Tech Won’t Save Us

Paris Marx is joined by Meghan O’Gieblyn to discuss parallels between transhumanism and Christian narratives of resurrection, despite the fact many transhumanists identify as staunch atheists.

Meghan O’Gieblyn is an advice columnist at Wired and the author of God, Human, Animal, Machine.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Meghan wrote about transhumanism and religion for n+1.
• Paris wrote about the religion of techno-optimism in Disconnect.
• Amy Kurzweil wrote about her father’s chatbot of his own father.
• In China, AI “deathbots” are being used to help people grieve.
• Richard Dawkins now identifies as a “cultural Christian” (not Catholic, as Paris mistakenly said in the episode).

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Paris Marx is joined by Alex Shephard to discuss the legalization of sports betting in the United States, the growing influence of gambling in professional sports, and its negative impact on the lives of sports fans.

Alex Shephard is a senior editor at The New Republic.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Alex wrote about sports gambling for The New Republic.
• The Wall Street Journal recent explored the wider backlash to sports betting in light of the Shohei Ohtani scandal.
• Last year, the New York Times gutted its unionized sports section to replace it with non-union writers at The Athletic.
• Psychologist Meredith K. Ginley explained how sports betting apps hook people on regular gambling.

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Paris Marx is joined by Edward Ongweso Jr. to discuss Kara Swisher’s attempt to rebrand herself as the most feared journalist in Silicon Valley, how she spent her career forwarding the industry’s narratives, and the larger problems with access journalism.

Edward Ongweso Jr. is finance editor at Logics Magazine and co-host of This Machine Kills.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Ed wrote a critical review of Burn Book in The Baffler.
• In Disconnect, Paris also wrote a critical review of Swisher’s book and explained his journey to becoming a tech critic.
• In 2021, Kara told CNBC that just because NFTs are digital “doesn’t mean it’s not of value.” The following year she also defended promoting investments in crypto for retirement.

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Paris Marx is joined by Kat Tenbarge to discuss the proliferation of AI-generated, non-consensual sexual images, their impact on the victims, and the potential fallout for tech companies who helped make it all possible. Note there is some discussion of self-harm and suicide in this episode.

Kat Tenbarge is a tech and culture writer at NBC News.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Kat has reported extensively on this issue, including stories about fake nude images of underage celebrities toping search engine results, nonconsensual deepfake porn showing up on Google and Bing too, Visa and Mastercard being used to fund the deepfake economy, and why plans for watermarking aren’t enough.
• Another Body is a documentary that looks at the scale of the problem of non-consensual deepfake explicit images.
• Microsoft’s Designer AI tool was used to create AI porn of Taylor Swift.
• Middle and high schools in Seattle, Miami, and Beverley Hills are among those already facing the consequences of AI-generated and deepfake nude images.
• In 2014, Jennifer Lawrence called the iCloud photo hack a “sex crime.”

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Paris Marx is joined by Zach Weinersmith to discuss why building space colonies will be much more difficult than the space billionaires want us to believe.

Zach Weinersmith co-wrote A City On Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? with Kelly Weinersmith. He also makes the Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt of A City on Mars was published by Space.com.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss the motivations behind the proposed TikTok ban and what the effort tells us about US tech policy.

Jacob Silverman is a tech journalist and the co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be speaking in Montreal on March 23 and March 26.
• Jacob wrote about the GOP megadonor who could benefit from whatever happens to TikTok.
• Paris wrote about the geopolitics of the TikTok ban and what it says about US power.
• Taylor Lorenz broke down some of the disputed claims being made about TikTok.
• Sam Biddle wrote about how Facebook knows they violated Palestinian human rights.
• Byron Tau explained how US government agencies are getting people’s personal data from data brokers.

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In a bonus episode, Paris Marx is joined by Ed Ongweso Jr. and Brian Merchant to share their thoughts on Dune: Part Two, how it relates to the modern tech industry, and whether today’s Luddites can take anything from Dune’s Butlerian Jihad.

Ed Ongweso Jr is finance editor at Logic(s) Magazine and cohost of This Machine Kills. Brian Merchant is a technology journalist and the author of Blood In the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• You can watch the entire livestream over on YouTube.
• For Disconnect, Paris wrote about how the digital revolution has failed.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ed Zitron to discuss the public’s growing disillusionment with the tech industry as it pivoted to chasing profits instead of providing us with anything useful.

Ed Zitron is the host of Better Offline and writes the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter. He’s also the CEO of EZPR.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Ed wrote about how tech lost its way and the problems with the generative AI hype.
• Paris wrote the failure of the digital revolution, the material costs of data centers, and Kara Swisher’s new book.
• A lot of Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI is cloud compute credits.
• Molly White reviewed Chris Dixon’s new book.

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Paris Marx is joined by Dharna Noor to discuss widely-held misconceptions about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and how industry lobbies invented them to protect the market for plastic products.

Dharna Noor is the fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• On Friday, March 8, Paris will be speaking with Ed Ongweso Jr. and Brian Merchant about Dune: Part Two and its connection to the growing Luddite movement. Watch it on our YouTube channel at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT.
• Our conversation was based in part on the Center for Climate Integrity’s new report called “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling.”
• Dharna reported on that report and has previously written about plastic materials ending up in landfills, fashion’s use of plastic, and the problem with replacing plastics with other disposables.
• In 2018, Barack Obama said, “That whole ‘suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas,’ that was me, people.
• New research has found microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies. The science isn’t settled on the effects on microplastics on human health, but there’s reason to be concerned.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss why the European Union’s Platform Work Directive isn’t moving forward, what hope remains for gig workers’ rights in Europe, and what we should make of Uber’s first annual profit.

Ben Wray is the coordinator of the Gig Economy Project and the author of Scotland after Britain: The two souls of Scottish independence.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• On March 8, Paris will be doing a livestream about Dune 2 and Luddites with Ed Ongweso Jr and Brian Merchant. Get notified on YouTube.
• Ben wrote about the failure of the Platform Work Directive, the recent conferences on platform workers’ rights in Brussels, and the Uber CEO’s admission of using driver’s “behavioral patterns” to influence pay rates.
• Paris wrote about the wider context of Uber’s first annual profit.
• Delivery Hero’s business isn’t going well and its share price has been dropping.
• Glovo is facing serious legal trouble in Spain, and even as some fines have been suspended, others have been added.
• Food delivery workers in the UK have been on a major strike. Notes from Below have been publishing some dispatches from it.

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Paris Marx is joined by Grafton Tanner to discuss the dangers and consequences of companies and politicians leveraging nostalgia for their own purposes. 

Grafton Tanner is the author of Foreverism. He also teaches at the University of Georgia.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode: 

• Paris wrote about the material footprint of data centers in Disconnect.
• Ian McKellen broke down on the set of The Hobbit after acting with no other actors on a green screen.
• In an interview with Charlie Rose, George Lucas described differences between Soviet and US film industries.
• Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told Vanity Fair it wasn’t as fun making Star Wars films today as it was making the original trilogy.
• Jake Gyllenhaal described the difficulty of acting in a Marvel film after Spider-Man: Far From Home.

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Paris Marx is joined by Zachary Kaiser to discuss the power of tech interfaces, why data isn’t an accurate reflection of the world, and why we need to discuss democratic decomputerization.

Zachary Kaiser is an Associate Professor of Graphic Design and Experience Architecture at Michigan State University. He’s also the author of Interfaces and Us: User Experience Design and the Making of the Computable Subject.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris is speaking in Auckland on February 18 at an event hosted by Tohatoha.
• Zachary wrote about dream reading technologies for Real Life.
• Zachary mentions specific works by David Golumbia, Ivan Illich, Aaron Benanav, John Cheney-Lippold, Thomas F. Tierney, Marisa Brandt, Arturo Escobar, and James Ferguson.

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Paris Marx is joined by Nastasia Hadjadji to discuss Emmanuel Macron’s plan to run France like a start-up, how that justified a further dismantling of France's welfare state, and how his desire to create national tech champions is having domestic consequences.

Nastasia Hadjadji is a French journalist looking at tech from the lens of political economy and the author of “No Crypto. Comment Bitcoin a envoûté la planète.”

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be speaking in Auckland on February 18 in an event hosted by Tohatoha.
• Emmanuel Macron aided Uber’s lobbying efforts as Economy Minister under the former Socialist government.
• France worked hard to attract the crypto industry. Macron even took a selfie with Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, who’s now pled guilty to felony charges.
• The group Technopolice documents police surveillance in France.
• La Quadrature du Net campaigns against algorithmic video surveillance.
• Louis Pouzin is considered to have almost created the internet.

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Paris Marx is joined by Victor Pickard to discuss the continued layoffs in news media, and how they are symptomatic of a deeper, structural crisis in journalism.

Victor Pickard is Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be speaking in Christchurch on February 4 and Wellington on February 8.
• Victor wrote for Niemen Lab about the need to divorce news and capitalism, and argued for public newspapers in the Washington Post.
• In the US, two-thirds of newspaper jobs, or 43,000 journalists, have been lost since 2005.
• Robert McChesney and John Nichols propose a Local Journalism Initiative.
• Police raided a newspaper in Kansas on August 11, 2023, setting off a major scandal that’s now seen the police chief suspended.

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Paris Marx is joined by Eric Silver to discuss Spotify’s big plan to dominate podcasting, why it’s now pulling back from those efforts, and the difference between highly produced and more independent podcasts.

Eric Silver is a podcast producer and head of development at Multitude.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be in Christchurch on February 4 (details here) and Wellington on February 8 (details here). He’s hoping to get an Auckland date organized and is open to going to Australia.
• Spotify pulled back on its podcasting ambitions last year, canceling big shows and laying off staff.
• After buying Gimlet and Parcast, it merged them into Spotify Originals last year.
• Ashley Carman posted a slide from a Spotify presentation presenting the RSS feed as “outdated tech” because it’s harder for them to harvest data from.

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Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the past year in AI hype, how AI companies have shaped regulation, and tech’s relationship to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
 
Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris is speaking in Montreal on January 20. Details here.
• Billy Perrigo reported on OpenAI lobbying to water down the EU’s AI Act.
• Nitasha Tiku wrote about the push to train students in a particular idea of AI.
• Politico has been doing a lot of reporting on the influences on AI policy in the US and UK.
• OpenAI made a submission in the UK to try to get permission to train on copyrighted material.
• Arab workers in the tech industry fear the consequences of speaking out for Palestinian rights.
• 972 Magazine reported on Israel’s use of AI to increase its targets in Gaza.
• Jack Poulson chronicles the growing ties between military and tech.
• Timnit mentioned No Tech for Apartheid, Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory, and Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto.

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Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work.

Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Read excerpts from If We Burn in The Guardian and In These Times.
• Vincent mentioned the work of Charles Tilley, Cihan Tuğal, Evgeny Morozov, and Andrey Mir.

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Paris Marx is joined by Naomi Klein to discuss the problems with personal branding pushed social media, how the left’s insufficient response to the pandemic created an opening for the right, and the fight over the roots of Western society that will shape our future.
 
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and a columnist with The Guardian. She is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice and Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her newest book is Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Read excerpts of Doppelganger in The Guardian and Vanity Fair.
• Naomi mentions Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.

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2023 is over, so it’s time to go through everything! In a special year-end episode, we review the biggest stories of 2023, what we’re thinking of the AI hype, how science fiction makes us think about the future, the worst villains in the tech industry, and what we’re watching in 2024.
 
Gita Jackson is a journalist and cofounder of Aftermath. Molly White is the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great. Aaron Thorpe is co-host of Everybody Loves Communism.
 
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• If you become a Patreon supporter before the end of the year, you’ll be entered into a giveaway for five signed copies of Joanne McNeil’s Wrong Way and Paris Marx’s Road to Nowhere. Sign up now!
• Gita recently launched Aftermath, and you can go subscribe!
• Molly is getting started on TikTok. Go follow her!
• Aaron posts a lot of cool science fiction art over on Twitter. Give him a follow!
• You can see the Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos photos we discuss in the Worst Person in Tech segment on Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon.
• Paris was mistaken: Enya sang “May It Be” for Fellowship of the Ring, not “Gollum’s Song” for the Two Towers. That was Emilíana Torrini. But Paris listened to both of them too much.

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Paris Marx is joined by Astra Taylor to discuss how capitalism creates insecurity to sustain itself, the way tech is used to make us more insecure, and what it will take to change that.

Astra Taylor is a writer, filmmaker, and political organizer. She’s the author of The Age of Insecurity and co-founder of the Debt Collective. Her next book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, written with Leah Hunt-Hendrix, comes out in March.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Astra wrote about the Insecurity Machine for Logic Magazine and the Dads of Tech for The Baffler.
• Find excerpts from The Age of Insecurity in The New York Times and The Walrus.
• Become a supporter on Patreon to join our giveaway.

