Humanities vs. Algorithms

This week our guest is Christian Madsbjerg who is professor of Applied Humanities at The New School in New York and co-founder of the consultancy Red Associates.

In this episode, we primarily discuss the ideas put forth in Christian’s latest book, Sensemaking: The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. Amongst other things, this includes exploring some of Christian’s key principles such as looking at cultures instead of individuals, looking at people’s experiences in their natural environment rather than in the lab, and looking at thick data (which includes context and passion) instead of thin data which tends to focus solely on cold hard facts.

While most of this conversation will explore the shortcomings of data-obsessed decision-making, we start off with a conversation Christian and I had started before recording dealing with his latest fascination: attention.

Follow Christian's work at https://madsbjerg.com/

Host: Steven Parton - LinkedIn / Twitter

Music by: Amine el Filali