Looks Like New: What makes computers happy?

More and more people feel uncomfortable with the role of big tech companies in their everyday lives, but they don’t feel they have any other option. System76 is trying to change that. It’s a Denver-based computer company that produces its own computers, and its own open-source operating system, here in Colorado. Emma Marshall is System76’s Happiness Manager, and she talks about what it means to be part of a company that helps create more empowered computer users.

MEDLab’s radio show and podcast, Looks Like New, asks old questions about new tech.

Each month, host Nathan Schneider speaks with someone who works with technology in ways that challenge conventional narratives and dominant power structures. The name comes from the phrase “a philosophy so old that it looks like new,” repeated throughout the works of Peter Maurin, the French agrarian poet and co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement.

You can hear Looks Like New the fourth Thursday of every month at 6 p.m., or online as a podcast on iTunes and Stitcher.

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