Conversations On New Technologies

Join Sam Harris in two conversations on new technologies and their impact on our daily lives.In the first conversation, Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris. Tristan Harris has been called the "closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience," by The Atlantic magazine. He was the Design Ethicist at Google and left the company to lead Time Well Spent, where he focuses on how better incentives and design practices can create a world that helps us spend our time well. Harris’s work has been featured on 60 Minutes and the PBS NewsHour, and in many journals, websites, and conferences, including: The Atlantic, ReCode, TED, the Economist, Wired, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the New York Review of Books. He was rated #16 in Inc Magazine’s "Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30" in 2009 and holds several patents from his work at Apple, Wikia, Apture and Google. Harris graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science.—In the second conversation, Sam Harris speaks with Matt Mullenweg about the evolution of distributed work. They discuss the benefits of working from home, the new norms of knowledge work, relevant tools and security concerns, the challenges for managers, the importance of written communication, the necessity of innovating in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, delivery networks as critical infrastructure, economic recovery, and other topics. Matt Mullenweg is a founding developer of WordPress, the Open Source software used by 36% of the web. In 2005, he founded Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and many other products. Matt has unique insight into running distributed teams. Automattic is entirely distributed—with 1,172 employees working in 75 countries.