TFGL20212- S5 - Ep5 - Harassment in the Metaverse
Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.
Hera Hussain is on hosting duties and she’s joined by Greg Ashton and Dama Sathianathan.
Our special guest this week is Catherine Woodiwiss, former journalist who is now a designer researching selfies & self-construction.
Transcript
Hera: Hello everyone. Welcome to Tech For Good Live. We'll be talking about carbon footprints. How far can these go to brag. Facebook making plans to tackle harassment and charities jumping into NFTs. Yes! NFTs make an appearance again. And we will be quizzing our guests on what NFTs stand for. Let's see if they can stand up to the test. All that and more coming right up. Today, we have Greg Ashton who will be guiding us through most of these stories because he's the one who's done the research. Greg, why do you have to show off every episode and do such a fantastic job at putting the agenda together?
Greg: It's literally the only thing I have in my life.
Hera: That makes sense. Yeah, I do believe you. And we also have Dama Sathianathan, who is one of my best friends. We really believe in nepotism in this organisation. But no, jokes apart. Dama has been a regular for a while and also runs lots of good tech for good communities and is also the trustee of the charity that I run. Hi Dama.
Dama: Hello. Hello. Really pleased to be here and talk all about NFTs.
Hera: Right. Do you know what it stands for?
Dama: I do. Yeah. National Fund Trees.
Hera: Good. And I am here and I'll be your host today. One of my goals for this year was to learn all about climate justice and this episode we will be discussing climate. So I'm excited to cross that right off my list, in the second month of the year. I'm doing so well. So we also have a guest with us today and we have Catherine Woodiwiss. I actually should have asked Catherine how to pronounce her surname. Catherine, you are a former journalist and also researching selfies and self construction. I want to know more. Tell me if I said your name correctly? What is the right way to say it?
Catherine: You said it correctly.
Hera: Oh, that's amazing. I am getting so many things checked off today, so I'm so happy. Tell us more about yourself.
Catherine: Add that to your new year's resolution list and check it right off. That's right. Yes. My name is Catherine Woodiwiss and I am a designer based in Austin, Texas. It's great to be here with you guys today. And I am currently a design researcher and my day job means I'm a researcher for HEB, which is the large Texas grocery store. It's got a bit of a cult following in Texas, and I'm actually doing design research into their internal digital systems. So helping the company basically maintain and optimize its food supply chain to feed residents in Texas, which is quite interesting work. On the side, I'm doing a little, little bit of personal independent research into selfies and self construction. That's part of a larger project around faces and identity, that I could talk about for the entire length of the podcast, but I'll be brief and just say that that's been some really interesting work that I've been doing as well. And before all that, I was a journalist for a publication in Washington, DC basically focusing on politics, justice, religion, tech, and culture. So all of those currents, I think, are probably going to come up today. Maybe not the religion piece, but we'll see, depending on how you feel about NFTs.
Hera: I might find a way to bring it in. Thanks for joining us. That’s so interesting. And what a coincidence that one of my best friends, childhood best friend works in HEB as a store manager. So I've heard lots of stories about HEB. If any of you have seen the show Superstore on Netflix, which is about the life of those, like, sort of big grocery store, they have these clips in between their scenes where people are doing very strange, bizarre, weird things. They're all true. The stories that she tells me is just like, it has really like both increased my respect and also disrespect for humanity. It's just crazy stuff. Leaving kids. Kids are like starting things. People are eating things from within the box. Like I'm just talking about the stuff that's safe to say on these airwaves. So it's insane. Really, really interesting. So I wanted to kick us off with asking what everybody is doing for their news appetite this year. Have you made any plans for how you consume news? For me, I've noticed that I've really cut down on watching, I used to watch BBC news every morning, like for a good two hours. And now I've cut it down to like 15 minutes. I have restricted myself to only watching it while I eat breakfast and then I switch off. I left the algorithm and my friend's circle, protect my bubble and give me the stuff that I really need to know through social media.
Catherine: That's probably a healthy way of doing this. I've got this really messy WhatsApp group with a couple of my friends. So anything that's breaking news I hear on WhatsApp nowadays, which is probably not the best way to do things, but generally on news consumption I'm mostly, especially around sort of tech, I'm mostly looking to rest of world now because I am so inclined to just get better deep dives outside the sort of Western bubble as well, which is what it serves. So that's really, really great.
