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.
The loss of NASA’s Glory mission gives Dr. Dave a sober example of an enormous failure followed by a determination to recover because the team are professionals, which he uses to put the show’s own technical problems in perspective.
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Faced with an endless stream of breaches and alarming security reports, Dr. Dave rejects both denial and paralysis. Take a breath, use the reasonable protections available and then keep living, because no individual can stay ahead of every possible threat.
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A report equating cell phone use with drunk driving prompts Dr. Dave and Evil Steve to examine what the headline leaves out. They work through the sample, simulator, measured conditions and behavioral limits, accepting that distraction is dangerous while questioning whether the study supports the dramatic equivalence used to describe it.
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Dr. Dave says society is bombarded by messages about what cannot be done, then points to a retired IBM engineer adapting an F-104 Starfighter into an eight-hundred-mile-per-hour land speed car. He admires people who reject that negativity and try to make ambitious ideas real through their own effort and willpower.
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After the News of the World phone-hacking discussion, Dr. Dave and Evil Steve strip away professional exceptionalism: investigating a story does not release a reporter from legal and ethical obligations or the need for a moral compass.
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A Caltech soundproofing experiment leads Dr. Dave to a broader observation: important knowledge is often discovered while people are pursuing something else, which makes creative research difficult to direct entirely from the top down.
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After Microsoft's fortieth-anniversary letter, Dr. Dave compares the expanding power of computing with the moral questions of the nuclear age. The challenge is not to flee from difficult technology, he says, but to develop it responsibly as it becomes more pervasive and potentially controlling.
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When the studio cannot reach Gmail, Dr. Dave notes that even an hour-long outage can feel catastrophic because people have become deeply dependent on digital services. Evil Steve describes modern society as “mainlining” technology and suffering withdrawal when it disappears.
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Watching Facebook's first trading day, Dr. Dave is relieved that excitement did not immediately produce another runaway speculative rush. He argues that greater promised potential should invite greater skepticism, says good and bad people exist in every profession and hopes earlier bubbles taught investors something.
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Dr. Dave offers a direct test for arguments about copying intangible work: if you had imagined, produced and built it yourself through a camera, studio, typewriter or computer, would you consider it fair for someone else to take it and profit? The question brings empathy for the creator into a debate often reduced to bits and bytes.
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A reported Craigslist murder leads Dr. Dave to reject the knee-jerk impulse to blame the mechanism rather than the person misusing it, while also urging people meeting strangers online to screen them and take practical precautions.
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Early vehicle-security research leads Dr. Dave and Evil Steve from remote control of automotive functions to a larger question: when a car acts for the driver, who remains responsible if automation causes harm?
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WiMAX promises lead Dr. Dave to explain how enthusiasm turns unhealthy when a person treats criticism of a favored technology as a personal attack.
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Near the close, Dr. Dave invites listeners to read the Truth and Tech blogs on DaveMason.com. He makes no promise that readers will agree with him; instead, he promises that they will be invited to think and can answer in the comments.
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Two days after Independence Day, Dr. Dave says Americans should be grateful for what they have without pretending that the country, its people or its leaders are perfect. He acknowledges developments that trouble him, but says no battle is ever completely won or lost, so he gets up every morning and fights the good fight.
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Dr. Dave describes himself as a contrarian who believes in questioning authority, then draws a moral limit: opposition is not automatically good when it abandons judgment about methods and consequences.
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Dr. Dave contrasts the public tone surrounding the Southern California wildfires with Hurricane Katrina and welcomes what he sees as a return of a resilient, defiant American spirit. He praises people who take hold of recovery and refuse to let a disaster defeat them.
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After recognizing the passing of Isaac Hayes and Bernie Mac, Dr. Dave remembers Hayes as a musician and television guest and then admits that sixty-five no longer sounds old to him. Evil Steve understands immediately: the closer they get to an age, the younger it seems, turning celebrity news into a brief, candid exchange about mortality.
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Dr. Dave admits that the show and its website were fooled by the supposed 1954 vision of a 2004 computer, explains how false quotations spread under famous names and tells listeners that convincing Internet material still needs confirmation. After the break, the brothers identify the image as a mock-up of a submarine control room and point listeners to a myth-checking source.
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Dr. Dave says the emotional appeal of Apple can make customers tolerate software and compatibility problems that another company could not, and Evil Steve compares the feeling with accepting the service demands of an exotic sports car. The analogy captures their mix of skepticism and understanding toward powerful consumer brands.
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The Kindle guest's newspaper argument reminds Dr. Dave of Bill Gates excitedly telling David Letterman that the internet could carry a baseball game, only for Letterman to ask whether he had heard of radio; Dr. Dave uses the story to examine his own difficulty seeing a new medium's advantage.
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A Microsoft route between two Norwegian cities produces a journey across several countries and two sea crossings. Dr. Dave and Evil Steve use the error to revisit other memorable localization and mapping mistakes and warn against accepting online information at first glance.
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Dr. Dave recalls an article he struggled to express but whose title captured the idea: make respect, responsibility, love, honesty, liberty and work feel like the rebellious choices. If those virtues became the “new vulgarity,” he jokes, a culture attracted to transgression might finally embrace them.
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After a painful football loss, Dr. Dave finds hope in an opposing player’s return from prison and says that when someone who made serious mistakes turns his life around, everyone should want that success to hold.
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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.
