When Software Has Eaten The World, w/ Belén ROMANA

Structural Shifts | aperture podcast

There is a lot of anguish over what’s happening online these days from the rise of hate groups to media manipulation, the propaganda to interference with elections — are the positives of our digital world even worth it? Well, today, your host, Ben Robinson, digs into this question with Belén Romana García — Spain’s former head of Treasury, and an economist who has worked in both the public and private sectors. Belén is also a board member for several public companies and foundations. She says that people are primarily driven by three things: power, money, and knowledge — and she is especially driven by knowledge and curiosity and a desire to understand the world and its possible future. Today, she and Ben discuss, should our elected officials have to learn how to code to better understand the world that we’re living in? Should we scrap GDP as a metric since it’s not accurately reflecting our service economy? Does democracy mean equal voting? And how does the information and infrastructure of our online world affect our freedom or a sense of freedom in real life? And more.