Hera: Amazing. That's like my favorite news publication, you know, like, especially looking at in-depth stuff that you just don't get to hear about, It's like a gift to us.
Catherine: Yeah.
Greg: Send me links. I'm always looking for news. Constantly. That is my life.
Hera: Sign up for their newsletter, Greg, seriously is the best newsletter you'll sign up for..
Greg: Yeah. Amazing.
Hera: What about you Greg?
Greg: Yeah. I just, basically, I'm constantly researching for our agenda items every week, so I'm never too far away from the news. I'm always searching for something new to include in the stories and so please, anyone send me links. It would make my life a lot easier.
Hera: That sounds like a cry for help. So listeners, please send Greg news stories [laughs] The situation is dire.
Catherine: You know, it's probably not wise for me to admit this as a recently former journalist, but one of the reasons I moved out of journalism into design was the real need to get out of the constant news cycle and into building and making things a little more. And so I feel like the last couple of years, I've sort of intentionally taken a little bit of a news fast, just significantly dialling down what I'm plugged into on a very daily basis. But I do, in terms of trying to find interesting longer form discussions that are happening kind of the undercurrent, you know, the news is sort of what bubbles up to the top on a daily basis, but I'm very much still trying to and excited to be reading things that are kind of the things that are happening just below the surface. So there are publications I like. I really like voxs future tense. That looks at, you know, it sort of takes what the trends are and tries to project a little bit. It's almost like speculative fiction, looking a little bit ahead of what's happening now and trying to understand where we could be moving in the future. And I find things like that a little easier to grapple with, maybe just because they're just removed from the moment. I have a little bit of distance. It feels a little safer, a little mentally better for us to engage with. But otherwise I similarly get a lot of my news from my Twitter feed, and from friends and family about the things that we're talking about throughout the day, which is a really interesting way to be operating. I think it kind of goes outside of the standard habit of going to one new source every day. So yeah, sort of a hodgepodge.
Hera: Yeah. Well, Catherine, we're going to pull you right back into the news with stat of the week. Greg, tell us what stats do you have?
Greg: Yeah. So I desperately was trying to avoid another conversation about the growing issues around poverty. There is a lot of news out this week around the Joseph Roundtree foundation in the UK of the new report on poverty in the UK and there's going to be, we're going to have lots of opportunities to talk about that. So I thought I'd talk about carbon and the environment, but actually it does feed into that story as well. So by 2015, the richest 10% were responsible for 49% of the world's carbon emissions. That is something that I think we've talked about previously, but you know, in most countries before COVID 19, less than half of the people reported flying at least once a year, while more than half of emissions from passenger aviation were linked to 1% of people who fly most of that. And it started a real imbalance here of normal everyday people trying to do what they can so reduce their carbon footprint. But the reality is, you know, they're not going to have the impact that just a small number of people would have. And it's not just people as well, it's companies. So a lot of the largest companies in the world are exaggerating the efforts that they're making to reduce their carbon. So that's where it really comes back to this question of poverty. Again, you know, you've got a lot of people who are really struggling with gas prices in the UK and the cost of energy and the people who could actually have an impact, the people and organisations who could have an impact on the environment are not being asked to make the changes that could actually help us all and help the people who are most in need. Yeah, so a familiar story, but what do we all think?
Dama: I wonder where you can sort of shift the burden from, especially with my sort of assumption. Let's take it back. My sort of assumption is that for any transaction that includes a significant amount of carbon emissions. So let's say it's a slide. That average individual is taking they might also be opting for the option to actually offset their carbon emissions, just because it's become so easy. But to what extent is that actually a good practice? Because it doesn't decrease the amount of carbon emissions that are going out in the first place. So to allow to extend hours of one day, especially not necessarily focused on the sort of wealth inequality that comes with increased carbon emissions, but with this sort of emphasis of startups and tech companies really focusing on putting out products that just help you manage your carbon footprint at the moment. Is that sort of the letter of indulgence pathway that we're going along? And that's just making it easier for British people or wealthy individuals to just offset whatever action you take. And that's sort of also then enables them to just continuously make those transactions and those decisions as well. But it's hard to sort of think about it's only 10% of, is it 10%? 10% of individuals that are responsible for this.
