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Will technology save us?

caption: Hanson Hosein, Amy Webb, Vinay Narayan and Elizabeth Scallon participate in KUOW's That's Debatable event on March 24, 2019.
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Hanson Hosein, Amy Webb, Vinay Narayan and Elizabeth Scallon participate in KUOW's That's Debatable event on March 24, 2019.
KUOW Photo/Brie Ripley

We’ve been talking a lot about Amazon, how as a company it’s entering more and more parts of our lives. But lurking underneath this exploration is a deeper, broader question: Will technology save us?

We wanted to dive into that, so we hosted a debate with some big thinkers, including:

  • Vinay Narayan, vice president of platform strategy at HTC Vive, a virtual reality system
  • Elizabeth Scallon, head of WeWork Labs in Seattle, a startup incubator
  • Hanson Hosein, who runs the Communication Leadership master's program at the University of Washington
  • Amy Webb, professor of strategic foresight at New York University's business school and author of "The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity."

In this episode of Prime(d) we’re going to walk you through some of what they taught us – and the surprising answer to the question.

Listen to the podcast by clicking the play button above or wherever you get your podcasts. Our theme song is "Ripples on an Evaporated Lake" by Raymond Scott. You also heard "Heartline" by Pezzner, a Seattle artist.

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