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.
Dr. Dave and Evil Steve acknowledge Bill and Melinda Gates’s charitable giving but question a culture that makes the wealthy and famous the automatic heroes. They argue that soldiers, Iraqi voters and election candidates who faced personal danger also deserved recognition because their commitment went far beyond money or celebrity.
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Dr. Dave marvels at the internet's historical access while warning that data is not necessarily information and information is not necessarily knowledge; Evil Steve adds that information itself is not always fact.
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Lock inventor Bob Wilcox says he cannot personally fix every public problem that frustrates him, but he can act on the one problem his building experience equips him to solve. Dr. Dave recognizes the familiar story of an ordinary person seeing a real need and applying a sharp mind and practical knowledge to it.
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Dr. Dave says that earning a living begins with finding how one's abilities add value to other people's lives. The contribution might be as celebrated as a medical breakthrough or as ordinary and necessary as repairing a road, but each person has different abilities and a responsibility to discover how to use them.
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At Facebook's tenth anniversary, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve use its automatically assembled timeline video to ask when a convenient platform feature becomes a claim over the people and material inside it. They compare photographs, phone calls and online posts, question what users truly own, note that email still has exceptional practical value and cautiously wonder whether Facebook's peak may already have passed.
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A conversation about vinyl records becomes Dr. Dave's compact observation that people sometimes make a fashionable decision first and then assemble facts to rationalize it.
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Evil Steve urges listeners not to limit generosity to the Christmas season, and Dr. Dave agrees that charitable organizations and families need support throughout the year. They add that people who cannot give money can still give their time and help in person.
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Dr. Dave calls a site built around reading books one of the most fun destinations on the Web. What excites him is access: out-of-print and highly collectible works that would otherwise be impossible or extraordinarily expensive to obtain can become searchable PDF research material, an idea he returns to when mentioning his African studies at the end of the show.
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A sensational question about whether recent disasters mean the end of the world leads Dr. Dave to argue that people naturally treat events in their own lifetime as unprecedented. He says serious study of history is essential for understanding nature, geography, politics and economics.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve argue that equating every imperfection with evil empties moral words of meaning and makes serious judgment impossible.
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Dr. Dave and Jane discuss letting a project develop rather than trying to control every step. Getting the right result matters more than taking credit, even when that means handing the work to someone else.
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With local donations reportedly far below the previous year, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve ask listeners to help the Salvation Army find food and toys for families before Christmas. They encourage giving money, goods, services or time in one's own community, and Evil Steve's joke about not eating the food keeps the appeal recognizably theirs.
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Dr. Dave responds to a television panel's claim by searching decades of newspaper coverage, then celebrates the unprecedented access the internet provides while insisting that people still have to think, investigate and separate reliable information from nonsense.
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Dr. Dave likes Arduino partly because a beginner can experiment without risking thousands of dollars on an unfamiliar project. He contrasts that freedom with an elaborate model airplane destroyed seconds into its first flight: keep the first attempt affordable enough that failure remains part of learning instead of ending the adventure.
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After a morning in which phones, laptops and studio automation all fail, Dr. Dave says that things will always need fixing. The successful people around us are the ones who solve problems, whether those problems involve technology, nonprofit fundraising, finance or another kind of useful work.
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Dr. Dave directs listeners to the Truth and Tech blogs and defines the Truth Blog in personal terms: he says what he sees, does not expect agreement and promises readers something worth considering. The exchange preserves the original site as an extension of the show's invitation to think rather than merely accept his conclusions.
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From artists selling music directly, Dr. Dave draws a general business rule: remove unnecessary layers between the person providing value and the customer receiving it. Whether the subject is music, automobiles or health care, he believes a more direct connection improves the relationship for both sides and forces obsolete intermediaries to rethink their role.
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Using fast-changing reports about the Target breach, Dr. Dave says the first account of an event is often incomplete or wrong. When a seventeen-year-old is named in reporting, he lists several possible levels of involvement, insists on waiting for facts and refuses to help condemn or destroy a young person before guilt is established.
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A reported defamation suit leads Dr. Dave to compare online behavior with the false privacy people sometimes feel inside a car: the sense of anonymity can invite reckless conduct, but other people still see it and consequences remain real.
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Dr. Dave says one of the Internet’s greatest benefits is access to source material that ordinary people would never have seen twenty years earlier. He values reading newly available government records directly rather than relying only on a commentator’s interpretation, so people can consider the evidence and make up their own minds.
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Dr. Dave acknowledges severe economic news but argues that positive facts deserve research too, because the media's preference for dramatic bad news can distort the whole picture.
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A discussion of DNS failures grows into Dr. Dave and Evil Steve’s larger view of the Internet as a loose voluntary organization. The same openness that lets almost anyone publish brilliant work also permits dangerous and unprofessional systems, so its greatest strength and its greatest weakness are inseparable.
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Dr. Dave and Evil Steve say difficult times offer a chance to stop being dazzled by new devices, reconsider status-driven purchases and choose technology according to what actually benefits life.
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An Xbox Live profile-policy change leads Dr. Dave to predict misuse and reflect on how internet anonymity can bring out behavior people would avoid face to face.
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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.