Greg: Yeah, yeah. For a huge amount of carbon. Catherine, I think, you know, the US. I'm going to do that thing I always do when we've got someone from the US on, is basically make you speak for a whole nation of people that's massive and sprawling and have totally different challenges. But yeah, you know, recently you've had the challenges with things being passed through the Senate due to individuals who, you know, who don't agree with that view of wanting to change and to fight climate change. And so I say, I think it's, you know, it's a real difficult challenge in the US as well.
Catherine: It is a difficult challenge. And I think, Dama what you brought up is so right on in the sense that so much of climate change is often positioned as a matter of individual choice. And what I think is so interesting about this article is that it really links economic structure to environmental impact, pretty undeniably. Climate change is a matter of, or, you know, kind of carbon emissions are a matter of structural habits that we have. And just the entire ecosystem of wealthy people is so different than sort of every day, the other 90% of people that it's not even just a matter of can we ask, you know, Beyonce not to use a private jet or what have you. It goes into what these, you know, conferences. Conferences like Davos, how much energy that wastes. Why are all of these wealthy people flying around the world to gather and then talk about climate? And I think that also gets to sort of corporate culture around the wastefulness that even just air travel has. I think one of the most interesting conversations that came out of the early kind of locked down pandemic days, was what does this mean for climate change, for carbon emissions? Are we actually sort of slowing this down in some significant ways? And I think one really interesting conversation that emerged from my field of design research was around how do we do empathetic design research with people remotely? How can we take this moment to say that the environmental impact of a wealthy client flying design consultants all around the US, you know, at the drop of a hat for hundreds of thousands of dollars, could we actually do effective research in a way that doesn't require that. My colleague, Laura Gallows has written some really great stuff about that,, on rethinking the way we do conferences, rethinking the way that we do design research and more. And so I know I just brought it back down out of the 10% into the 90%, but that's all to say. I don't understand the ecosystem of the wealthy quite as intimately, but there are, it goes beyond personal choice into structural economic questions that I think is really important. And I appreciate that this article highlights it.
Hera: I mean, this conversation is fascinating. I know that Greg found another article which talked about another study looking at 25 corporations and their attitudes and their behaviour around meeting their own targets on the climate crisis. And I think we found that there was a huge exaggeration and misreporting off their progress. I'm just going to quote one stat from that before we start talking about something else, because this connects really well. Actually it doesn't align. So yeah.
Greg: [laughs]
Hera: I can't, I can't lie on here, you can all tell. So I'm just going to read out the two of the stats that I found interesting in that article from the BBC. One says the 70% of Apple's climate footprint is created by upstream emissions, including the consumption of electricity by consumers, using Apple phones, laptops, and other products. That's interesting because that is the 90%. Yeah. And then the other thing that I thought was interesting is that just three of the 25 companies that they looked at were clearly committed to removing 90% of their carbon efficients from their production and supply chains. And those are Maersk. I don't know how to say this, it's Danish. Right. Okay. Vodafone and Dama, that's like your country's company. What is that?
Dama: Dutch telecoms [laughs]
Hera: Okay. So yeah, I found that was interesting. Well, we've been talking about climate change and the climate crisis. I always remind myself to use climate crisis rather than climate change to go with Guardian's, like, you know, messaging guidelines and feeling the shift in language and the power of it. And our charity news of the week is also related to this somewhat. And it's talking about the WWF, which is the World Wildlife Foundation. Yes. I know what it is. I know it because the y have to do with animals and everything to do with animals, I know. WWF received backlash for using NFTs for fundraising. Greg, what did you find? I know this one got you really riled up because you shared it all across your social media. That's a rarity.
Greg: This is quite an interesting one. Mainly, there's two aspects to this. One. NFT. WFT WTF.
Hera: Oh no Greg, you were almost there.