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Paris Marx is joined by Émile Torres to discuss Silicon Valley’s recent obsession with effective accelerationism, how it builds on the TESCREAL ideologies, and why it shows the divide at the top of the AI industry.
 
Émile Torres is a postdoctoral fellow at Case Western Reserve University. They’re also the author of Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
 
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Emile wrote about the TESCREAL ideologies and AI extinction scaremongering.
• Timnit Gebru also did a great presentation on TESCREAL.
• Paris wrote about the religious nature of Marc Andreessen’s techno-solutionist manifesto and about Sam Altman’s (temporary) ouster from OpenAI.
• The Year In Tech livestream for Patreon supporters is on December 17 at 1pm PT / 4pm ET / 9pm GMT. More details on Patreon or Twitter.
• The Information did a great profile on effective accelerationism.
• Forbes revealed the man behind the e/acc moniker Beff Jezos.
• 972 Magazine reported on Israeli’s use of AI to expand targets in Gaza.
• UK plans a “hit squad” to replace public servants with AI. Paris wrote about the threat it poses.

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Paris Marx is joined by Tim Schwab to discuss why the story we hear about Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn’t reflect their real impact on education and health around the world.

Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist and the author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Bill Gates was pied in Belgium in 1999 and made fun of on The Simpsons.
• You can watch highlights from Gates’ deposition in the antitrust trial on YouTube.
• Gates had a reputation about questionable and inappropriate conduct toward women below him in the workplace.
• Aaron Gordon wrote there’s an adage that “everyone thinks Musk is a genius until you hear him talk about a subject you know something about.”
• In 2008, the head of the World Heath Organization’s malaria program criticized the growing dominance of the Gates Foundation in the research area.

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Paris Marx is joined by Joanne McNeil to discuss her new novel dealing with the human labor behind self-driving cars and the challenges of being a good tech critic.

Joanne McNeil is the author of Wrong Way and has written for Dissent Magazine, New York Magazine, and The Nation.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Joanne has written about the need for tech critics that aren’t insiders and tech media warming back up to Facebook.
• Paris wrote about the recent scandal around GM’s Cruise division.
• In 2014, Ursula Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and gave a speech that skewered capitalism.
• Joanne’s fictional tech founder was in part inspired by Holacracy and Dan Price.
• The fantasy of self-driving cars is highly reliant on remote drivers.

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Paris Marx is joined by Mike Isaac to discuss the drama around Sam Altman being temporarily removed from OpenAI, what it means for the future of the company, and how Microsoft benefits from its partnership with the company.

Mike Isaac is a technology reporter at the New York Times. He’s also the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Mike summarized the OpenAI-Sam Altman affair with his colleagues in the New York Times. He's been reporting on it since it began.
• Paris wrote about the Sam Altman-Microsoft relationship in Disconnect.
• Semafor reported that in 2018, Elon Musk tried to take over OpenAI but was pushed out instead.
• Forbes reporter Sarah Emerson went through Emmett Shear’s old tweets — and yikes.

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Paris Marx is joined by Marwa Fatafta to discuss the ongoing Israeli campaign in Gaza, the importance of social media for sharing what’s happening on the ground, and what listeners can do to support peace and Palestinian rights.
 
Marwa Fatafta is a Palestinian digital rights advocate and researcher. She is Access Now’s Policy and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• 1 in 200 people in Gaza have been killed. >4,600 of the 11,100 dead are children.
• An Israeli government minster called their actions the “Gaza Nakba.”
• Instagram inserted “terrorist” into translations of Palestinian bios and removed hospital bombing photos for nudity. Whatsapp generated stickers of gun-wielding children for Palestinian terms.
• Facebook’s terrorism algorithms removed non-violent Arabic content 77% of the time.
• 7amleh tracked hate speech in Hebrew on social media. WSJ reported Meta’s Hebrew hate speech classifier doesn’t actually work.
• FAIR detailed Western media bias in reporting on Israel-Palestine.
• Access Now published a report on the internet shutdowns happening in Gaza.
• CNN and other Western outlets allow the Israeli army to review their Gaza footage.
• Al Jazeera, Channel 4, NYT, and WaPo found holes in Israel’s hospital explosion story about.
• Israel has been actively creating and spreading disinformation.
• The Israeli parliament passed a bill criminalizing the “consumption of terrorist materials” as dozens are arrested for social media posts.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, why he was found guilty, and how his negative traits are common across Silicon Valley.
 
Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. He’s also the host of The Naked Emperor. Find more of Jacob’s work on jacobsilverman.com.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob recently wrote about the Sam Bankman-Fried trial for Air Mail, The Nation, and his newsletter.
• Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison in May for an 11-year sentence for swindling investors in Theranos.
• Sam Bankman-Fried is facing further charges in a second trial scheduled for March 11. He’s also due to be sentenced for the guilty charges in the first trial on March 28.
• Caroline Ellison revealed the leaked balance sheet that ultimately tanked FTX and Alameda was one of seven fakes made at the behest of Bankman-Fried.
• Max Chafkin and Hannah Miller wrote about the role of Bankman-Fried’s parents in Bloomberg Businessweek.
• Binance is in crisis in the face of a serious Department of Justice investigation.

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After building an empire, now Elon Musk wants us to believe he deserves it. He built a myth of his genius, and now he’s using the same to seed harmful ideologies into the public that justify how he hoards wealth to pursue the projects he should be central to humanity’s future, leaving behind a ton of suffering in their wake. But is Musk’s future really the one we want? This is episode 4 of Elon Musk Unmasked, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us.
 
 Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Astrotopia author Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Human Extinction author Émile P. Torres, science fiction author Annalee Newitz, The Information reporter Julia Black, New York Times Johannesburg bureau chief John Eligon, Insider senior correspondent Linette Lopez, and environmental compliance expert Eric Roesch were interviewed for this episode.
• Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, and Liftoff by Eric Berger were the books cited.

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Elon Musk has built himself a corporate empire, but how did he do it? He’s styled himself at as the cofounder of Tesla, but the real innovations came from its actual founders before he took the credit and spun a ton of deceptive tales he couldn’t follow through on to boost its share price. Ultimately, his interventions have had some serious consequences. This is episode 3 of Elon Musk Unmasked, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Insider senior correspondent Linette Lopez, CNBC.com journalist Lora Kolodny, Ludicrous author Edward Niedermeyer, transportation journalist Alissa Walker, and climate journalist Amy Westervelt were interviewed for this episode.
• Ludicrous by Edward Niedermeyer, Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, and Road to Nowhere by Paris Marx were the books cited.
• A full transcript can be found on the show's official website.

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Elon Musk is man, but he’s also a character that he crafted and which the media blew up to unimaginable scale. Without the media, Musk would not be the man he is today because that myth — and the way it exaggerated some of his traits and virtually hid others — was essential to his success. This is episode 2 of Elon Musk Unmasked, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Science fiction author Annalee Newitz, CNBC.com journalist Lora Kolodny, Ludicrous author Edward Niedermeyer, freelance journalist Karl Bode, and Insider senior correspondent Linette Lopez were interviewed for this episode.
• Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, The Founders by Jimmy Soni, and The PayPal Wars by Eric Jackson were the books cited.
• A full transcript can be found on the show's official website.

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Elon Musk wasn't always the influential billionaire he is today. To begin our dive into the myth of Musk, we need to go back to his origins — to find out where he came from, what inspired him, and how he became the man he is today. Those details set the foundation for the three episodes to come. This is episode 1 of Elon Musk Unmasked, a special four-part series from Tech Won’t Save Us.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Insider senior correspondent Linette Lopez, New York Times Johnannesburg bureau chief John Eligon, CBC documentary producer Ira Basen, and science fiction author Annalee Newitz were interviewed for this episode.
• Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson, and The Founders by Jimmy Soni were the books cited.
• A full transcript can be found on the show's official website.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss the start of the criminal trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, what we know about the case, and whether he’s likely to be found guilty.
 
Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. He’s also the host of The Naked Emperor. Find more of Jacob’s work on jacobsilverman.com.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob wrote about the trial on his newsletter.
• Molly White has also written a preview of what’s to come in the Bankman-Fried trial.
• Sam Bankman-Fried leaked Caroline Ellison’s diaries to the New York Times. Soon after, his bail was revoked and he was sent to prison for over witness tampering.
• Sam Bankman-Fried was interviewed by Matt Levine on Odd Lots and basically admitted yield farming was a Ponzi scheme.
• Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh have all pleaded guilty and are expected to be collaborating with the government against Bankman-Fried.
• Bankman-Fried’s parents are also being sued over the millions they got from FTX.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the history of the Luddites, why we have their story all wrong, and what we can learn from them today.
 
Brian Merchant is the technology columnist at the LA Times and the author of Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt from Brian’s book was published in Fast Company. He also explained why he’s a Luddite in the Washington Post.
• In 2014, Brian wrote “You’ve Got the Luddites All Wrong.”
• On October 12, we’ll be holding a Luddite Tribunal in New York City.
• We also mentioned the work of David Noble, Eric Hobsbawm, and E. P. Thompson.

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Paris Marx is joined by Eric Roesch to discuss the aftermath of the SpaceX Starship launch that caused so much environmental damage in April 2023 and the broader consequences of Elon Musk’s consistent regulatory evasion.
 
Eric Roesch is an expert in environmental compliance and risk assessment who writes about intersection of capitalism, markets and greenwashing as ESG Hound. You can follow Eric’s newsletter on Substack.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Eric wrote about the damage the Starship launch was going to have, SpaceX’s violation of the Clean Water Act, and Elon Musk’s general regulatory evasion. He also shared a lot of photos of the aftermath of the Starship launch.
• Paris wrote about the late David Golumbia and his work on Disconnect.
• The Federal Aviation Administration says SpaceX needs to take 63 corrective measures before another Starship launch.
• The FAA was sued by environmental groups over the impacts of the Starship launch. SpaceX joined that lawsuit.
• SpaceX still needs approval from the US Fish and Wildlife Service before it can launch again. They’ve previously not been happy with SpaceX.
• Ronan Farrow put shed light on the power Elon Musk has amassed in the New Yorker.

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Paris Marx is joined by Yangyang Cheng to discuss the growing divide between the United States and China, and how nationalistic narratives distract us from a better understanding of tech in both countries.
 
Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist and research scholar at Yale Law School. She’s written for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, WIRED, and many others. You can follow Yangyang on Twitter at @yangyang_cheng.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Yangyang wrote about the myth of the TikTok spy and the US fixation on Chinese espionage for Wired.
• She mentioned the coming expiry of a science and technology agreement between the US and China. It’s been temporarily extended.
• Paris recently wrote about the benefits the US receives from the global footprint of its tech companies, and why that makes China look like a threat.

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Paris Marx is joined by Dean Preston to discuss the havoc robotaxis are wreaking in San Francisco and the wider impacts the tech industry has had on the city.
 
Dean Preston is the District 5 Supervisor in San Francisco and the first democratic socialist elected in the city in 40 years. He’s also a tenant attorney and founder of Tenants Together. You can follow Dean on Twitter at @DeanPreston.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris interviewed one of the activists placing cones driverless cars to disable them and draw attention to the California Public Utilities Commission’s pro-corporate regulatory decisions.
• In 2011, Twitter got a massive tax break to stay in San Francisco instead of moving its offices elsewhere in the Valley.
• Salesforce CEO Marx Benioff was a rare tech mogul to support San Francisco’s ballot measure to create a new tax to fund help for homeless residents.
• A ballot measure to increase the transfer tax on properties over $10 million won in 2020, despite industry opposition.
• The campaign against progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin was bankrolled by tech and real estate money. Jacob Silverman put this into wider context in a piece about the rise in the political influence of David Sacks.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jason Koebler and Samantha Cole to discuss why they launched 404 Media, how it was inspired by their work at Motherboard, and their reflections on the state of tech media.
 
Jason Koebler and Samantha Cole are co-founders of 404 Media. Jason was editor-in-chief of VICE’s Motherboard. Samantha was a senior editor at Motherboard and is the author of “How Sex Changed the Internet.” Find out more about 404 Media.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Last week the 404 team introduced themselves. Among the stories they published were pieces looking into Apple AirPods Max and AI-generated porn.
• Vice declared bankruptcy in May 2023.
• Paris argued in Disconnect that the media failed the public in how they reported on Elon Musk.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ben Tarnoff to discuss the ELIZA chatbot created by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s and how it led him to develop a critical perspective on AI and computing that deserves more attention during this wave of AI hype.
 
