From Philosopher to Cyber: S4:E44🎙️ LIVE with Chuck Brooks

3 Aug 2025 · 2 min

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2:15

In this segment of the live interview, Chuck Brooks discusses the types of people he would like to meet, emphasizing a preference for scientists, philosophers, and space pioneers over politicians or celebrities. He mentions a contemporary Japanese philosopher‑astronomer (name uncertain) and the late astronaut Buzz Aldrin as examples. The conversation then shifts to privacy, which Brooks identifies as a pressing, universal problem. He describes a growing sense of helplessness as individuals become reduced to data points, likening the future to a "Twilight Zone" of machine‑driven conformity. Brooks critiques the 1976 U.S. Privacy Act as outdated for 2025, and acknowledges the European Union’s GDPR as a positive model that better protects consumers. He also highlights the pervasive influence of a marketing‑centric society that exacerbates privacy erosion.

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No, I've also, you know, Mikaku Kacchu, I'm not sure if I pronounced his name right, the Japanese philosopher astronomer. He's alive and he writes amazing stuff, sort of on the edges things. And I'd love to see that. And, you know, I think I leave off politicians because I think that it's really not an area I've done it so long that I don't have an interest in it. And they all, you know, it's not really my, my— although I understand the importance of things, I don't want to— it's not my choice to meet anyone that's famous that way, or any celebrity that's famous. So I think it stays with, you know, more with the science philosophy kind of people. One more person? I'm trying to think of who would be the last one. I think that, you know, I would pick maybe, you know, he's not alive anymore, but maybe Buzz Aldrin.
You know, or is he alive?
I'm not sure, walking on the moon. I think he'd be up there with one of the key people too, because I have an interest in space.
That is great. So when you wake up in the morning, what is one problem you would like to solve?
Well, I think that, you know, I think privacy is a huge problem for everybody now, and I worry about it because we're all victims of it. And it's getting worse and worse by the day. I wish we could solve that some way that we could have— I worry about it sort of being a world of lemmings where we're all basically just like numbers or digits, and I can see it going that way. And there's a lot of Twilight Zone kind of things where we follow the machine. I don't want to be like that. Privacy.
I guess we have the, what, 1976 Privacy Act, which is definitely completely obsolete in 2025. What about what the European European Union is doing with privacy, GDPR? Should we follow their example?
Well, you know, I think they— what they're doing is good. I think, I think there's a lot, because you're protecting a lot of the consumers, really. Um, the problem with us is that we're, we're, uh, deep in a marketing society here, and it's almost— we're so, so