Greg: Too many acronyms. Yeah, just that whole chaos around NFTs, which we can touch on. And there's links there with blockchain, which is complicated, which has caused this backlash. But the main trigger of the backlash, because I thought people were just not keen with blockchain, but the reason that it's come so violently for WWF is because of the huge amount of energy that's used. So going back to your point about apple and that kind of upstream and downstream WWF are claiming that they're using this new kind of side chain called polygon, which is supposed to have a much greatly reduced energy consumption. But actually a lot of people are saying that's not necessarily true because it's built on Ethereum. And the carbon footprint of the network currently used by Ethereum is the size of the energy consumption of Sweden. So the real criticism there is they claim to be an organisation trying to fight the climate crisis, and then be using this technology that really doesn't help at all and actually buying into something that increases it even further. So yeah, some interesting points on this. NFTs, what do we think? And you know, this idea of using something new for a charity organisation for fund-raising. So Dama, let's start with you and let's talk about this idea of fundraising using a new technology.
Dama: Yeah. So I've gone on a whole journey of like really hating NFTs and blockchain and anything that was cryptocurrencies to sort of being a bit more mellow about it as well, and trying to understand what sort of the areas and opportunities could be to actually shaping what 3.0 which is yet another password, to coming back to actually being very sceptical about this hype, which has also prompted by a recent article that was published in the Atlantic by Ian Bogus, which basically talks about, it gives you a really good overview of how non fungible tokens or anything in the NFT space at the moment is being really mentored for investment from venture capitalists. And I know I say this fully, knowing that I am a VC myself, but really, you know, you need a healthy dose of scepticism in there as well, especially when you need to make investment decisions where you don't want to do harm. But I'm in two minds about this whole thing with using NFTs for fundraising, because I also think there's a significant challenge for civil society organisations in general to raise funding or to continue finding ways of generating, finding alternative sources for funding in a time where austerity and where a lot of budgets for civil society are being cut by governments as well. Not just specifically in the UK, but more broadly. So I also think exploring ways of trying to reach a new audience because NFTs are so wild and we're Gen Z and millennials. It's ridiculous. To actually exploring different ways to be able to fundraise is actually quite novel and really, really cool that they're doing this. However, without necessarily thinking about the consequences of NFTs and the mining practices as well, and the vast amount of energy that is required and might potentially harm the environment further in the long term is definitely for an organisation like WWF. You would have assumed they would have checked into this as well, but there's definitely good lessons learned for everyone who is involved in charity fundraising to actually try to learn whether they are different ways to fundraise and reach a new audience, but potentially also consider whatever strategy you're using actually takes into account harm to people and planet and mitigating those harms.
Greg: The shocking part is this isn't the first time they did it. Germany did it at the back end of last year. And they had the exact same backlash. So obviously different arms of the organisation are not speaking to each other and letting them know the results of what happened. So, yeah, I think a lot of charities now are gonna be like, we'll just stay away from NFTs for awhile till that thing settles down.
Hera: And we discussed NFTs a couple of episodes ago. So if anybody's interested in it, we covered quite a few stories two episodes back.
Greg: Catherine, what do you think and also from a perspective of, I was thinking about this and I always think about things in a very kind of weird way, but I was like, you're really focused in kind of the idea of self construction. And it feels like there's an element of that around NFTs. It's very much a cool thing. There's a lot of celebrities that are wanting to be seen to be involved in them. Is it a flash in the pan or is it a new digital way of defining our coolness?
Catherine: Such a good question. I think celebrity buy-in is a flash in the pan. I think in NFTs will probably, I suspect they'll prove to be enduring, but I don't know that they will be in the current sort of art gallery trading frame that we've been seeing so far. I think. As relates to self construction with WWF specifically, I did see that the German arm of the WWF did, I think they call them NFTs, they were making sort of unique endangered animals. And what's so interesting to me about that. I understand the thought process there. Dama, like you, I think, okay, they're trying something new. They're trying something special. They're trying to hit that sweet spot of hype and money. But I also think the idea of NFTs is based on an idea of scarcity and that in some ways is sort of actually kind of a grim link when you're linking it to endangered animals. I'm not actually sure that that kind of scarcity is actually a very positive one to be highlighting. And when you factor in the reality that a lot of. People who would want to give and to support and WWF are not currently in the ecosystem, the crypto ecosystem wouldn't be able to mint NFTs the volume that they were looking for. It also raises questions of accessibility. And I think that also is part of the Goodwill problem here. That not only was the research sort of surprisingly not well done into the environmental impacts, but also the fact that people who are wanting to give it sort of a lot of charity work is, is a sense of collaboration. Like together, we can make this change. And I think in addition to the environmental impacts not being not fully understood, maybe by WWF, there's also a sense of, this is only for the rich celebrities, you know, it's sort of, even though I think it's incorrect, but I think the major perception right now is NFTs are for rich people and celebrities. And I do think that's a perception that will change over time but I'm not sure it's there yet. So I was a little surprised to see that this was the move they made. It sort of felt like not quite enough research done to be able to stand on, on exactly how polygon actually is carbon neutral.