Ben Tarnoff writes about technology and politics. He is a founding editor of Logic, and author of Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @bentarnoff.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Ben wrote a long article about Weizenbaum and what we can learn from his work for The Guardian.
• Paris wrote a skeptical perspective on AI hype and the promises of ChatGPT in Disconnect.
• Zachary Loeb has also written about Weizenbaum’s work and perspective on AI and computing.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White to discuss Sam Bankman-Fried having his bail revoked and Sam Altman’s plan to scan all of our irises to get us into crypto and supposedly protect us from AI.
 
Molly White is the creator of Web3 Is Going Just Great and a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. You can follow Molly on Twitter at @molly0xFFF.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Molly wrote about Sam Bankman-Fried going to prison and what’s going on with Worldcoin in her newsletter.
• Paris also dug into Worldcoin in the Disconnect newsletter.
• The New York Times published a story about Caroline Ellison based on details provided by Sam Bankman-Fried.
• MIT Tech Review and Buzzfeed News did in-depth investigations of Worldcoin and its exploitation of people in the Global South.
• Worldcoin has been shut down in Kenya and is under regulatory scrutiny in the European Union.

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Paris Marx is joined by Edward Ongweso Jr. to discuss how the venture capital industry works, why the technologies it funds don’t deliver on their marketing promises, and how that’s once again being shown in the hype around AI.
 
Edward Ongweso Jr. is a freelance journalist, co-host of This Machine Kills, and guest columnist at The Nation. You can follow Ed on Twitter at @bigblackjacobin.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Edward wrote about the problems with venture capital and what the AI hype shows us about the industry for The Nation. Earlier this year, he wrote about the tantrum VCs threw after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.
• Paris wrote about where Elon Musk’s vision for the X superapp comes from, why his Twitter rebrand isn’t going so well, and why ChatGPT isn’t a revolution.
• In 2020, Sam Harnett wrote about the problem with tech media’s coverage of the gig economy.
• Uber used to want to be the “Amazon for transportation” and the “operating system for everyday life.”
• TIME reported on how OpenAI lobbying watered down EU AI rules.
• Marc Andreessen wrote his pitch for “Why AI Will Save the World.”

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss how the right-wing of the tech industry are funding media platforms like Rumble to reshape the political discourse and why they’re helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. challenge Joe Biden.
 
Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud. He’s also the host of The Naked Emperor on CBC Podcasts. You can check out Jacob’s Substack.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob wrote about Rumble as a MAGA platform, why tech is boosting Robert F. Kennedy Jr., revolutionary war reenactors getting caught up in Facebook’s purge of militia groups, and David Sacks.
• Mark Zuckerberg chose to go easy on Alex Jones and other right-wing figures on Facebook.
• Trump Media may be going public via a SPAC merger.
• Darren Blanton was involved in a scheme to keep Black voters from the polls.
• Wendy Siegelman put together a chart of the connections between Rumble, Trump Media, and other groups.
• Rumble went public via SPAC in 2022.
• Brandy Zadrozny wrote about RFK Jr. and his views for NBC News.

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Paris Marx is joined by Kelsey Atherton to discuss the renewed interest in UFOs, where the conspiracy theories of aliens in the sky came from, and whether flying saucers might really be watching us.
 
Kelsey Atherton is a military technology journalist. He contributes to Popular Science and has written for Slate. Follow Kelsey on Twitter at @AthertonKD.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Kelsey has written about how the military’s culture of secrecy breeds UFO conspiracy theories, why sensors are an important aspect to consider, and the truth of Area 51.
• A U-2 pilot took a selfie with the Chinese balloon shot down earlier this year.
• The military later confirmed the Chinese balloon was not actually spying on the United States.
• One of the balloons that were shot down likely belonged to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.
• In 2019, a bunch of people online planned to hold a “Naruto run” at Area 51.

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Paris Marx is joined by Keoni Mahelona to discuss the colonial nature of data extraction by major tech companies, and how Te Hiku takes a very different approach to revitalize the Māori language.
 
Keoni Mahelona is the Chief Technology Officer at Te Hiku Media. Follow Keoni on Twitter at @mahelona.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Keoni and some of his colleagues wrote about why OpenAI’s Whisper is another example of colonialism.
• Wired and MIT Tech Review have written about the work Te Hiku is doing with Māori language in Aotearoa New Zealand.
• Mark Zuckerberg owns a lot of land in Hawaiʻi, and it’s quite controversial.

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Paris Marx is joined by Antony Loewenstein to discuss how the Israeli weapons industry tests new military technologies on occupied Palestinians before selling them internationally.
 
Antony Loewenstein is an independent journalist who’s written for the New York Times and the Guardian. He’s the author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports The Technology Of Occupation Around The World. Follow Antony on Twitter at @antloewenstein.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Excerpts from Antony’s book have been published by In These Times, Declassified Australia, and Jamal Khashoggi-founded Democracy for the Arab World Now. Antony also wrote a good overview of the book for Middle East Eye.
• Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and Yesh Din have called Israel’s actions apartheid.
• Google and Amazon workers protested Project Nimbus. They also faced shareholder revolts over the project.
• Airbnb lists properties in illegal Israeli settlements.
• Red Wolf is deployed at checkpoints to scan Palestinians’ faces and add them to surveillance databases without their consent.
• Facebook has been criticized for removing Palestinians’ posts.
• The New York Times reported on Israel’s use of NSO Group surveillance tools for diplomatic leverage.
• The Committee to Protect Journalists found Israel killed 20 journalists.

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Paris Marx is joined by David Moscrop to discuss Canada’s plan to make Google and Meta pay news publishers, and what might happened now that they’re threatening to pull Canadian news from their platforms.
 
David Moscrop is a freelance writer and the author of Too Dumb for Democracy?: Why We Make Bad Political Decisions and How We Can Make Better Ones. Follow David on Twitter at @David_Moscrop.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• David Moscrop wrote about the larger context of the Online News Bill in his Substack newsletter.
• Paris also wrote about Google and Meta threatening to pull news in Canada and why Canada should take a hard line with them.
• Sandy Garossino wrote about how much money Google and Meta extract from Canada.
• Media conglomerates Postmedia and Nordstar are in talks to merge.
• California is also looking at a similar process to force Google and Meta to pay media in that state.
• On Wednesday, the Canadian government pulled advertising from Facebook and Instagram, but said Google was still talking to find a way forward. The government said it won’t back down, and two opposition parties — the New Democratic Party and Bloc Quebecois — voiced their support.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly Crabapple to discuss why AI image generation tools are a threat to illustrators and why we need to refuse the idea that Silicon Valley’s visions of technology are inevitable.
 
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York. She is the author of two books, Drawing Blood and Brothers of the Gun with Marwan Hisham. Follow Molly on Twitter at @mollycrabapple.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Molly wrote an op-ed for the LA Times about the threat of AI-generated tools for artists, and co-wrote an open letter about restricting AI illustration for the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting.
• Karla Ortiz wrote about how teaching an AI to copy an artist’s style isn’t democratization; it’s theft.
• Corridor Digital claimed they were “democratizing” animation by using AI trained on Vampire Hunter D to generate their own animated video.
• Rest of World reported on how AI was being used to take video game illustrators’ jobs in China.
• AI is already being used to justify laying off journalists.
• In February, Creative Commons published an article arguing that using copyrighted works to train generative AI should be considered fair use.
• Stable Diffusion and Midjourney were hit with a copyright lawsuit, and Getty Images launched its own suit against Stable Diffusion.
• The US Copyright Office says AI generated images are not eligible for copyright protection.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the vision of the future of computing offered by Apple’s Vision Pro headset and why it should be resisted.
 
Brian Merchant is the technology columnist at the LA Times. He’s also the author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone and Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be in Edmonton, Alberta on June 24. More info here.
• Brian wrote a column about the Apple Vision Pro for the LA Times, and another about Uber drivers in California getting payouts.
• Paris also wrote about why Apple Vision Pro should be ridiculed for Disconnect.
• David Karpf called virtual reality the “rich white kid of technology.”
• Meta employees are not working in the metaverse.
• Mark Gurman reported on the internal division at Apple over whether to release the Vision Pro in its current form.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White to discuss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase and what they might mean for the future of the crypto industry.
 
Molly White is the creator of Web3 Is Going Just Great and a fellow at Harvard Library Innovation Lab. Follow Molly on Twitter at @molly0xFFF.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Tech Won’t Save Us was in the New York Times!
• Molly wrote about the Binance and Coinbase cases for Rolling Stone. She also wrote about both cases in her newsletter.
• Amy Castor and David Gerard broke down the Coinbase lawsuit.
• Matt Levine has also written about the lawsuits and what it means for crypto being seen as a security.
• In 2020, Forbes reported on the Tai Chi documents about Binance’s efforts to evade regulators.
• Binance is also being sued by the CFTC and there are reports that criminal charges could also be coming from the Department of Justice.
• Prometheum Capital registered to deal in crypto securities.
• Binance recently withdrew from Canada.
• Robinhood ended support for tokens the SEC listed as securities.
• Crypto.com is winding down US institutional trading.
• Nigeria’s SEC said Binance’s operations are illegal.
• Elon Musk is being sued over manipulation of the price of Dogecoin.

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Paris Marx is joined by Emily Hund to discuss the creation of the influencer industry, how it’s been formalized by companies who profit from it, and what can be done to make it fairer for the people who work in it.
 
Emily Hund is the author of The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media. She’s also a research affiliate at the Center on Digital Culture and Society at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Follow Emily on Twitter at @emilyadh.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt of Emily’s book was published in Wired.
• After Elon Musk took over Twitter, a menswear account was suddenly in everyone’s feeds.
• Instagram is offering a paid subscription service that includes customer service.
• Countries have begun regulating the influencer industry. For example, Norway requires retouched photos to be labeled, while France has an even stricter law that regulates the types of products that can be promoted along with other requirements.

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Paris Marx is joined by Amanda Mull to discuss the history of consumerism and where ecommerce goes in the next few years as interest rates rise and its market share stalls.
 
Amanda Mull is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she writes the Material World column. She’s also a shop steward at The Atlantic Union. Follow Amanda on Twitter at @amandamull.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Amanda has written about consumerism, buying less junk, the pivot to TikTok, and why free returns are coming to an end.
• Paris wrote about the problem with Apple’s town square store concept.
• Amazon curtailed massive warehouse expansion plans it made early in the pandemic.
• Lauren Smily wrote about the shut-in economy in 2015.
• William Leach wrote Land of Desire: Merchants: Power and the Rise of a New American Culture.

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Paris Marx is joined by Mary-Jane Rubenstein to discuss how ideas that underpinned colonization and Manifest Destiny are now setting the foundation for the billionaire space race and the plan to colonize the cosmos.
 
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is the author of Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. She’s also a Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt of Mary-Jane’s book was published in Metapolis.
• Paris wrote about the business behind the billionaire space race and the problem with Starlink.
• Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin recently got a contract to build a moon lander for NASA.
• One of Barack Obama’s legacies is pushing for the privatization of space flight.
• The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 and Artemis Accords are attempts to unilaterally rewrite space law for US commercial interest.
• Catherine L. Newell wrote Destined for the Stars: Faith, the Future, and America's Final Frontier.

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Paris Marx is joined by Julia Black to discuss tech billionaires’ embrace of pronatalism and how it’s part of a broader rationalist project to remake society and protect their privileged positions.
 
Julia Black is  a senior correspondent at Insider and previously worked at Esquire and Vox. Follow Julia on Twitter at @mjnblack.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Julia wrote about pronatalism, Lex Fridman, and Sam Altman.
• Paris wrote about eugenics in Silicon Valley.
• Marc Andreessen wrote “It’s Time to Build” in April 2020.
• Timnit Gebru gave a presentation on the TESCREAL bundle of ideologies. Émile Torres made a thread on Twitter about it.

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Paris Marx is joined by David A. Banks to discuss how cities have been reshaped to attract tech companies and what the consequences have been for the people who live in them.
 
David A. Banks is the author of The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America. He’s a lecturer in the Geography and Planning department at University at Albany, SUNY. David also writers Other Day and co-hosts Iron Weeds. Follow David on Twitter at @DA_Banks.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• David wrote about Richard Florida, the creative class, and his book The New Urban Crisis.
• An excerpt of his book was published in Dwell.

Support the show

Paris Marx is joined by Matt Binder to discuss Elon Musk’s first six months at Twitter and how his obsession with blue checks has decimated the company’s finances.
 
Matt Binder is a reporter at Mashable and the host of Scam Economy and Doomed. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattBinder.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Matt wrote about how few people are signing up for Twitter Blue, the people subscribing to Musk’s tweets, the Block the Blue campaign, and whether Bluesky will challenge Twitter.
• Paris wrote about what a recent BBC interview tells us about Musk’s knowledge of what’s happening on Twitter and what his history tells us about his plans for Twitter.
• Twitter revenue from its top 10 advertisers dropped 89% from September-October to March-April.
• William Shatner said his trip to space left him with “among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered.”
• After Musk gave many high-profile users blue checks again, many wonder if he could be sued for false endorsement since they haven’t actually paid for the service.

