Why does every new technology spark the same recurring fight, with utopian boosters on one side and doomers on the other, and what would a more productive conversation look like? On this episode (recorded live at the Institute for Humane Studies’ Flourishing House at SXSW) host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Troy Cross, Professor of Philosophy at Reed College and a Senior Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and Karim Farhat, Assistant Director of the Internet Governance Project at Georgia Tech.

They explore why identity and storytelling distort our judgment about new tools, what the Bitcoin energy debates reveal about motivated reasoning, how markets have quietly solved earlier trust problems like online authentication, and why a liberal society in the age of AI has room for both data centers and the Amish family next door.

Further Reading

• Troy Cross — Bitcoin Policy Institute

• Karim Farhat — Internet Governance Project

• C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity)

More from Liberalism.org

• Enshittification, Despotification, and the Open Internet — Mike Masnick

• AI and the First Amendment — Corbin Barthold