Hera: Or how the community would react to it, which feels like something that you would consult on when you have a really opinionated following. So one of the things that Greg pulled out of this article, which I think is worth saying, is that in an apparent sub-tweet of the controversy rival green group, Greenpeace EU posted a picture of the NFTs it supports natural forest trees
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Greg: [laughs]
Hera: So from that, the T in NFT, we are going to move to tech news of the week. And this one, I have a lot to say on because we're going to be discussing how Facebook is thinking about tackling harassment in the metaverse. So Greg, tell us what a metaverse is first.
Greg: I'm so glad you're on this actually Hera, because it is fully in your wheelhouse. This is an interesting one, as I put it, the company who perfected harassment at a distance is worried about harassment in the metaverse. So the metaverse is a collective term for a load of bullshit about VR, which they're desperately trying to make relevant. They're trying to make it a thing. We've talked about previously on the podcast, but yeah, it is a series of various platforms that are creating VR experiences from concert halls to just kind of slightly better versions of that game. That was called Second Life, if you remember, you're old enough to remember, was a terrible attempt at the first metaverse. And we're seeing lots of different things happening with people spending millions on property within the metaverse, which makes no sense. So we've talked about that before. But now following on from a private beta and now opening up into the public, Facebook now Meta, have announced that they're going to introduce a personal boundary which will be a set within their experiences. Horizon world and horizon venues. So horizon world is what they call a creation platform, kind of like your Minecraft thing. And then horizon venues is a live event service. And basically the reason they're doing this is because during the beta, one user mentioned that they an avatar groped her. The worst part about this is that I am determined, and this is what they said. She hadn't taken full advantage of the available options and expressed the desire to make features like the block button trivially easy and findable so they've already introduced victim blaming into the metaverse.
Hera: Absolutely. I think it's worth reading out her statement. So this is Nina Jane Patel. And she said that within 60 seconds of joining, I was verbally and sexually harassed. Three to four male avatars with male voices essentially, but virtually gang raped my avatar and took photos. As I tried to get away, they yelled don't pretend you didn't love it and gore up yourself off to the photo. So I think it's really important that we really let those words sink in and that experiencing it, which is not going to sound unfamiliar to women listening to this podcast, because these are experiences that we have in really. But the scary thing is that in the virtual world, you know, we don't design physical spaces. We often cannot design physical spaces because they have evolved over years. There are multiple like, you know, parties. There's not much control over who comes in and out of the physical space. Especially if it's a public space, but with metaverse. Being designed from A to Z by Durrell's one of the world's richest companies, which has like the most expensive talent and it's kind of shocking that every single time Meta or Facebook come up with a new feature, they fail to undertake a very like thorough gender analysis of what the consequences can be. So instead of like launching into this hoping that things won't go wrong and then they have to do something about it, they should be creating safer places in the first place so that the people have good experiences, you know, whether we think these virtual spaces are bullshit or not, you know, people deserve to enjoy them if they want to. And I think that what's shocking as always.
Catherine: I think that sounds very accent to this by introducing those personal bubbles for you reminded and reminded me of what happened a couple of years ago during New Year's Eve in Cologne, when there was quite a large incident of allegedly refugees groping and harassing quite a large number of women during that day as well. And the Mayor of Cologne basically just introduced, basically just flippantly said, oh, you should just keep men at a two arms distance anyways. That's not the problem. This is the exact same reaction of actually just reacting to whatever consequences occurred rather than actually going to the root of the problem. And actually ensuring, as Sarah said, having safe spaces for people to enjoy them, even if they are bullshit. So I think that there's definitely, I think there's, there are so many opportunities that companies can do. And so many failed opportunities to actually safeguarding people. So I also think it's equally gonna pan out like Gamergate a little. Then people are just going to not want to join these spaces to begin with because there's already a decorum of, this is not a safe space for women or for other people. So I wonder how this will sort of evolve now.
