Listen Now

South Australia experienced a major power outage recently when a severe weather event destroyed three elements of critical infrastructure, which led to the power system protecting itself with a shutdown. The ability to achieve baseload power for a city, state and country is a piece of critical infrastructure that should not fail, and in the fallout of this power outage, many are blaming the shut down of Port Augusta’s Alinta coal fire plant in May and a focus on renewables. What does this mean going forward? Steve and Ben look at this issue caused by an extreme weather event and how the importance of redundancy and back-up systems when it comes to providing power to everyone.

Two of the most popular elements of the Star Trek phenomenon has been the use of teleportation and time travel in its story telling. Scientists have focused their attention on these areas and have offered some interesting thoughts and breakthroughs and both topics. The teleportation of light particles has now become a technological breakthrough, although the beaming of humans between locations as shown in Star Trek may be beyond us. Time travel on the other hand is already possible in to the future, and can be argued, that we are constantly travelling in to the future at the rate of one second per second. Steve and Ben discuss these two popular science fiction motifs and their potential, or otherwise, applications in the real world.

Another September, another Apple iPhone event. On September 7th, Apple will unveil the latest generation iPhone to the world. Rumours of dual camera lens and the loss of the headphone jack are driving the media frenzy this year, but most important of all is the notion that this year’s iPhone may not be that exciting. What does this mean for Apple, particularly in the light of a drop in overall sales year-on-year? Steve and Ben discuss Apple and the iPhone in context of where the smartphone business is today, and whether or not Apple is right to force its customers to interact with their devices the way they want to.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s successful follow up to the Carl Sagan original series, Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey, serves very well in illuminating the audience on the vastness and mysteries of space-time, the universe, the cosmos, our world, our solar system and more, including our place as humans in the grand scheme of things and the effects we have had on our planet in such a short space of time. Steve and Ben discuss the series, as well as leading a general discussion on space-time and its mysteries, as well as a look at the importance of science communicators such as Neil deGrasse Tyson in enlightening the public on the world and universe around us.

Successfully navigating privacy settings on platforms, services and devices is a potential nightmare for the lay person, yet most of us don’t even give this very important issue a second thought. Steve and Ben discuss the importance of successfully navigating all the privacy settings in the apps, platforms, systems and devices we use, and how it is potentially easier to leave your privacy exposed than it is to keep it locked down due to the nature and design of all those apps, platforms, systems and devices that we all love to use on a daily basis.

Air travel has never been more affordable and accessible. Formerly only available to the affluent and elite, the introduction of new technologies as well as flexible and budget pricing models have opened up stand air travel to anyone who wants to fly. Airlines have not slacked off on first class travel however, with many airlines offering very luxurious first class and business class features to those willing and able to pay for it. Steve and Ben take a look at the increasing affordability of air travel, how airlines are offering more impressive high-end seats and facilities, and have a look back to flights of yesteryear and how the affluent used to travel in the skies.

Seemingly overnight, the new augmented reality game Pokemon Go has become a worldwide sensation, encouraging millions to wander through the streets to track down pokemon on their smartphones in real locations. Steve and Ben discuss Pokemon Go’s meteoric rise to the top of the app charts, the benefits of its augmented reality experience, and whether or not the game is actually causing major unintended issues for end users.

YouTubers and other online content creators are under constant pressure to continually produce content with no downtime in order to maintain the interest of their audience. Some have even felt the need to push the envelope of their content to maintain audience attention, often to the detriment of their reputation and personal well-being. For their fiftieth episode of SciTech Culture, Steve and Ben examine the issue of no downtime for online content creators and how their own personal experience producing online content has changed over the years in order to find the right balance between producing content, maintaining quality, and taking the time to step away from creating that content to reflect and recharge.

The advent of social media and its rise in our culture has led to a simultaneous explosion of channels for promoting one’s voice to the world while at the same time overloading our minds with too many decisions to make and distractions. Overusing social media, spending too much time on tweets and posts can not only take its toll on one’s psychological well-being, it can also lead to a feeling of the whole process becoming dull and uninteresting, the latter of which could explain the disengagement of younger users with a platform such as Facebook. Steve and Ben explore the issues around social media burnout. They also touch on the 2016 Australian Election, the extraordinary result of a second hung parliament within a decade, and a trend in voting patterns away from established parties and orthodoxy, as seen in the recent Brexit vote and the rise of Donald Trump.

The referendum held in the UK which asked its citizens to leave or remain in the European Union generated a result that caused shockwaves around the world with the significant political and economic consequences of the successful leave vote still to be realised. Brexit, as it has become known for the benefit of Twitter users, was a political roll of the dice for British Prime Minster David Cameron, and he has come out on the losing side. Steve and Ben discuss this historic referendum, its result and the reaction. They also discuss the recent blasts of cold weather that have hit southern and eastern Australia, and examine how global warming actually can cause cooling trends and harsher winters in different parts of the world.

Expectations around Apple’s announcements for WWDC 2016 have again reached fever-pitched, with rumours foreshadowing the latest updates in Apple’s software platforms macOS, tvOS, iOS and watchOS, to the more wishful thinking rumours around brand new hardware, particularly with new MacBook Pros and the often requested, but never announced 5K Thunderbolt Display. Steve and Ben discuss the issues surrounding expectations for Apple in 2016, where most of Apple’s products have matured to the point where there is little they can do to improve them beyond evolutionary updates, and the fact that expectations of Apple to come up with a wow moment in every single presentation they make have now become unrealistic.