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Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss the unconvincing arguments being made for a TikTok ban in the United States, then by Daniel Greene to explore how the turn against Chinese technology signals a shift in US policy on the internet and technology.
 
Shoshana Wodinsky is a freelance reporter, previously at Marketwatch and Gizmodo. She writes the Tubes newsletter. Daniel Greene is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies and the author of The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope. Follow Shoshana on Twitter at @swodinsky and Daniel at @Greene_DM.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris wrote about the effort to ban TikTok and why it shows the US desire to protect its technological dominance.
• Shoshana broke down the Congressional hearing with TikTok’s CEO in her newsletter and explained how data brokers get data from many social media apps.
• A priest was outed through his Grindr data, which was part of a campaign by Catholic conservatives to identify priests using gay dating apps.
• The Strava fitness app gave away the location of secret US military bases when soldiers used the app on their runs.
• The FBI and Department of Homeland Security have been buying US phone data.
• Meta paid a firm linked to the Republican Party to smear TikTok.
• In Foreign Affairs, Dan Wang explained how China has developed its tech industry with insights gained through the manufacturing process.
• After TikTok, there’s a campaign to get Shein in the crosshairs of lawmakers.
• Adam Tooze wrote for Foreign Policy about why the US shouldn’t feel it can dictate the path of China’s development.

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Paris Marx is joined by Aaron Benanav to discuss OpenAI’s claims that generative AI will take our jobs, how previous periods of automation hype haven’t resulted in mass job loss, and why we need to ensure it doesn’t further empower employers.
 
Aaron Benanav is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and the author of Automation and the Future of Work. Follow Aaron on Twitter at @abenanav.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Aaron wrote about why chatbots won’t take your job for the New Statesman.
• Microsoft is rolling out generative AI in its enterprise software services and its Azure platform.
• The Writers Guild is proposing contract language on AI in scriptwriting to ensure writers still get the credit.

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Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender to discuss what it means to say that ChatGPT is a “stochastic parrot,” why Elon Musk is calling to pause AI development, and how the tech industry uses language to trick us into buying its narratives about technology.
 
Emily M. Bender is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington and the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master’s Program. She’s also the director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory. Follow Emily on Twitter at @emilymbender or on Mastodon at @[email protected].

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Emily was one of the co-authors on the “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots” paper and co-wrote the “Octopus Paper” with Alexander Koller. She was also recently profiled in New York Magazine and has written about why policymakers shouldn’t fall for the AI hype.
• The Future of Life Institute put out the “Pause Giant AI Experiments” letter and the authors of the “Stochastic Parrots” paper responded through DAIR Institute.
• Zachary Loeb has written about Joseph Weizenbaum and the ELIZA chatbot.
• Leslie Kay Jones has researched how Black women use and experience social media.
• As generative AI is rolled out, many tech companies are firing their AI ethics teams.
• Emily points to Algorithmic Justice League and AI Incident Database.
• Deborah Raji wrote about data and systemic racism for MIT Tech Review.
• Books mentioned: Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil, Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Noble, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin, Ghost Work by Mary L Gray & Siddharth Suri, Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Broussard, Design Justice by Sasha Costanza-Chock, Data Conscience: Algorithmic S1ege on our Hum4n1ty by Brandeis Marshall.

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Paris Marx is joined by Moira Weigel to discuss the third-party sellers who supply many of the goods sold through Amazon, how the company’s policy decisions reshape small businesses to act like mini-Amazons, and what that means for regulatory responses.

Moira Weigel is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University, a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School, and a founding editor of Logic Magazine. Her most recent book is Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk about What They Do--And How They Do It, co-edited with Ben Tarnoff. Follow Moira on Twitter at @moiragweigel.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Moira recently wrote a report for Data & Society looking into Amazon’s “trickle-down monopoly,” and previously worked with Ava Kofman and Francis Tseng on research into white nationalist publishing on Amazon.
• Aiha Nguyen and Eve Zelickson wrote a report on how Ring doorbells are used to surveil delivery workers.
• Logic Magazine published an interview with an anonymous AWS engineer.
• In March 2020, an Amazon seller bought 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and tried to price gouge.
• Marketplace Pulse found that Amazon fees for sellers now account for 51.8% of an average sale, rising from 35.2% in 2016.
• Amazon is now the third-largest digital advertising company after Google and Facebook.
• In January, John Herman wrote about the state of Amazon that touched on some of the Chinese brands.
• Amazon has been scaling back its private label business, in part due to regulatory fears.
• Books mentioned: Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy: Amazon and the Power of Organization by Sarrah Kassem, Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang, and The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy by Lin Zhang.

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Tech Won’t Save Us is turning three years old, so Paris recorded a quick update on the show and announced plans for a new Elon Musk series if the show gets 200 new Patreon supporters in April.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Support the show

Paris Marx is joined by Kate Wagner to discuss the goals behind Saudi Arabia’s architectural megaprojects, the incentives for major architects to work on projects for despotic regimes, and how architecture’s relationship to tech is driven by profits and PR.

Kate Wagner is an architecture critic and journalist. She’s also the creator of McMansion Hell. Follow Kate on Twitter at @mcmansionhell.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Kate wrote about Saudi Arabia’s big architecture projects, the problem with PR-chitecture, the ethical failings of modern architecture, and why utopian architectural projects suck.
• In 2020, Bjarke Ingels met with Jair Bolsonaro about a tourism plan for Brazil.
• Workers in the architecture industry have begun to unionize.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, how it’s part of a larger crisis in the tech sector, and why it’s turning people against the industry’s venture capitalists.

Jacob Silverman is a journalist and the host of The Naked Emperor, a new CBC podcast. Follow Jacob on Twitter at @SilvermanJacob.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob wrote about the lessons from the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in the Globe and Mail.
• Paris wrote about how the SVB collapse should be a radicalizing moment against venture capitalists.
• A video circulated about Jason Calacanis bragging about SVB offering him favorable banking services.
• A screenshot shows a founder complaining about Chase closing his bank account because his company doesn’t have a physical office, saying SVB never required one.
• Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund told its portfolio companies to pull their money out of SVB before its collapse.
• SVB’s President pushed for Congress to reduce regulations and oversight on banks like SVB as it grew.

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Paris Marx is joined by James Wright to discuss Japan’s efforts to develop robots to care for its growing elderly population, what the government hoped to achieve with that plan, and why it hasn’t worked out as planned.

James Wright is a research associate with Turning Institute and a visiting lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. He’s also the author of Robots Won’t Save Japan. You can follow James on Twitter at @jms_wright.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris is visiting New Zealand and doing a number of events through the latter half of March. Find all the dates and details here.
• James wrote about Japan’s efforts to automate elder care for MIT Tech Review.
• Jennifer Robertson spoke about the gendering of robots to cement conservative gender norms.

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Paris Marx is joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss how AI systems encourage ranking populations and austerity policies, and why understanding their politics is essential to opposing them.

Dan McQuillan is a Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He’s also the author of Resisting AI: An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. You can follow Dan on Twitter at @danmcquillan.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Dan wrote specifically about ChatGPT and how we should approach it on his website.
• Dan mentions TWIML as a podcast that has conversations with industry players that’s informative for how these technologies work (though you’re not likely to get a critical perspective on them), and Achille Mbembe’s book Necropolitics.
• OpenAI used Kenyan workers earning $2/hour to make ChatGPT less toxic.
• The UK had to scrap a racist algorithm it was using for visa applications and many councils dropped the use of algorithms in their welfare and benefits systems.
• Dan mentions a Human Rights Watch report on the EU’s flawed AI regulations and its impacts on the social safety net.
• The Lucas Plan was developed by workers at Lucas Aerospace in the 1970s, but rejected by their bosses.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ben Wray to discuss the fight to win a pro-worker Platform Work Directive in the European Union, Uber’s rollout of dynamic pricing, and how Barcelona taxi workers have fought back against ride-hailing.

Ben Wray is the coordinator of The Gig Economy Project and the co-author of Scotland after Britain: The two souls of Scottish independence. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @Ben_Wray1989.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• The Gig Economy Project has a weekly newsletter on the gig economy in Europe.
• Ben wrote about the Platform Work Directive for Context.
• In 2022, the Uber Files gave us greater insight into Uber's lobbying activities, with a specific focus on what had gone on in Europe. The leaks implicated French President Emmanuel Macron, but he said he’d do it all again.
• The Gig Economy Project broke down what dynamic pricing would mean for workers and spoke to Leïla Chaibi about the Platform Work Directive.
• The UCLA Labor Center, transport analyst Hubert Horan, and Rideshare Drivers United with the Asian Law Caucus have all found Uber raising prices while cutting driver pay.
• Spain passed the Riders Law to regulate gig work, and Barcelona has pushed back against ride-hailing with the backing of a taxi union called Élite Taxi.

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Paris Marx is joined by Rosie Collington to discuss the consequences of outsourcing tech to the private sector, how it causes governments to lose important capacities to serve the public, and how the push for open government data empowered large tech firms.

Rosie Collington is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London. She’s also the co-author of The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies with Mariana Mazzucato. You can follow Rosie on Twitter at @RosieCollingto.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Rosie wrote a paper called “Disrupting the Welfare State? Digitalisation and the Retrenchment of Public Sector Capacity” for New Political Economy, and a report calling “Digital Public Assets” for Common Wealth.
• Palantir has a massive and controversial contract with the NHS. That hasn’t stopped Peter Thiel from criticizing the UK’s public healthcare system.
• Mar Hicks wrote about the masculinization of the computer workforce in Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing.

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Paris Marx is joined by Malcolm Harris to discuss the sordid history of Silicon Valley, including the long influence of eugenics at Stanford, how Silicon Valley profited from the United States’ wars throughout the 20th century, and why the libertarian narrative of tech hide a much darker reality.

Malcolm Harris is the author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. You can follow Malcolm on Twitter at @BigMeanInternet.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• You can read an excerpt of Malcolm’s book in The Atlantic.

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Paris Marx is joined by Edward Niedermeyer to discuss the rollercoaster ride of Tesla’s share price, the escalating regulatory and legal scrutiny the company faces, and the challenges it faces in the electric car market.

Edward Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors and a co-host of The Autonocast. You can follow Edward on Twitter at @Tweetermeyer or on Mastodon at @[email protected].

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Argo AI shut down in October and Apple pushed back its car project again in December.
• California found “Full Self-Driving” was a misleading term and couldn’t be used in Tesla marketing.
• A Tesla engineer testified that a 2016 video to promote Autopilot was staged.
• Tesla is facing a number of Autopilot cases in the coming months, including an important one in Florida.
• Liza Dixon wrote about “autonowashing”.
• In January, Tesla admitted it was under investigation by the Department of Justice.
• Tesla’s Head of Autopilot Software testifying he doesn’t know what an operational design domain is presents serious red flags.
• Chinese car companies are planning to significantly expand vehicle exports, as BYD is already selling more vehicles in China than Tesla sells globally.
• Since recording, Elon Musk was found not liable in the “funding secured” trial.

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Paris Marx is joined by Anousha Sakoui to discuss the prospect of a writer’s strike later this year, what workers are fighting for, and how the move to streaming has affected working conditions and compensation in Hollywood.

Anousha Sakoui is an entertainment industry writer for the Los Angeles Times, covering topics including labor and litigation in Hollywood. She was part of the team that was a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist in breaking news for work covering the tragic shooting on the “Rust” film set. You can follow Anousha on Twitter at @anoushasakoui.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Anousha wrote about how the Writers Guild and Directors Guild are approaching upcoming negotiations with studios.
• David Robb wrote about the history of Writers Guild strikes, and why another one seems overdue.
• WGA West recently blasted Warner Discovery for reducing opportunities for content creators after its merger.
• In 2021, IATSE was poised to go on strike before reaching a last-minute deal with the studios that was accepted by members.
• A new deal will loosen some Covid protocols on film sets.
• In 2021, Apple was paying lower rates to production crews because it said its TV+ service has less than 20 million subscribers. In July 2022, it started paying the higher rate.
• In 2018, the Hollywood Reporter reflected on the 2007 writers strike after ten years.
• The 2007 writers strike helped revive Donald Trump’s flagging The Apprentice show with a spinoff, The Celebrity Apprentice.

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Paris Marx is joined by Quinn Myers to discuss the launch of Google Glass, why the product failed so badly, and what lessons we can learn from it as tech companies make another push for AR glasses.

