The Anti-Dystopians

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Rowena Squires, a PhD Candidate in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University. They discuss the strange legacy of the depiction of outer space in children’s animation. From the (not-so-cute-after-all) robot and the consumerist environmental collapse of Earth in WALL-E, the re-telling of colonial narratives of the frontier in Treasure Planet and Lightyear, to Walt Disney’s relationship with the former rocket scientist Werner von Braun in selling the American public on space and Space Mountain. They ask what are better ways of imagining outer space, and the human relationship to nature on Earth and in the stars (and viewing recommendations for your holiday break this year)?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr. Tim Karayiannides, a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College, about his recent article about the similarities and connections between South Africa and Silicon Valley. While Elon Musk’s childhood in apartheid in South Africa is sometimes cited as an explanation for his far-right views, there is in fact a much deeper history of connection between Californian and South Africa — from exporting gold mining engineers, to the establishment of technical universities, computer engineers who joined finance, to the histories of eugenics and racial capitalism. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On this week’s podcast, Alina Utrata talks to Jan Eijking, a William Golding Junior Research Fellow and Martin Fellow at Oxford University. Jan’s work is based in international relations, and focuses on expertise, empire, capitalism and the history and theory of international organizations. They talked about everything from the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX — and how thinking about “experts,” expertise in politics can have a lot to say about the recent elections, the Silicon Valley engineers plans, but also the wider history of these infrastructural projects in empire.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social and Jan Eijking at @janeijking.bsky.social.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, your usual host is in the hot seat! Guest host Benjamin Tan, PhD Candidate at Cambridge, asks Alina Utrata about her recent publication in the American Political Science Review about Silicon Valley's outer space colonization projects. They discuss what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as different as they may seem, what the history of the British East India Company can tell us about SpaceX and Blue Origin, and why indigenous conceptions of property can problematize sovereignty and territoriality and the way we think about political power and rule today.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke with Catriona Gray, a PhD at the University of Bath working at the intersection of sociology, politics, and law on the adoption of AI technologies. They discussed the political economy of data and whether frameworks like ‘data is the new oil’ are helpful to understanding these relationships; what is new about the technological structures or dynamics that have been created today; thinking about the inequities between the Global North and the Global South, and how these relates to existing and historical relationships; and the implementation and conceptualization of AI regulation in governments and beyond.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Matt Mahmoudi, the lead researcher on the Amnesty International report "Automating Apartheid" examining the deployment of facial recognition technology in Palestine. They discuss the report's findings, including how this facial recognition technology is being deployed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and consolidates existing practices of discriminatory policing; why these systems have been 'gamified' and how they connect to other infrastructures and databases; how this is affecting Palestinians’ lives; and whether existing CCTV systems in other settings — including London — could be repurposed for similar kinds of militarized policing. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On this week’s episode of The Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke to Paola Ricurate, an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Tierra Comun Network, and Sebastián Leheude, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre of Governance and Human Rights and a Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University. They discussed Paola and Sebastian’s work on data colonialism, decoloniality and feminism and Latin America. What is the connection between historic forms of colonialism and what technology infrastructures are being built now? Why are tech companies building data centers (and swimming pools) in the desert? How are local communities resisting these infrastructures and what are alternative ways of imagining our future?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Maha Atal is back to discuss feminism, reproductive rights and technology. Host Alina Utrata asks her: how has the legal landscape of abortion and reproductive rights changed since the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what are technology companies doing about it? Does your GP know who their cloud computing provider is (and do they have access to your sensitive health data)? How do the US and UK feminist movements differ? And why is feminism, gender and the right to bodily autonomy on the frontline against fighting fascism today?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/