Dealing with allergic reactions to the foods we eat is a common problem for many of us. Avoiding foods because our bodies are incapable of processing them properly leading to unwanted side effects can be a cumbersome prospect, and takes the fun out of eating when one has to carefully scrutinize any food they want to enjoy. Steve and Ben take a look at the story of how researchers are close to identifying the genetic code that will make allergy-free peanuts, and then continue in to a wider discussion on how science is helping us to deal with food allergies.

Want to launch a nuclear missile? You'll need a floppy disk. The Pentagon is still using 1970s-era computing systems that require floppy disks. U.S. government departments spend upwards of $60 billion a year on operating and maintaining out-of-date technologies, three times the investment on modern IT systems. This is due to change in the next few years thanks to the tech-saavy Obama administration shocking established culture by putting all departments on notice to upgrade their systems. Steve and Ben discuss this amazing story and contrast it with an example of the latest in technological advances being worked on today, IBM’s artificial intelligence solution, Watson.

Changing smartphone platforms can either be a relatively straight forward affair or a nightmare depending on how heavily invested you are in the platform you are moving away from. There are plenty of self-help guides on the web dedicated to assisting you in moving from one platform to another. Steve and Ben recall their current experiences in this area, particularly with Steve moving away from Apple’s iOS last year to take up Android on his then new Sony Xperia phone. Steve and Ben also discuss whether or not Apple has become the new Microsoft, as well as options around computing options for personal and professional users in today’s world, including an answer to the question, how much computer power do you actually need today?

We are living at the dawn of the digital age which has opened our worlds to more content, news, software and more than ever before. The democratisation of so many products and services through the internet is exposing our culture to an exponentially growing amount of content and services, but it is also potentially creating a huge user base that does not want to pay for those content and services like previous generations had. Do content and services have the same value as they used to? Steve and Ben discuss the pros and cons of this new world and how the amount of new options available to us may be devaluing the products and services available to us, whether they be apps, movies, novels, news, software and more. Steve and Ben also discuss the continuing fallout of the Apple vs FBI encryption case, the latest from Facebook's F8 Conference, the downward spiral of Bitcoin Exchange Igot, and SpaceX successfully launching a rocket that landed on an ocean drone platform.

Finding a suitable career choice can be difficult for those people who have multiple interests and passions. We live in a society that places a focus on finding your one true calling, but as Emilie Wapnick asks in her Ted Talk, what if you don’t have just one true calling? Steve and Ben explore the notion of the multipotentialite; a person that has multiple career paths due to their varying interests, and how changing careers to follow these passions may be the new norm in the 21st Century. Steve and Ben also take a look at the critical lashing of Batman V Superman, Microsoft Tay’s erratic tweets, the luck of an amateur astronomer capturing an asteroid hitting Jupitier, and using Google Cardboard.

Technology and Culture fed in to each other this week on two fronts; the first being Google DeepMind’s AI technology beating human Grandmasters of the Game of Go, and the second being how a rally of organised violence was recently perpetrated in Melbourne’s CBD over the weekend to the horror of police and families attending the Labor Day long weekend Moomba festival as they came under attack by over 200 youths. Steve and Ben have a look at both of these stories and their cultural impact. They also take a look at the seemingly unlikely, but now unstoppable rise of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the 2016 US Presidential Election.

With a vast array of topics this week, Steve and Ben delve in to a number of stories covering Science, Technology and Culture. In science, astronomers have confirmed a previously identified galaxy at 13.2 billion light years away, the most distant galaxy observed on record, and one of the first galaxies ever formed. In technology, Google has experienced a mishap of sorts with its self-driving test car inadvertently crashing in to a bus. And in culture, social media and the internet have provided the ultimate platform for anonymous bullying and harassment, but is it any different to what used to happen in the past with anonymous notes, threatening phone calls and the like? Steve and Ben discuss all these topics and more in this week’s episode.

Much of the tension between nations in this world occurs over resources, such as oil, gas, land and the like. One resource that is starting to appear on the radar in an environment of climate change and global warming is water. This precious resource is essential to human life, and with areas of the planet starting to dry up, could we see tensions escalate between countries over water? Steve and Ben have a look at the importance of water for everyone on this planet and the potential problems we could face if we don’t all work together to secure its long term future.

What would happen if we woke up tomorrow and there was no way to go online? What if someone pulled the master switch on the internet, and we were forced back to a world that existed prior to the early 90s? Would we cope, or have we become too dependent on the benefits of the internet to deal with this problem? Steve and Ben talk about their direct experiences being cut off from the internet and its effects. They also discuss the growing fight between Apple and the FBI, with the former wanting to safeguard the security and encryption of the iPhone, while the latter wants Apple to build a backdoor in to iOS which could potentially render security on all iPhones broken. Can a backdoor be created to a smartphone for just a single occasion, or will doing so break security on all these types of devices? Steve and Ben discuss the issues at stake in this important, landmark case.