Ethan Zuckerman: Talks Metaverse, building a better internet, and the power of local communities.

Dream Nation Love

Ethan Zuckerman is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (my alma mater), where he teaches Public Policy, Communication, and Information. His work focuses on designing and advocating for versions of social media that have positive social and civic impacts. Which means moving beyond existing models of funding and governance.

On the show, Ethan talks about the Metaverse, trust, Facebook vs Apple, making the Metaverse a safe space, governance of online spaces, data ownership, what the biggest piece missing from the Metaverse conversation is, Omar Wasow and Black Planet, and technical barriers when it comes to storytelling access on various platforms.

Ethan founded the Institute for Digital Public Infrastructure to explore the ideas previously mentioned. It’s a research group studying and building alternatives to the existing commercial internet.

Previously Ethan was at the MIT Media Lab working at the Center for Civic Media, researching the relationship between media and social change, and building tools to study how ideas spread in the media, and how citizens can better participate in their civic lives. He is also the inventor of pop-up windows.

Ethan has many hats but the one that he wears the most is that of a blogger/writer. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, CNN, Wired and others. He also has a Ted Talk about listening to global voices.

Over the years, he’s been a tech startup guy (with Tripod.com), a non-profit founder (Geekcorps.org) a peace Corp for geeks, transferring tech skills from geeks in developed nations to geeks in emerging nations, especially entrepreneurial geeks who are building small businesses. He is also the Co-founder of Globalvoices.org which is a global blogging community.

He’s has written two books: Mistrust: Why Losing Faith in Institutions Provides the Tools to Transform Them and Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection, both published through W.W. Norton. And is an alumnus of the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, the MIT Media Lab and Comparative Media Studies at MIT, Geekcorps, and Tripod.

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