Greg: What's the feeling in the US, Catherine? Like over here, I just feel like everyone's sort of going, oh, here we go. Silly, silly Americans thinking they can invent VR. It is the general view over there, like, oh my God, there's this new tech thing and it's going to be great. Or is it a little bit more like, everyone's like, ah, Jesus.
Catherine: Speaking on behalf of all Americans, I can tell yo [laughs]
Greg: [laughs]
Catherine: No, I mean, I think it's a mixed bag, but by and large, I will say that I consider myself quite online in terms of Twitter and not terribly online and other sort of, you know, online forums and forums. But I think from what I know, and the friends I have who are very online and other spaces like Tik Tok or Reddit, or what have you, a lot of the most successful social gathering spots that we have digitally are ones that grew up organically. Reddit is very user moderated and Twitter even as is, you know, the best parts of Twitter, sort of being hacked and shaped by people who see it as the potential for friend finding that it is. Certainly Tik Tok is a great example. So I think the general senses a little more, or at least I'll say what I've seen, is a sense of why Facebook is just sort of, or why Meta rather, sort of artificially creating this digital space where there are not already people there's not already users congregating in a way that's kind of emergent. And that leads to, I think you all talked about this on a recent podcast that leads to a kind of strange sort of sterile corporate VR space environment where it's like, we don't have a shared code of ethics. We don't have a shared language. We don't have a shared way of relating. Half of us aren't even thinking about safety and that's not going to be a successful digital experience. And so what this makes me wonder is, you know, what if there, what if Meta or another company did something like recruit the very best community accumulators from different digital spaces that are building places for kind conversation and friendly and safe interactions and then said, this is who we want to model this after. Come help us. That could maybe have some hope of an interesting space. But as it is the sort of top-down designing from a company that has not given us any indication, but there were with it when it comes to women's experiences or experiences of any marginalised or minority identities. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence. So I definitely don't think it's, it's not on the radar in an exciting way yet.
Hera: Really interesting points. And Greg, you have been looking into how this is translating into money. So give us a quick update on like how all of this has been taken up by investors and shareholders and what's happening to their stock prices.
Greg: Yeah. So alongside this news coming out there, a stock price has taken a huge hit. And so shares dropped 25% at one point. Taking 240 billion off the value. That was the equivalent to combining all other social media networks. So you can kind of get a view of how much value there is in Facebook. And yeah, you know, there was still 75% leftover. There were three factors, so one was around Tik Tok. That has definitely taken a hit on their numbers. Apple and then moved to require iPhone user consent to being tracked. That has really impacted their revenue. The numbers have really stalled as well. So they're kind of plateauing on the number of people they're getting on the platform. But this is really tied into their business model. If we can get more people joining, then they'll get more people joining because they'll tell their friends. But now that's plateauing and in some cases reducing, it's actually having the opposite effect. It's referred to as the network effect, but it's kind of going the other way. So they're really plumbing, a lot of money into the metaverse, but actually their core business is really taking a major hit, which is dragging them down.
Hera: So it looks like they might turn off their services if they don't get their way in Europe. What is that about?
Greg: Yeah, apparently. So in the financial release, there was a one line which basically said, so there's a review in the EU and in the UK looking at a relationship. So there's this transatlantic data transfer agreement and basically there's been some criticisms of it. And there was one line which basically said if it doesn't go our way, we'll put, you know, we may look to switch this, switch off services in Europe. They've said afterwards, oh, we definitely wouldn't do that. Well, you know, they want to put that threat out there. I would love it actually if they did that. Because kind of like the pandemic turn things and we had to very quickly adapt. I think, you know, if we just lost it people could adapt.
Hera: Please don't say that. Please don't say that because I do not want my family on my shoulder. That's just not a good experience for me. I'm going to have to be super careful.
Greg: [laughs]
Hera: Yeah, it's not going to affect everybody equally, okay. So Facebook is a really good place to drag with people in a particular way, but it's a really interesting point. And you know, we usually end our podcasts with a rant or nice of the week, which we discuss. And our guest, Catherine, has come up with two nices of the week. So Catherine, I'm going to give you the honor of taking us through what those nice things are.
