (National Trust for Local News), and Larry Ryckman (Colorado Sun), about how it works and what they hope it will produce.

This conversation was co-sponsored by the Media Enterprise Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder and Zebras Unite.

Our guest this month, Armond Towns, has been developing a “Black media philosophy” that confronts media cultures saturated in whiteness. He is a professor of Rhetoric and Communication Studies at the University of Richmond. With host Bailey Troutman.

Coraline Ada Ehmke is a software developer working to change that. She created the Contributor Covenant, a widely adopted code of conduct for open-source projects. Now she is leading the Ethical Source Movement, which enables projects prevent their tools from being used for purposes they oppose.

But for the most part, platforms rely on only very blunt tools for addressing these harms—the digital equivalents of censoring and exiling.

But can we do better than simply imagining we can make harm go away?

Niloufar Salehi (UC Berkeley) and Amy Hasinoff (CU Denver) have been exploring how to bring practices of restorative justice into online communities. This discussion is part of the Metagovernance Seminar (metagov.org).

Brick House’s founder, the veteran journalist and entrepreneur Maria Bustillos, explains why she thinks a simpler, older model of cooperative ownership could be a better way forward—even while she remains hopeful about the sci-fi promise of blockchains.

The COVID-19 pandemic has many of us rapidly changing how we work—and wondering how many of the changes will stick. To guide us through this process, we hear this month from Natalia Lombardo and Richard D. Bartlett, founders of The Hum, an organization that supports teams with self-organization and decentralized collaboration. They are already accustomed residents of the world many of us are just beginning to enter.

Can we create big, ambitious projects without corporations, governments, and bosses?

Nathalia Scherer wants to try. Her organization, DAOstack, is using Bitcoin-like blockchain technology to make tools for self-organizing. Last year DAOstack raised $30 million in a 60-second token offering, but genuinely participatory governance may be easier to raise money for than to actually achieve.

CU Boulder’s Media Archaeology Lab is a place where artists, scholars, students, and tinkerers can come to use apparently obsolete computers and other technology.

Founding director Lori Emerson, professor of English and Intermedia Art, Writing, and Performance, discusses her lab and the history of labs in general.