Quinn Myers is the author of Google Glass and a freelance writer who used to write for MEL. You can follow him on Twitter at @quinmyers.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7
• Apple is planning to release a mixed-reality headset, but its AR glasses have reported been delayed due to ongoing technical issues.
• Mark Zuckerberg said you’ll be able to text people during a meeting on your glasses.
• Google released a video called “One Day” that vastly overpromised what Glass would deliver.
• Sergey Brin’s affair with an employee working on Glass was revealed in 2013.
• After 8 years, the “Twitter tax cut” finally ended in 2019.
• Residents protested against Google’s use of public bus stops in San Francisco.
• The PRISM revelations showed the NSA had access to tech company servers.
• The Daily Show skewered Google Glass in a 2014 segment.

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Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the misleading framings of artificial intelligence, her experience of getting fired by Google in a very public way, and why we need to avoid getting distracted by all the hype around ChatGPT and AI image tools.

Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute and former co-lead of the Ethical AI research team at Google. You can follow her on Twitter at @timnitGebru.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7
• Timnit wrote about the exploited labor behind AI tools and how effective altruism is pushing a harmful idea of AI ethics.
• Karen Hao broke down the details of the paper that got Timnit fired from Google.
• Emily Tucker wrote an article called “Artifice and Intelligence.”
• In 2016, ProPublica published an article about technology being used to “predict” future criminals that was biased against black people.
• In 2015, Google Photos classified black women as “gorillas.” In 2018, it still hadn’t really been fixed.
• Artists have been protesting AI-generated images that train themselves on their work and threaten their livelihoods.
• OpenAI used Kenyan workers paid less than $2 an hour to try to make ChatGPT less toxic.
• Zachary Loeb described ELIZA in his article about Joseph Weizenbaum’s work and legacy.

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Paris Marx is joined by Louise Matsakis to discuss the growing divide between the US and China, the long history of Western concern about the East, and why we should pay attention to who these anti-China narratives benefit.

Louise Matsakis is a technology reporter at Semafor who previously worked at NBC News, Rest of World, and Wired. You can follow her on Twitter at @lmatsakis.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7
• Louise wrote about YouTube videos predicting China’s collapse, the rise of Shein, and the prospect of TikTok bans.
• Many US states are banning TikTok from government-issued devices.
• In 2000, Bill Clinton said that trying to place restrictions on the internet was like trying to nail Jello to a wall. China proved him wrong.
• India has already banned TikTok and a number of other Chinese apps.
• Speakers of the Khmer language in Cambodia used voice chat on Messenger because keyboards weren’t designed to work with their language.
• Shein is taking off in Mexico.

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Paris Marx is joined by Rose Eveleth to discuss the end of her long-running podcast, why thinking about the future is important, and how tech billionaires try to shape our idea of the future to serve their ends.

Rose Eveleth is the creator and host of the Flash Forward podcast and the author of Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows. You can follow them on Twitter at @roseveleth.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7
• Elon Musk says Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a big inspiration, but he seems to have missed its message.
• Karen Hao and Gideon Lichfield explained how Facebook’s PR team nitpicked one of their stories
• Books mentioned: Ruha Benjamin’s Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want and Jimmy Soni’s The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.
• The New York Times recently wrote about a group of Luddite teens.
• Tommy Douglas won CBC’s Greatest Canadian contest for winning public healthcare. You can see the episode here.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant, Chris Gilliard, and Gita Jackson to discuss the year in tech, including Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the biggest stories of the year, what they’ll be watching in 2023, and the worst person in tech of 2022.

Brian Merchant is the author of The One Device and Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Chris Gilliard is a Just Tech Fellow at the Social Science Research Council. Gita Jackson is a tech and culture journalist. You can follow them on Twitter at @bcmerchant, @hypervisible, and @xoxogossipgita.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris wrote about Netflix and streaming services for Business Insider.
• Brian wrote about how 2022 was a disastrous year for the tech industry for The Atlantic.
• Chris and Kishonna Gray wrote about digital migration and what it means for Black users for Wired.
• Gita wrote a review of Dwarf Fortress’s Stream release.
• Part of the show discusses a Twitter policy that was briefly launched to restrict sharing of links from several other social media platforms. It was rescinded after the initial discussion.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White to discuss the ongoing collapse of the crypto industry, what to make of the implosion of FTX and Alameda Research, and what happens next with Sam Bankman-Fried.

Molly White is the creator of Web3 Is Going Just Great and a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. You can follow her on Twitter at @molly0xFFF.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Since recording, Sam Bankman-Fried has been extradited from the Bahamas to the United States, and it’s been revealed that Caroline Ellison and FTX co-founder have plead guilty and are cooperating with authorities against Bankman-Fried.
• Molly has been analyzing the collapse of FTX on her newsletter.
• Paris wrote about effective altruism and longtermism for the New Statesman.
• Journalists at Forbes wrote about Caroline Ellison and her history.
• After Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested, effective altruist Kelsey Piper published a series of direct messages she exchanged with her supposed friend.
• The Southern District of New York’s attorney’s office, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have all filed charges against Sam Bankman-Fried.
• There are rumors that Caroline Ellison is working with authorities against Sam Bankman-Fried.
• US Justice Department is split on when to charge Binance executives. There are also growing questions about Binance’s books.

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Paris Marx is joined by Wendy Liu to discuss what it was like to work in tech in the 2010s and why structural changes in the industry are empowering an increasingly reactionary capitalist class to strike back at workers and upend the expectations of the boom period.

Wendy Liu is a writer and the author of Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism. You can follow her on Twitter at @dellsystem.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Casey Newton and Zoe Schiffer wrote about how tech CEOs are inspired by what Musk is doing at Twitter
• Mel Krantzler and Patricia Krantzler wrote Down and Out in Silicon Valley: The High Cost of the High-tech Dream
• Jacob Silverman wrote about David Sacks and the reactionary turn of tech billionaires
• Paris wrote about how longtermism is designed to justify the position of billionaires in society
• Julia Black wrote about the embrace of pronatalism within the tech industry

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Paris Marx is joined by Douglas Rushkoff to discuss why internet visions of the 1990s were wrong to ignore corporate power, how the dot-com boom was like a Ponzi scheme, and why we desperately need to stop elevating tech billionaires.

Douglas Rushkoff is an author and documentarian who studies human autonomy in a digital age. His most recent book is Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires and he’s the host of Team Human podcast. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushkoff.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt from Survival of the Richest was published in The Guardian.
• Paris was recently on the Team Human podcast to discuss Road to Nowhere with Douglas.

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Paris Marx is joined by David Zipper to discuss how Silicon Valley pitched new technologies as the fix for a whole range of transport problems, and how that really just distracted us from solutions while allowing issues like  road deaths, emissions, and traffic to get even worse.

David Zipper is a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Taubman Center for State and Local Government and a contributing writer at Bloomberg CityLab. You can find his articles and sign up for his newsletter at DavidZipper.com and follow him on Twitter at @DavidZipper.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• David wrote about why traffic safety is getting worse in the US, and compared it to Canada, Finland, France, and Japan. He also wrote about the history of self-driving cars, the danger posed to pedestrians on the roads, the problem with infotainment systems, and what’s wrong with positioning car tech as the solution to our problems.
• Paris wrote about how Elon Musk designed the Hyperloop to try to get California’s high-speed line canceled.
• AAA puts the annual cost of car ownership in the US at over $10,000 a year in 2022. In Canada, CAA put it at $8600 to $13,000 a year in 2017 — a number that is surely even higher now.
• Peter Norton wrote about how the auto industry took over US roads in the early 1900s in Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City.

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Paris Marx is joined by Daniel Joseph to discuss why advertising is central not just to the tech economy, but modern capitalism itself, and how the business models of companies are increasing shaped by serving ads and collecting data to inform them.

Daniel Joseph is a Senior Lecturer of Digital Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. He’s also written for a number of publications, including Briarpatch Magazine, Motherboard, and Real Life Magazine. Follow Daniel on Twitter at @DanjoKaz00ie.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Daniel wrote about how advertising and the need to create audiences is much more central to the tech economy than is often discussed.
• Shoshana Wodinsky explained why so many companies are getting into advertising, including hotel chains, retailers, and more.
• Unity faced criticism for merging with IronSource, a known advertising malware distributor.
• After reporting a subscriber decline earlier this year, Netflix launched an ad-supported tier in October.
• Companies like Apple and Uber are expanding their efforts to increase advertising revenue.
• Ramon Lobato wrote Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution.

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Paris Marx is joined by Julie Turnock to discuss the history of the visual effects industry, the role that George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic played in setting industry standards, and what its current form dominated by Disney means for visual effects workers.

Julie Turnock is an associate professor of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the author of The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism. Follow Julie on Twitter at @JulieTurnock.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris will be speaking at Marxism Festival in Dublin on November 19, the Lighthouse Bookshop on November 24, and details on an event in London on November 25 are coming soon.
• In a series of recent articles, visual effects workers have been speaking out about conditions in the industry.
• The Mandalorian introduced ILM and Disney’s new visual effect technology dubbed “Stagecraft” that uses LED video walls instead of green screens.
• The declining quality of effects in major films is forcing people to look at labor and production practices.
• Disney accounted for nearly 40% of box office returns in 2019, and made 80% of the top earning films of the year.

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Paris Marx is joined by Hussein Kesvani to discuss the mess of Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the problem with his solution to blue check privilege, and what we should learn from how he posts.

Hussein Kesvani is a journalist and the co-host of Trashfuture and Ten Thousand Posts. Follow Hussein on Twitter at @hkesvani.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris wrote about Elon Musk’s new plan to allow users to pay $8 to get a blue check, priority on their posts, and other features as part of an updated Twitter Blue.
• Private texts revealed from the Delaware court showed the rich and powerful groveling to Elon Musk.
• A long list of companies have stopped advertising on Twitter after Musk’s takeover. He blamed it on activists.
• Roko’s Basilisk brought Elon Musk and Grimes together.
• Elon Musk has decreed that people making fun of him by impersonating him on Twitter will be banned.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, the politics of the PayPal Mafia tech billionaires, and how they’re trying to reshape US political discourse to serve themselves.

Jacob Silverman is a journalist who writes for The New Republic, The Baffler, Slate, and many others. He’s also the co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud with Ben McKenzie. Follow Jacob on Twitter at @SilvermanJacob.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob wrote about Musk’s Twitter acquisition for The Baffler and the politics of David Sacks and these other tech billionaires for The New Republic.
• Paris wrote about Musk’s Twitter acquisition for NBC News and Marc Andreessen’s housing politics for Business Insider.
• The Delaware court case revealed text messages between Elon Musk and all the people trying to gain his favor.
• Saudi Arabia had an intelligence operation running through Twitter, which led some former employees to be charged with spying. Saudi Arabia has imprisoned people over their tweets.
• There were accusations that Twitter had an Indian official associated with the far-right Modi government on payroll.
• Banks are expecting to suffer major losses on the loans provided to Musk to acquire Twitter.
• The LA Times reported that Twitter bots helped build the cult of Musk.
• In 2016, Thiel and Sacks’ Diversity Myth comments were resurrected and Thiel has to issue a statement.

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Paris Marx is joined by Dave Karpf to discuss Meta’s misguided attempt to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, how Wired Magazine has evolved, and why the tech billionaires are destroying the world.

Dave Karpf is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. He’s also the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy and Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy. Follow Dave on Twitter at @davekarpf.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Dave wrote about the history of WIRED Magazine’s future predictions and why VR never dies.
• People Make Games made a video looking at what’s going on in VRChat.
• Meta’s legs demo wasn’t real.
• Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Survival of the Richest looks at how the rich are trying to protect themselves from the crises they’re making worse.
• Science fiction books mentioned: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, and William Gibson’s The Peripheral.

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Paris Marx is joined by Émile P. Torres to discuss the ongoing effort to sell effective altruism and longtermism to the public, and why they’re philosophies that won’t solve the real problems we face.

Émile P. Torres is a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A History of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. Follow Émile on Twitter at @xriskology.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Émile recently wrote about the ongoing effort to sell longtermism and effective altruism to the public.
• Peter Singer wrote an article published in 1972 arguing that rich people need to give to charity, which went on to influence effective altruists.
• NYT recently opined on whether it’s ethical for lawyers to defend climate villains.
• Nathan Robinson recently criticized effective altruism for Current Affairs.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jim Thomas to discuss how digital technologies are being integrated into the industrial food system, how it empowers agribusiness firms and major tech companies, and its implications for farmers and farm workers.

