Is digital life booming in Rio?

Quantum computing promises revolutionary new discoveries. But tech revolutions can be messy. Is now the time to start thinking about how we ethically use quantum machines?Also, we find out how glass can be turned into useful data storage that will last for thousands of years. And ...  Show more

AI tech is giving people their lost voices back. We chat to Yvonne Johnson, who has motor neuron disease. She's lost much of her ability to speak. But artificial intelligence is helping Yvonne to be heard again, with her own voice.Also this week: we discuss AI and the price of me ...  Show more

Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist who has studied crack gangs, sex workers, and gun runners, suddenly found himself working at Facebook, and later at Twitter. Now he’s back from Silicon Valley to explore and explain our overheated digital universe. “Sudhir Breaks the Internet” is a ...  Show more

This week Digital Planet looks back on some of the stories we’ve covered in 2020; electricity from Lake Kivu on the Rwandan/DRC border, internet shutdowns across the world, contact tracing apps during the pandemic and how technology has changed digital death rituals and allowed u ...  Show more

Today, we're going to continue our occasional project of getting oral histories and personal anecdotes about how, exactly, the Internet and the web came to various places around the world. On this episode we're going to look at how the Internet came to—and is still in the process ...  Show more

This week’s Digital Planet is something of a celebration, it's 20 years since the BBC World Service launched the programme. Originally entitled ‘Go Digital’, the programme has always been innovative. It was the first radio programme to generate digital video, and also launched po ...  Show more