Catherine: Sure. So the first thing I found was a delightful article about the tabletop board game called Wingspan. It's about birds. And I have to admit, I have not yet played it, but I've heard from several friends that they love it. And what is delightful about it is not only that it's sort of a viral board game in an age of all gaming being online, but it's a collaborative game where you're basically trying to steward and build an ecosystem. And so it's built off of several North American birds. So in that way, it's a little geographically biased in its design but the current back is north American birds. And you try to attract them to your preserve by giving food, tokens, eggs, et cetera and try to grow your biodiversity reach. And it's not exploitative than it's not competitive in a way that a lot of games are. And I just thought that was delightful, you know, it felt sort of like Wordle, in a similar way in which the design of it is very much for collaboration, understanding and also learning more about our ecosystem. So I thought that might tie in nicely with our environmental conversation today as well. Have any of you all played Wingspan or heard of it?
Greg: I've not heard of it but I really want to play it.
Hera: I want to play it too. Do you have another nice of the week as well? Sorry Greg. You want to share something?
Greg: I want to go on about Wingspan. Cause I'm a board gamer. Bex and Jonny, who are often on the podcast, they love board games. They have one which takes a year to play.
Hera: I really like board games too but no one in my family likes them.
Greg: It's huge. And, you know, I was playing Pandemic during the pandemic, which was a lot of fun. My wife enjoys them, but doesn't enjoy them that much. She doesn't like the ones where you have to spend too much time doing like, admin. It doesn't like admin. This sounds perfect. Cause the person who wrote the article was basically saying, I hate those games where you've got to do loads of admin. Like Settlers of Catan is a big one and there's a lot of involved play in that. And this apparently is although it sounds complex, it's really easy to get into, because it is about. You know about like fighting and trying to take over or mine things. It's about creating a balanced side. It just sounds brilliant. I'm going to go and buy that. Definitely.
Catherine: We'll all have to check in when we’ve had a chance to play it.
Hera: Absolutely. The makers of the game should be so proud that they've got Greg on board.
Greg: [laughs]
Hera: He's a committed fan, already a fan before playing the game.
Greg: Yeah.
Hera: I'm going to share the next nice thing that Catherine found for us, which is that despite don't look up doomsday about tech, billionaires and governments and media and the world crashing actually scientists are working really hard and successfully to stop asteroids, which is pretty amazing.
Catherine: Yes.
Hera: And it links to our final story of the pod as well, which is that scientists are also close to getting nuclear fusion to work. So that's two good space science stories. For those of you who don't know what nuclear fusion is, it's like, you know, it's what powers stars. It's considered the most powerful form of energy and it's what scientists have been working towards because that could really be a sustainable source of power. Does anybody have any strong thoughts about nuclear fusion?
Greg: If you want to understand it, watch Spider-Man 2. The original Spider-Man 2. As he puts it, the power of the sun is in the palm of my hand.
Hera: Very nice.
Dama: I was just going to say people can go check out the show notes, right, to see more articles?
Greg: Yes.
Hera: You can definitely see the articles that we have been sharing. This one is from the Independent and folks. That's all that we have time for. Thank you, Catherine, Greg, Dama for joining and Catherine, this was your first time. So tell us how you found it? Is there anything you want to share about your work that you think people should know, please let us know about that too.
Catherine: Yeah, this was lovely. I will say this was the best way to get back into the weekly news cycle. So thank you all. This is a much better way to engage with news. Yeah, nothing specific to plug or promote. I sadly don't have a SoundCloud link, but I do have Twitter. So feel free to find me on there. I hang out there a lot. And this was lovely.
Hera: What is your Twitter handle?
Catherine: At C H Woodiwiss. So that's at C H W O O D I W I S S.
Hera: Amazing. We'll see you there. And listeners tell us what you think. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Get in touch with us on Twitter at tech for good live or email hello at tech for good dot live. We'd love it if you'd give us a nice iTunes review, because why wouldn't you? And tell all your friends about this podcast. Thank you to Podcast.co for hosting our podcast, like always and thanks to all of our many offscreen volunteers who you can find on our team page at tech for good dot live.