Jim Thomas is the research director at ETC Group, which has over 25 years international experience tracking the impact of emerging technologies on human rights, biodiversity, equity and food systems. Follow Jim on Twitter at @jimetc or follow @ETC_Group.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• ETC Group recently released its Food Barons 2022 report, providing a snapshot of the world’s the biggest players up and down the industrial food and agriculture chain, with a lot of insight on the use of technologies throughout the food system.
• The ETC Group has also put together a children’s book and video to make information about the digital takeover of food more accessible.
• The war in Ukraine is only exacerbating preexisting problems in the global food system.
• The Gates Foundation uses its vast wealth to shape the global food system so it works as Bill Gates wants it to and benefits major agribusiness and tech companies. Groups in Africa have long been speaking out about Gates’ plans for agriculture on the continent.
• The UN finds that food systems are responsible for 80% of deforestation, 29% of emissions, and a leading share of biodiversity loss. It also reports that 70% of the world’s agricultural land is owned by 1% of all farms, mainly large agribusiness firms.
• The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems put together a report on what a long food movement could look like.

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Paris Marx is joined by Adrienne Buller to discuss how the tech and finance industries are selling us false solutions to the climate crisis that are designed for their own benefit.

Adrienne Buller is the Director of Research at Common Wealth and the author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism. Follow Adrienne on Twitter at @adribuller.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Adrienne originally wrote about the problem with the finance industry’s approach to climate change for Novara Media. She recently wrote about the failure of green capitalism for the Guardian and the power BlackRock wields for Jacobin.
• Common Wealth recently produced a report on Asset Management Capitalism.
• Elon Musk called ESG a scam after Tesla was booted from the S&P 500’s ESG fund.
• Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen wrote The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism.

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Paris Marx is joined by Josh O’Kane to discuss how Sidewalk Labs decided to build a city “from the internet up” in Toronto, the concerns that existed with the project, and why it ultimately fell apart.

Josh O’Kane is an award-winning technology reporter at the Globe and Mail and the author of Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy. Follow Josh on Twitter at @joshokane.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt of Josh’s book was published in the Globe and Mail.
• Josh wrote about how Canada’s Liberal government under Justin Trudeau isn’t as friendly with tech companies as it was earlier in its time in power.
• Around the time of Sidewalk Toronto, opponents were able to defeat Amazon’s HQ2 project in New York, Google’s Berlin startup hub, Apple’s planned central Stockholm store, and its planned store in Melbourne’s Fed Square.
• Bianca Wylie was one of the prominent critics of the project, and was called the “Jane Jacobs of the smart city.”
• In 2019, documents leaked showing Sidewalk Labs wanted a lot more power and access to more land than was agreed upon, and that further fueled opposition.
• In May 2020, Wylie wrote about the cancelation of the project and the lessons that should be learned.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant and Claire Evans to discuss their new science fiction anthology, how it uses the genre to critically interrogate the technologies being rolled out around us, and how it pushes back on the desire of tech billionaires to use science fiction to get the public to buy into their corporate futures.

Brian Merchant is a tech journalist and author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone. Claire L. Evans is the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet and singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group YACHT. They are the cofounders of Terraform at VICE's Motherboard and the co-editors of Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn.  Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant and follow Claire at @TheUniverse.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Brian and Claire wrote about their science fiction anthology and what you can expect from it.
• Some of the stories mentioned in our conversation are “Busy” by Omar El Akkad, “One Day, I Will Die on Mars” by Paul Ford, and “Devolution” by Ellen Ullman.
• Brian also wrote about the metaverse and the science fiction that inspired it for Vice.
• Langdon Winner wrote about the concept of epistemological Luddism in his book Autonomous Technology. Zachary Loeb expanded on it in a great essay called “Luddism for These Ludicrous Times.”
• Cory Doctorow wrote about science fiction being a Luddite literature.

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Paris Marx is joined by Thea Riofrancos to discuss how the push for electric vehicles is driving governments in the United States and Europe to onshore mining after decades of doing the reverse, what that means for companies in the sector, and how movements are pushing back against this resource-intensive vision for a green transition.

Thea Riofrancos is an Andrew Carnegie Fellow,  an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, and a member of the Climate + Community Project. She’s also the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador. Follow Thea on Twitter at @triofrancos.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Thea wrote about the push to onshore mining activities and what it means for climate justice, and recently published an academic article on the “security-sustainability nexus” relating to lithium onshoring.
• EV raw material costs doubled during the pandemic, forcing many automakers to raise prices.
• A lithium mine in Portugal was scrapped after local opposition, but other projects continue to move ahead.
• The US Inflation Reduction Act included many benefits for mining companies and tied EV tax credits to mineral supply chains.

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Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss the push to expand surveillance technologies in schools during the pandemic and in response to school shootings, and why they’re making life worse for students without addressing the problems they claim to solve.

Chris Gilliard is Just Tech Fellow at the Social Science Research Council at a recurring columnist at Wired. Follow Chris on Twitter at @hypervisible.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Chris recently wrote about why school surveillance won’t protect kids from shootings.
• Chris and David Golumbia wrote about luxury surveillance for Real Life.
• Pia Ceres wrote about how students’ school devices are still tracking what they do on them.
• Amazon is launching a new show called “Ring Nation” to make Ring surveillance videos seem less invasive.
• Studies by the Center for Democracy and Technology have found negative effects from surveillance on student expression and increasing their contact with police.
• After nine members of Axon’s AI ethics board resigned, plans for a taser drone in schools seem to still be inching forward.
• Todd Feathers reported on how school monitoring tools could flag searches for sexual and reproductive health resources.
• Pasco County in Florida deployed a predictive policing system targeting children. 
• Some books mentioned: David Noble Progress Without People and Forces of Production, and Dan Greene wrote The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope.

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Paris Marx is joined by Thomas Coughlan to discuss Amazon’s foray into Tolkien’s fantasy world, the big subsidies it received to film in New Zealand, and how its decision to move the series to the UK is giving fuel to demands to reassess the support for Hollywood productions.

Thomas Coughlan is a senior political reporter at NZ Herald, and formerly was a journalist at Stuff and Newsroom. Follow Thomas on Twitter at @coughlthom.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Thomas wrote for Stuff about the effort by the New Zealand government to attract Amazon to New Zealand and how it hoped the relationship would go beyond the TV series. For the NZ Herald, he also wrote that Amazon’s decision to move the series away from New Zealand will have implications for tourism and wasn’t communicated to the government until the last minute.
• Benjamin Clark wrote about how film subsidies have been essential to attracted big Hollywood productions to New Zealand.
• Madelaine Chapman dug into how much Peter Jackson has benefited from those subsidy schemes.
• Amazon is spending about $464 million on the first season of The Rings of Power.
• Amazon announced it was moving future seasons of the show to the UK in August 2021, causing frustration in New Zealand.
• There were concerns about safety on the set of The Rings of Power after stunt workers were injured and they didn’t seem to be properly reported to authorities.
• In November 2021, Unity acquired the technology division of Jackson’s Weta Digital.
• There’s also a growing debate in New Zealand over whether it should be the site of major data centers.

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Paris Marx is joined by JS Tan to discuss how Chinese tech workers fought against “996” work practices and whether the its phaseout is being driven by that movement or by the changing needs of the government and tech companies.

JS Tan is a graduate student at MIT, a former tech worker, and a member of Collective Action in Tech, a project to advance the tech worker movement. Follow JS on Twitter at @organizejs.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• JS wrote about why China’s 996 work schedules are changing and the factors driving it.
• Rest of World also had recent reporting on changes to 996 practices.
• Collective Action in Tech has an embedded organizer program that is open for applications.
• The Verge wrote about Justin Sun, a controversial figure in crypto.
• In 2020, Ant Group's US IPO was canceled.
• China has launched a number of policies to crack down on its tech industry in recent years.

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Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the networks and services built by volunteers and hobbyists on top of the telephone network before the internet took over the in the 1990s, and what it can teach us about the internet and social media today.

Kevin Driscoll is the author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media and an associate professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Follow Kevin on Twitter at @kevindriscoll.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Kevin wrote about The Modem World in Wired.
• textfiles.com is a good source for historical documents about the modem world.
• Find out more about Paris’ event with Sabrina Fernandes in Berlin on August 26!

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Paris Marx is joined by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein to discuss the science behind the new space telescope, the problems with the billionaire space race, and why we need to challenge the capitalist and colonial forces driving the the effort to commercialize space.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is the author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred. She’s also an assistant professor of Physics and core faculty member in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire, and a  columnist at New Scientist and Physics World. Follow Chanda on Twitter at @IBJIYONGI.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Chanda wrote “Becoming Martian” for the Baffler earlier this year, and called last year for the James Webb Space Telescope to be renamed.
• Paris wrote about the billionaire space race for Tribune Magazine.
• Of the five initial images released from the JW Space Telescope, Chanda described the First Deep Field and noted the accessibility of its alt-text on Twitter.
• As part of Joe Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia in July 2022, the country signed onto the Artemis Accords. The Accords have faced criticism as a US-centric and commercial set of bilateral agreements that seek to set new norms beyond international law.
• Saturday Night Live made fun of the billionaire space race.
• In July, the head of Roscosmos indicated it planned to pull out of the International Space Station, though an official notice has not been made. The segment Paris mentioned on AlJazeera can be found here.
• Starlink is undemocratically altering how we see the night sky, which some Indigenous groups are calling “astro-colonialism.”
• Gil Scott-Heron released “Whitey on the Moon” in 1970.
• Chanda called attention to the Just Space Alliance.

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Paris Marx is joined by Fenwick McKelvey to discuss the massive outage at Rogers, why it’s challenging the narrative that more competition will fix Canada’s telecom sector, and the need for better regulation and even public ownership.

Fenwick McKelvey is the author of Internet Daemons: Digital Communications Possessed. He’s also an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University and a director of Machine Agencies at the Milieu Institute. Follow Fenwick on Twitter at @mckelveyf.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Fenwick spoke to CBC about the Rogers outage and previously spoke to Daniel Joseph about changing the way we think about media platforms in Canada.
• Paris has previously argued for telecom nationalization in Canada and has written about the history of Canadian telecom.
• After the outage, Canadian innovation minister François-Philippe Champagne forced telcos to come up with a new agreement on several key areas of emergency cooperation.
• The Competition Bureau is objecting to a proposed merger between Rogers and Shaw.
• Last year, the Rogers family was engaged in a protracted feud that affected management of the company.
• ZeD was an “open-source television” series aired by Canada’s public broadcaster from 2002 to 2006.

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Paris Marx is joined by Malcolm Harris to discuss the legacy of Stewart Brand and why the myth we’re often told about him overstates the reality of his impact.

Malcolm Harris is the author of Kids These Days, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and his forthcoming book Palo Alto. He also writes for New York Magazine. Follow Malcolm on Twitter at @BigMeanInternet.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Malcolm Harris wrote a critical review of John Markoff’s Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand.
• Benjamin Kunkel also wrote a critical review of Whole Earth.
• The Stewart Brand documentary We Are As Gods about his quest to bring back wholly mammoths to solve climate change is slowly being rolled out after two years of delay and seeming lack of sales interest.
• Brand’s Long Now Foundation is building a 10,000-year clock in Texas that’s funded by Jeff Bezos.
• We also mention Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture.

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Paris Marx is joined by Dwayne Monroe to discuss what it’s like to work in a data center, how the cloud came to hold a dominant position, and the consequences of its control by companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

Dwayne Monroe is a cloud technologist and aspiring Marxist theorist of technology, with twenty years of experience architecting large-scale computational systems. Follow Dwayne on Twitter at @cloudquistador.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Dwayne wrote about cloud computing for Logic Magazine. He’s also written about a public cloud and the metaverse on his blog.
• Amazon’s cloud infrastructure in the eastern United States experienced a major outage in December 2021.
• Residents in various parts of the world have been questioning the logic of building data centers, including in the United States and New Zealand.
• In July, the network of Canadian telecom giant Rogers went down, leaving millions without service.

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Paris Marx is joined by Shoshana Wodinsky to discuss how the digital infrastructure that companies have built out over the past couple decades to track everything we do in order to serve us ads places us at risk, and how that’s come into focus since the overturning of abortion rights in Roe v Wade in the United States.

Shoshana Wodinsky is a privacy reporter at Gizmodo. Follow Shoshana on Twitter at @swodinsky.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Shoshana wrote about getting an abortion in the age of surveillance and why every company is becoming an ad network. With her colleagues at Gizmodo, she also wrote about how Facebook perpetuated climate denial and killed news feed changes that would anger conservatives.
• Anti-abortion groups targeted ads at people who had visited abortion clinics.
• Data brokers have been selling data on people who visit abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood.

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In a special episode to celebrate the release of host Paris Marx’s new book Road to Nowhere, Brian Merchant takes over as guest host to interview Paris about the book, the tech industry’s visions for transportation, and why they don’t solve our mobility challenges.

