DaveMason.com
ComputerTalk with Dave Mason
The official archive of all available ComputerTalk with Dave Mason radio shows. Spend some time with Dave. Listen to a full show or explore clips by topic.
3,475 unique clips. Each clip appears in one section. Historical conversations, not current advice. Full episodes remain available separately by date.
364 clips, strongest first.
A joke about patenting a flash drive zipper leads to Andreas Pavel’s long dispute with Sony over the idea behind the Walkman. Dr. Dave admires Pavel’s persistence and eventual settlement, but emphasizes Pavel’s decision to move on because a legal battle can become a person’s identity and make the rest of life and the family suffer.
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A report tracing anonymous Wikipedia edits to institutional networks leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve through the difference between an IP address and an identified author. Dr. Dave concludes that Wikipedia is incredibly useful but no source deserves automatic belief: information from the Wall Street Journal or ABC News should be confirmed too.
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The brothers notice people walking and driving while staring at devices and ask whether digital engagement can become disengagement from the physical people and dangers around them.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve relish a report that DEFCON attendees recognized a Dateline NBC associate producer attempting an undercover camera investigation and turned their spot-the-fed game into spot-the-reporter. For Dr. Dave, the reversal is funny but also carries a media-accountability lesson: journalists who investigate everyone else should remember that the public can watch them too.
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A report linking information access with happiness prompts Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to question how happiness can be quantified and whether benefits turn into depression after internet use crosses a personal threshold.
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While explaining Bitcoin's design, promise and independence from conventional institutions, Dr. Dave warns that enthusiasm can make people imagine technology has removed the complications of human behavior. His conclusion is simple: the potential may be real, but the reality rarely matches the ideal, so keep your feet on the ground.
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A likely staged video about a crash-proof motorcycle becomes a compact statement of Dr. Dave’s skepticism: technology can be useful and even lifesaving, but blind dependence is precisely where trouble begins.
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After describing graphics processors repurposed for password cracking, Dr. Dave argues that a device is not inherently the problem because beneficial and harmful outcomes depend on the person using it; he and Evil Steve include their own radio show in the joke.
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A service for saving and studying every tweet fascinates Dr. Dave as a research tool but strikes both brothers as another way for technology to consume the life it is supposed to document.
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After joking about people hitting lamps with Wii controllers, Dr. Dave says he loves technology when it does what it is supposed to do: make humans better. He points to retirement-home residents using virtual sports for movement they might otherwise miss, and Evil Steve finishes the earnest example with bowling and sore-arm jokes.
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After acknowledging the public grief for Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, Dr. Dave asks why the country does not show comparable public mourning each time a service member dies in defense of it.
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Rick Pitino's leadership comments lead Dr. Dave from humility and listening into a candid reflection on the hours social media can consume. Life is made of time, he says, and while people should stay informed rather than become ignorant, disengaging from relentless negativity can be an intelligent choice; do not join the “fellowship of the miserable.”
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Dr. Dave compares a Facebook post with standing on the busiest street corner in town, holding up the same words and shouting them. If someone would not do that in public, he says, they should think twice before posting it online.
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Caller Dr. Dave worries that no computer can be made perfectly safe, and Dr. Dave Mason answers that the benefits can still be worth the risk because people are not powerless—just as life remains worth entering even though it is never guaranteed safe.
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Victor and Jim call after watching the full Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Melinda Gates interview that Dr. Dave had only seen reported. Their context changes the meaning of Buffett’s remark, and Dr. Dave repeatedly thanks them, accepts that his earlier reading was too harsh and says he needs to obtain the full interview.
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Mary offers selective emergency, election and government updates as useful examples. Dr. Dave tests the distinction, listens to her limits and concedes that a rational, proportional use is valuable and weakens his earlier argument.
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Dr. Dave recommends writing an angry message only to get the feeling out, saving it and walking away instead of sending it. He then admits how often he begins an online reply before realizing it is not important and explains that responding can energize the very thing that should be left alone.
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Dr. Dave rejects the two extremes of treating technology as wholly wonderful or wholly terrible and argues for a more demanding balance: enjoy what it makes possible while recognizing and addressing the damage it can cause.
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A caller asks whether computers can be made adaptable enough to last a decade. Dr. Dave says the question appeals to him personally because treating a costly phone as something automatically discarded after 18 months feels unnatural, wasteful and often irrational when the replacement works no better than the familiar device.
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A caller asks whether an unsecured home or apartment Wi-Fi network may be used. Dr. Dave distinguishes an intentionally public hotspot from a private network left open and says that uncertainty requires checking with the owner rather than treating access as permission.
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While discussing surveillance, Dr. Dave remembers disagreeing with Dennis Prager and says respect makes his first reaction “What am I missing?” He argues that intelligence, education and good intentions do not prevent a person from being completely wrong, applies the same possibility to himself and ends by saying he is open to being convinced that he has missed something.
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Dr. Dave rejects both ignoring Arizona lightning and treating every distant flash as a reason to shut down completely, arguing for an informed middle ground that respects real risk without making work and ordinary life impossible.
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Dr. Dave argues that blogs took control of information away from traditional gatekeepers, allowed people with specialized knowledge to check public claims and would permanently change how history unfolds. He says the outcome matters regardless of which political party benefits because he wants competing viewpoints and the underlying facts available to everyone.
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Dr. Dave credits blogs with challenging institutional media while plainly acknowledging the cost: an Internet full of weak claims that demands more reading and judgment. He describes checking a campaign-fee story instead of repeating it, insists that invented claims hurt any cause and says new access only helps people willing to consider contrary information.
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Browse by year, then month, to find the episodes from that month.
442 proposed broadcast dates, plus 2 undated entries. Dates are based on archive filenames and may be approximate. Some broadcasts survive as separate parts or incomplete recordings.
