January 08, 2025

25 Years of the 21st Century: 3. The Age of Outsourcing

28 minutes

Is this the age of outsourcing?

This is not a show about call centres in India. Rather, it's a look at a much deeper shift in who we are, how we think, and where value is created. In some ways, it's the most dizzying and philosophical shift of all.

In this episode, we attempt to understand outsourcing at the macro level - how corporations have outsourced so much that they’ve become hollow. And we look at the micro level - how we've outsourced our minds and memories to technology.

Contributors

Margaret MacMillan, Emeritus Professor of International History at the University of Oxford and author of several acclaimed books.

James Williams is an author and technology advisor. He worked for Google for more than 10 years where he received the Founders Award for his work on search advertising. He's the author of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy.

John Key is author of The Corporation in the 21st Century. He's a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and a columnist for the Financial Times.

Production team

Editor: Sara Wadeson

Producers: Emma Close, Marianna Brain, Michaela Graichen

Sound: Tom Brignell

Production Co-ordinators: Janet Staples and Katie Morrison