Paris is the host of Tech Won’t Save Us and the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation. Brian Merchant is a tech journalist, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, and co-editor of Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:

• Road to Nowhere is available anywhere you buy books, but Verso has it discounted until July 8 as part of its Summer Reads sale.
• An excerpt of Road to Nowhere about the dystopian future the tech industry is creating was recently published in Wired.
• Paris recently spoke to StreetsBlog USA about the problem with Apple CarPlay.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the impact of the iPhone after 15 years, including its effects on how we work, how we use technology, and what it’s meant for Apple.

Brian Merchant is a tech journalist, author of  The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, and co-editor of Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• In 2011, Cory Moll tried to unionize Apple stores. In June 2022, a store in Maryland became the first to vote to form a union.
• Apple’s claims about privacy are, at least to some degree, a clever marketing campaign.
• Paris previously wrote about some of Apple’s environmental messaging.
• The previous episode with Brian on the iPhone is episode 78 (Sep 16, 2021), and I also spoke to Jenny Chan about the conditions at Foxconn factories where iPhones are manufactured on episode 27 (Sep 17, 2020).

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To kick off a new monthly bonus series on tech in Canada, Paris Marx is joined by Bianca Wylie to discuss Canada’s COVID Alert app, the problems with the digital contract-tracing experiment, and why we need a public post-mortem so lessons are learned for next time.

Bianca Wylie is a partner at Digital Public, a co-founder of Tech Reset Canada, and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Follow Bianca on Twitter at @biancawylie.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• This series on Canadian tech is made in partnership with Passage, a left-wing publication in Canada. Passage published an edited transcript of the conversation.
• On June 17, 2022, Health Canada decommissioned the COVID Alert app.
• In April, Bianca wrote that the government needed to shut down the COVID Alert app because it wasn’t working (if it ever had). She also began writing a series on the app on her Medium blog that month.
• In July 2020, Bianca and her colleague Sean Mcdonald were already asking questions about the app and the planning around it.
• Other digital contact-tracing apps were launched in many other countries, including Australia, France, and Iceland, with poor results.

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Paris Marx is joined by David Nemer to discuss how residents of Brazil’s favelas reshape technologies developed in the Global North to serve their needs, and how technology alone does not solve social oppression.

David Nemer is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and in the Latin American Studies program at the University of Virginia. He’s also the author of Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil. Follow David on Twitter at @DavidNemer.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris’ new book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation is out on July 5! It’s currently on sale at Verso Books.
• Ahead of hosting the World Cup, Brazil forced thousands of favela residents from their homes.
• Grace Blakeley recent spoke to David Adler about Colombia’s election and the use of TikTok.
• Dan Greene wrote The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope and Lindsay Ems wrote Virtually Amish: Preserving Community at the Internet's Margins.

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Paris Marx is joined by Gita Jackson to discuss how streaming has altered the film and television industry, what happens as their business models are coming under question, and whether cinemas have reason to celebrate streaming’s woes.

Gita Jackson is a staff writer at Motherboard, Vice’s tech vertical. Follow Gita on Twitter at @xoxogossipgita.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Gita wrote about why Eternals was still bad even though it was diverse, Netflix laying off Tudum writers, and some of the challenges Netflix faces.
• Paris wrote about the end of the Paramount Decrees, the need to break up the media giants, and the problem with the new Spider-Man movies.
• EA considered a merger with NBC Universal, and had talks with other companies.
• Raven Software at Activision Blizzard and Bioware contractors at Keywords Studios have voted to unionize. Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said the company would recognize the Raven Software union if its acquisition of Activision Blizzard goes through.
• CNN+ was shut down after a few weeks of operation.
• Netflix is changing its content investment strategy as investors lose confidence.
• Netflix’s share price plummeted in April after reporting it lost subscribers. The following week, the cinema celebrated the negative turn on streaming at CinemaCon.
• The Mandalorian pioneered a new kind of film set with massive LED screens instead of green screen.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ben Tarnoff to discuss why the problems with the modern internet, including its excessive concentration in the hands of a few companies and the way its dominant firms shape our interactions to generate profit, find their root in the decision to privatize the network. To fix them, that needs to be changed.

Ben Tarnoff is the author of Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future and the co-founder of Logic Magazine. Follow Ben on Twitter at @bentarnoff.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• An excerpt of Ben’s book was published in the New York Times.
• Victor Pickard wrote about the history of public media in Democracy Without Journalism.
• Newt Gingrich and George Gilder, once featured by Wired for their visions for the internet, have now become big crypto fans.
• The United States has terrible broadband access.
• Major tech companies are buying up undersea internet cables.
• Tarleton Gillespie wrote about the politics of platforms and what the term suggests.
• Jathan Sadowski compares platforms to shopping malls.
• Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about the predatory inclusion of the internet.
• Community internet has shown success in the United States, while provincial public telcos have a history of positive outcomes in Canada.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ed Zitron for a wide-ranging discussion on the responsibility tech media has to its readers, the problems with crypto, and why bosses like Elon Musk are desperate to force workers back into the office.

Ed Zitron is the CEO of EZPR and writes the Where’s Your Ed At newsletter. Follow Ed on Twitter at @edzitron.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• New Tech Won’t Save Us merch is now available in our store (including tote bags!).
• Ed wrote about the problem with Kara Swisher’s aggressive response to a listener asking why Pivot had run an ad telling people to put their retirement savings into crypto. (Listen to the ad here.)
• Elon Musk wrote a set of emails telling workers they need to return to the office for a *minimum* of 40 hours a week, or they can “pretend to work elsewhere.”
• Ed has written many times about employers pushing their workers back to the office.
• In March, Kevin Roose wrote a Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto, and Ed was one of the critics that Molly White got to contribute to an edited version.
• Sam Harnett wrote an essay on how the early, uncritical coverage of the gig economy helped legitimize its exploitative business model.

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Paris Marx is joined by Émile P. Torres to discuss why longtermism isn’t just about long-term thinking, but provides a framework for Silicon Valley billionaires to justify ignoring the crises facing humanity so they can accumulate wealth and go after space colonization.

Émile P. Torres is a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A History of Thinking About the End of Humanity. Follow Phil on Twitter at @xriskology.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Émile wrote about the dangers presented by longtermism and its relationship to Elon Musk.
• Paris wrote about Jeff Bezos’ vision of life in space and why Elon Musk is planning for climate catastrophe.
• Elon Musk was tweeting about birth rates again (he has some odd views on who should be having kids) and retweeted someone praising a paper by longtermist Nick Bostrom.
• After moving to Texas, its governor said Elon Musk liked the state’s “social policies” (in reference to abortion limitations) to little pushback, then Musk forced California employees to move to Texas. 

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Paris Marx is joined by Bennett Tomlin to discuss last week’s crash of Terra and Luna, the problems with stablecoins, and whether this collapse will finally force regulators to take action on cryptocurrency.

Bennett Tomlin is a co-host of Crypto Critics’ Corner and writer of the FUD Letter. Follow Bennett on Twitter at @BennettTomlin.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris wrote about the Terra/Luna collapse and why we can’t let those who promoted crypto scams escape blame for their actions.
• Bennett references George Soros’ attack on the British pound in 1992, also known as Black Wednesday.
• Do Kwan was behind the failed Basis Cash stablecoin.
• Vitalik Buterin backed a proposal for an FDIC-like response to rescue “small holders” who lost money in the Luna collapse.
• Investors recently pulled $7 billion out of Tether, which still won’t be open about its reserves. It was hacked in 2017.
• FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried described yield farming as a Ponzi scheme.
• Justin Sun has already launched a copycat of the failed Terra algorithmic stablecoin. The Verge did a deep dive on him in March.
• a16z says the crypto winter is here.

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Paris Marx is joined by Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese to discuss the environmental crises of climate change and mass extinction we face, and why taking them seriously while providing for everyone requires a radical change to how we structure society.

Drew Pendergrass is a PhD candidate in environmental engineering at Harvard University and Troy Vettese is an environmental historian and a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute. They are the co-authors of Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics. Follow them on Twitter at @pendergrassdrew and @TroyVettese.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Earth is currently undergoing its sixth major extinction, due to the actions of humans on the planet.
• The most recent IPCC report looked at demand-side solutions to the climate crisis.
• The meat industry is responsible for double the emissions of plant-based foods, as well as for an enormous amount of water and 80% of all agricultural land.
• Aaron Benanav is the author of Automation and the Future of Work.
• There is also a Half-Earth Socialism videogame on half.earth.

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Paris Marx is joined by ann haeyoung to discuss IBM worker organizing in the 1970s and 1980s against racism and apartheid, and how those stories are important to informing tech organizing in the present.

ann haeyoung is a media artist interested in technology and labor. She is also a former tech worker and organizer, and a graduate student at UCLA.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• ann wrote about IBM organizing for Wired, and put together a four-part series on her research for Tech Workers Coalition.
• Science for the People published an article about tech worker organizing in the 1960s and 1970s.
• Logic Magazine spoke to Joan Greenbaum about the early days of tech worker organizing.
• Tech Won’t Save Us is looking for a producer.

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Paris Marx is joined by Edward Ongweso Jr. to discuss Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition, how technology is enabling an extension of speculation and gambling, and why those pressures need to be opposed.

Edward Ongweso Jr. is a staff writer at Motherboard/Vice and a co-host of This Machine Kills. Follow Edward on Twitter at @bigblackjacobin.

🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Edward wrote about Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition and the casino economy we increasingly find ourselves in.
• Paris wrote about Elon’s Twitter purchase for Jacobin before it was confirmed, and Tribune afterward.
• Max Read also wrote about the acquisition and what it might mean.
• CNN spoke to meme stock traders who made a lot of money and the difficulty of what came after.
• TrueAnon did a recently episode on mobile gambling.
• Tim Hwang wrote “Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.”

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly Taft to discuss why we need to act now to reduce emissions, what role carbon removal technologies can play, and how Silicon Valley is trying to shift our focus to future technologies rather than taking drastic action today.

Molly Taft is a staff writer at Earther. Follow Molly on Twitter at @mollytaft.

🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Molly wrote about the dire warnings in the most recent IPCC report and why we need to be paying attention to carbon removal technologies.
• UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “Climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals.  But, the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”
• Groups are urging the United States and European Union not to invest in new fossil fuel infrastructure and production.
• Canada approved Bay du Nord, a new deep-sea oil project in Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Major tech companies, especially Amazon, have been helping oil companies extract more oil. Microsoft has also been helping them oppressively manage their workforces.
• Kate Aronoff explained part of the problem with Bill Gates’ approach to climate change.

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Paris Marx is joined by Lauren Smiley to discuss what we’ve learned about the Uber crash since in happened in March 2018, what that’s meant for the vehicle operator who’s been charged, and whether the justice system made the right call in blaming her instead of Uber.

Lauren Smiley is a WIRED contributor and freelance journalist based in San Francisco. Follow Laren on Twitter at @laurensmiley.

🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Lauren interviewed Rafaela Vasquez and dug into the substance of the past four years of information on the Uber crash for WIRED.
• Last summer, Vasquez’ legal team argued the grand jury hadn’t heard to full version of events before indicting her.
• In 2019, the NTSB’s final report placed primary blame on the operator, but secondary blame on Uber, the pedestrian, and the state.
• In 2015, Lauren wrote about the “shut-in economy” and social divides being entrenched by on-demand services.

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Paris Marx is joined by Justine Medina and Karen Ponce to discuss how the Amazon Labor Union succeeded in unionizing Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, what it’s like working for Amazon, and where the movement to unionize Amazon goes next.

Justine Medina is a packer at the JFK8 warehouse and is on the organizing committee of the Amazon Labor Union. Karen Ponce is a stower at JFK8 and the interim secretary of Amazon Labor Union. Follow Justine on Twitter at @jnmedina8989 and Karen at @Karennn_928.

🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• You can support the Amazon Labor Union by donating to its Solidarity Fund.
• Justine spoke to Labor Notes and wrote about why the ALU won.
• The ALU is making 8 immediate demands of Amazon.
• Chair of the ALU’s Worker Committee Angelika Maldonado spoke to Jacobin about the union win.
• Lauren Kaori Gurley wrote about the Amazon Labor Union’s successful union vote at JFK8.
• In early 2020, Amazon fired Chris Smalls and tried to smear him as “not smart or articulate,” but their internal memos leaked.
• Jacobin and Briarpatch published articles on the need to salt at Amazon.
• Chris Smalls says workers from 50 facilities have contacted the ALU.
• The ALU is demanding to meet with Amazon in early May to begin bargaining.
• Amazon is planning to ban a ton of words in its chat app.
• Amazon forcing people to work in warehouses without air conditioning was a scandal in 2011.

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Paris Marx is joined by Molly White to discuss the big Axie Infinity hack, what’s wrong with the New York Times’ Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto, and what Molly’s years as a Wikipedia editor have taught her about the problem with web3’s vision of total commercialization.

Molly White is a software engineer and the creator of web3 is going just great. Follow Molly on Twitter at @molly0xFFF.

🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Molly and a bunch of other crypto critics put together an (Edited) Latecomer’s Guide to Crypto.
• You can read Kevin Roose’s original Latecomer’s Guide here.
• Molly wrote about the $625 million Axie Infinity hack and harassment on the blockchain.
• Interest in NFTs and their values have plummeted in recent months.
• Tech Won’t Save Us has a new website. Check it out at techwontsave.us.

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Paris Marx is joined by Will Tavlin to discuss the history of the film industry, how the digital revolution was promised to democratize film, and how it actually helped cement the power of Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

Will Tavlin is a writer and fact checker based in New York City. Follow Will on Twitter at @wtavlin.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Will wrote about how Hollywood killed celluloid film to empower itself for n+1.
• Paris wrote about the repeal of the Paramount Decrees and what tech companies are doing to cinema.
• Marvel films’ heavy reliance on CGI has downsides, and Disney is increasingly looking to making whole sets virtual, if not even the actors on them.
• David Noble wrote about ideas of technological progress in Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance.

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Paris Marx is joined by Grace Blakeley to discuss how low interest rates and quantitative easing fueled the tech economy’s post-recession growth, why raising them won’t fix the problems that’s created, and whether higher interest rates are the solution to rising inflation.

Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune Magazine and host of A World to Win. She’s also the author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation and The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism. Follow Grace on Twitter at @graceblakeley.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Grace wrote about how interest rate hikes are used against workers, what we should learn from the Gamestop short squeeze, and how the pandemic has produced closer links between the state and major corporations.
• Benjamin Braun and Adrienne Buller explained the concept of asset manager capitalism.
• In the face of rising inflation, NFT values are down 48% since November.
• High energy prices tend to drive inflation, and Russia and Ukraine are major wheat exporters.
• In the UK, wages are falling at the fastest rate since 2014. In the US, wages are falling when accounting for inflation, after decades of wage stagnation.

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Paris Marx is joined by Moira Weigel to discuss Peter Thiel’s history, how the network he cultivated has influenced Silicon Valley, and his recent move into funding Republican candidates.

Moira Weigel is an assistant professor at Northeastern University, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School, and a founding editor of Logic magazine. She also co-edited Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk about What They Do--And How They Do It. Follow Moira on Twitter at @moiragweigel.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Moira wrote about Peter Thiel and the importance of his network in The New Republic.
• Paris wrote about why Peter Thiel isn’t an outlier in Silicon Valley.
• Reason Magazine asked “wasn’t Peter Thiel supposed to be a libertarian?”
• In February 2020, Peter Thiel stepped down from Facebook’s board.
• Books mentioned: The Contrarian by Max Chafkin, From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner, Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters, The PayPal Wars by Eric Jackson, Predict and Surveil by Sarah Brayne.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ryan Broderick and Hussein Kesvani to discuss how war gets filtered through social media and the content economy, and what that means for how we make sense of it.

Ryan Broderick writes the Garbage Day newsletter and hosts Content Mines. Hussein Kesvani is a writer and the co-host of Trashfuture and Ten Thousand Posts. Follow Ryan on Twitter at @broderick and Hussein at @HKesvani.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Ryan has written two issues of Garbage Day trying to make sense of what’s happening in the war.
• Hussein wrote a very good tweet.
• Sam Biddle wrote about how Facebook is allowing users to praise the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.
• Taylor Lorenz wrote about Instagram meme pages capitalizing on the conflict.
• Journalists have been saying some pretty racist things about why the war in Ukraine is different than those in the Middle East.
• Chris Stokel-Walker wrote about how TikTok is designed for war.
• Jonah Peretti wrote an article called “Capitalism and Schizophrenia.”
• NBC’s Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel wondered aloud on Twitter whether NATO should start World War III.
• Hillary Clinton neglected the consequences of the US arming Afghan “insurgents” against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
• The media isn’t applying the right level of scrutiny to Ukrainian war stories, like Snake Island.
• Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could have consequences for semiconductors.

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Paris Marx is joined by Edward Niedermeyer to discuss how Elon Musk got involved in Tesla, promised things he couldn’t deliver to raise funds, and where it goes next now that he’s becoming a more controversial figure.

Edward Niedermeyer is the author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors and a co-host of The Autonocast. Follow Ed on Twitter at @Tweetermeyer.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• California is suing Tesla over “rampant racism” at its Fremont factory, with another Black worker suing the company earlier this week.
• Tesla vehicles are continually found to have very poor build quality, and customers report the service experience can be frustrating too.
• Tesla allowed people to play games on vehicle touchscreens while driving in December 2021 before being pushed to remove the feature.
• Tesla tried to automate parts of the production process that other companies had already tried to automate — and it failed too.
• The number of people being killed by cars in the United States is increasing — particularly among pedestrians.
• US auto safety regulators haven’t kept up with changes in vehicle dangers.
• The New Yorker reported on the problems in the early years of Google’s self-driving project.
• Last year a customer in China protested at the Shanghai auto show over her Tesla’s brake failure, forcing regulators to take a closer look at the company.

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Paris Marx is joined by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai to discuss the arrest of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan for trying to launder the $5 billion in Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex hack, how they were moving the money, how the authorities found them, and what lessons the case might hold.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai is senior staff writer at Motherboard. Follow Lorenzo on Twitter at @lorenzofb.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Lorenzo wrote about the arrest of the couple and Heather Morgan’s cringe raps as Razzlekhan. Along with Motherboard colleagues, he also dug deep into the couple’s history and online presence.
• The Bitcoin they held and tried to launder came from the 2016 hack of Bitfinex.
• People who knew Morgan told the New York Times her social media presence was “part of an elaborate act to confront social pressures.”
• In 2014, Mt. Gox was hacked and shut down. It was an exchange handling 70% of Bitcoin transactions.
• Criminals laundered $8.6 billion in cryptocurrency in 2021, up 30% from the year before.
• AlphaBay was a darkweb crypto marketplace that was seized by authorities in 2017.
• On Feb 14, Heather Morgan was released on bail, but Ilya Lichtenstein remained in detention.

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Paris Marx is joined by Phil Jones to discuss the hidden microworkers behind supposedly AI-powered automation from major tech companies, how it differs in the Global North and South, and what it means for how we think about the future.

Phil Jones is the author of Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism and a researcher at Autonomy. Follow Phil on Twitter at @philjones7771.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Phil wrote about digital piecework for The Guardian and had an excerpt about refugee labor in Rest of World.
• Turkopticon helps workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk gain some information on the contractors offering tasks on the platform.
• In 2020, Gizmodo did surveys to find out about workers’ experiences on Mechanical Turk. There were a lot of horror stories.
• In 2014, workers on the platform sent emails to Jeff Bezos to ask for better conditions.

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As the podcast celebrates episode 100, Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss the huge drop in crypto prices, the coming threat (to crypto) of interest rate hikes and regulation, the human impact of crypto schemes, and where things may be going next.

Jacob Silverman is a staff writer at The New Republic and writes about crypto with the actor Ben McKenzie. Follow Jacob on Twitter at @SilvermanJacob.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Jacob and Ben McKenzie wrote about Tether. Zeke Faux also wrote an essential article on the stablecoin, and Jacob recommends Crypto Critics Corner.
• Crypto prices have plunged, and that’s hurt regular people.
• New York’s Attorney General reached a settlement with Tether last year.
• VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is making a big lobbying push in Washington, DC to get favorable crypto regulations.
• Matt Damon and Spike Lee are among the celebrities to take crypto money and help pump the industry.
• US regulators are looking at crypto regulations, and Biden administration is planning an executive order to move it forward.
• China banned crypto mining, Russia proposed a ban on crypto, and many countries have suffered power outages due to crypto mining.
• Stephen Diehl wrote explained how crypto is about arbitraging securities regulation.
• Diane Jeantet wrote about a massive series of Bitcoin pyramid schemes in Brazil.

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Paris Marx is joined by Rob Zacny to discuss the potential consequences of Xbox’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and what subscriptions and consolidation might mean for the future of games and the industry.

Rob Zacny is a senior editor at Waypoint and co-host of Waypoint Radio. Follow Rob on Twitter at @RobZacny.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Rob discussed the consequences of the proposed acquisition with his colleague Patrick Klepek.
• Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.
• In November, Phil Spencer said he was troubled by the harassment and abuse at Activision Blizzard.
• QA workers at Activision’s Raven Software are seeking to unionize. The company said it won’t recognize the union, and is reorganizing the division.
• A new Game Developers Conference found 55% think the industry should unionize.
• On January 18, the US Federal Trade Commission began a process to rewrite its merger guidelines.
• Google shut down its Stadia game studios at least in part due to Microsoft’s acquisition of Zenimax.
• At GDC in 2005, a developer rant session featuring Warren Spector, Jason Della Rocca, Greg Costikyan, Brenda Laurel, and Chris Hecke presented a grim picture of where the industry was going.

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Paris Marx is joined by Corrina Laughlin to discuss how evangelical Christians have adapted to modern technologies, how churches have emulated startups, the growth of the faith tech sector, and whether there’s anything that can be learned from their tech experiments.

Corrina Laughlin is the author of Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture. She’s also an instructor of media studies at Loyola Marymount University. Follow Corrina on Twitter at @CKLaughlin.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Corrina wrote an article about why evangelicals are early adopters for The Atlantic.
• Pew estimates about 24% of US adults identify as born again or evangelical Protestants.
• The 1925 Scopes Trial was over the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools.
• Life.Church makes a ton of high production value resources available to churches looking to start up and expand what they’re doing.
• The prosperity gospel is a pro-capitalist theological tradition preached by some very wealth pastors, including Kenneth Copeland.

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Paris Marx is joined by James Muldoon to discuss his vision for platform socialism and the different ways we could reorganize platforms to serve the public good over corporate profit.

James Muldoon is the author of Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim our Digital Future from Big Tech. He’s also a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and the Head of Digital Research at Autonomy. Follow James on Twitter at @james_muldoon_.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• James wrote about why web3 won’t save the internet.
• Paris wrote about what’s wrong with discourses about decentralization and why we should nationalize Amazon.
• Francesca Bria was interviewed by Crypto Syllabus about web3, decentralization, and her experience with municipal tech projects.
• Facebook’s Project Amplify ensured users saw positive stories about the company.
• Antonio Negri and Dalla Costa were among the Italian Autonomist Marxists thinking about the social factory. Karl Marx wrote about the concept of surplus value.
• G.D.H. Cole wrote about guild socialism. James also mentions the work of Otto Neurath.

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Paris Marx is joined by Quintin Smith to discuss how Roblox profits from the labor of children, built an exploitative in-game economy, and needs to be regulated as soon as possible.

Quintin Smith is a journalist working with People Make Games and Shut Up & Sit Down. Follow Quintin on Twitter at @Quinns108.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Quintin did an investigation of Roblox for People Make Games. Watch part 1 and part 2.
• Roblox went public on March 9, 2021, hitting a valuation of $45 billion. It’s now over $50 billion and benefiting from the metaverse hype.
• More than half of US kids and teens under 16 are on Roblox. It’s estimated that half the platform’s users globally are under 13 years old.
• Cecilia D’Anastasio reported on fascist role-playing games in Roblox.
• Games featuring sex and nudity are not always caught by Roblox, exposing kids to them.

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To end 2021, Paris Marx provides a quick update on the podcast and what’s coming next year.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris’ book Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation comes out in July 2022.

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Paris Marx is joined by Annalee Newitz to discuss what’s wrong with Silicon Valley’s understanding of science fiction, and how tech leaders use it to justify terrible futures.

Annalee Newitz is the author of Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age and The Future of Another Timeline. They are also the co-host of Our Opinions Are Correct and a writer for NYT Opinion and New Scientist. Follow Annalee on Twitter at @Annaleen.

🚨 T-shirts are now available!

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Annalee wrote about what tech companies don’t get about science fiction for New Scientist.
• Paris wrote about the dystopian future proposed by the metaverse.
• The Verge spoke to Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, but the interviewer suggested The Matrix was trying to predict where technology was going.
• In 1985, Ursula K. Le Guin wrote about science fiction and the future.
• Facebook is already failing to combat harassment in VR, and its incoming CTO thinks doing so in the metaverse is “practically impossible.”
• People mentioned: Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, JPL engineer Jack Parsons, and Trekonomics author Manu Saadia.
• Annalee’s reading suggestions: Ring Shout by P Djeli Clark, Murderbot series by Martha Wells, Infomocracy by Malka Older, An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King, Rosewater by Tade Thompson, Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan, Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, and Broken Earth by N.K. Jemisin.