Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx is joined by Becca Lewis to discuss the right-wing project to shape the internet in the 1990s and how we’re still living with the legacies of those actions today.

Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford 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. 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 Marc Andreessen mentioning the Italian Futurists in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
• Ruth Eveleth wrote about the Italian Futurists in the context of Silicon Valley.
• In 1995, Wired published a story on how “America’s futurist politicians” Al Gore and Newt Gingrich were in an epic struggle to shape the internet.
• Becca mentioned the work of Nicole Hemmer and Patricia Aufderheide.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. We’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Cecilia Rikap, an Associate Professor in Economics at University College London. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Brian Merchant to discuss the fallout from the US election, what it means for the tech industry, and more importantly, what it might mean for all of us. They also celebrate the show hitting 250 episodes!

Brian Merchant is a longtime tech writer and 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:

• Brian wrote about the results of the election on his newsletter.
• Paris wrote about why we need to remember who enabled Elon Musk to obtain his power.
• There are already reports of advertisers returning to Twitter/X to gain favor with Musk and Trump.
• OpenAI is moving away from its original non-profit status.
• Uber chief legal officer Tony West told Kamala Harris to stop attacking big business.

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Our Data Vampires series may be over, but Paris interviewed a bunch of experts on data centers and AI whose insights shouldn’t go to waste. Starting this week, we’re releasing those interviews as bonus episodes for Patreon supporters. Here’s a preview of this week’s premium episode with Ali Alkhatib, Logic(s) data editor and former interim director of the Center for Applied Data Ethics. For the full interview, support the show on Patreon.

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Paris Marx is joined by tante to discuss troubling developments in the open source world as Wordpress goes to war with WP Engine and a new definition of open source AI doesn’t require being open about training data.

tante is a sociotechnologist, writer, speaker, and Luddite working on tech and its social impact.

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:

• tante wrote about the problem with the Open Source Initiative’s definition of open source AI.
• Check out this link for the full breakdown on the Wordpress drama.
• Wordpress changed its trademark guidelines on September 19 regarding the use of the WP abbreviation.
• Tumblr and Wordpress started selling user data for AI training earlier this year.
• A lot of the controversy around Richard Stallman started blowing up in 2019.

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Paris Marx is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss all the money Elon Musk is pouring into the US election and what Silicon Valley’s political influence will mean regardless of who becomes president.

Jacob Silverman is the author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, coming in September 2025 from Bloomsbury. His book Easy Money is now available in paperback.

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:

• The New York Times reported on Elon Musk’s efforts to get Trump elected in the final two weeks of the campaign.
• The Pennsylvania district attorney sued Elon Musk’s PAC to stop his $1 million giveaways.
• Marc Andreessen wrote the Techno-Optimist Manifesto and the Little Tech Agenda.
• FTX was up to way more shady things that didn’t make it into the first trial of Sam Bankman-Fried. The second didn’t go ahead after he was found guilty in the first.
• The canvassing operation for Trump by Elon Musk's PAC has been flagged as potentially fraudulent.
• The US Supreme Court’s Chevron decision will have significant consequences for federal regulators.

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Tech billionaires are embracing extreme right-wing politics. It’s not just to enhance their power, but to try to realize a harmful vision for humanity’s future that could see humans merging with machines and possibly even living in computer simulations. Will we allow them to put our collective resources behind their science fiction dreams, or fight for a better future and a different kind of technology to go along with it? This is episode 4 of Data Vampires, 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. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Postdoctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University Émile P. Torres, features reporter at The Information Julia Black, Goldsmiths University lecturer Dan McQuillan, and former head of the Center for Applied Data Ethics Ali Alkhatib were interviewed for this episode.
• Pieces by Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, and an interview with Elon Musk were cited.

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Paris Marx is joined by Ulises A. Mejias and Nick Couldry to discuss how Silicon Valley's extractive data collection regime and the power it grants them resembles a much older form of exploitation: colonialism.

Ulises A. Mejias is a professor of Communication Studies at SUNY Oswego and Nick Couldry is a professor of Media, Communications and Social Theory at the London School of Economics. They are the co-authors of Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back and among the co-founders of the network Tierra Común.

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:

• Read an excerpt of Ulises and Nick’s book.
• Ulises has helped advance the Non-Aligned Technologies Movement.
• The World Economic Forum and Accenture published a report on governance of AI.
• Geoffrey Hinton was one of the winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics. Paris wrote about why we shouldn’t trust his assessment of AI.
• Google told the UK Labour government it will be left behind in the AI race if it doesn’t do what the company demands.
• Data centers use 21% of electricity in Ireland, and number that could jump to 31% within the next three years.
• Home building in West London could be restricted until 2035 because data centers have used up the available energy.
• Kenya is being drafted into the US’s anti-China tech alliance, which includes building data centers while ignoring the poor working conditions of data labelers and content moderators.

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Sam Altman is clear: he’s ready to sacrifice anything for his AI fantasies. But are we? We dig into why generative AI has such extreme energy demands and how major tech companies are trying to rewrite climate accounting rules to cover how much their emissions are rising. AI isn’t just churning out visual slop; it’s also being used to transform how our society works and further reduce people’s power over their lives. It’s a disaster any way you look at it. This is episode 3 of Data Vampires, 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. Support the show on Patreon.

The show is hosted by Paris Marx. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Hugging Face Climate Lead Sasha Luccioni, Associate Professor in Economics Cecilia Rikap, former head of the Center for Applied Data Ethics Ali Alkhatib, Goldsmiths University lecturer Dan McQuillan, and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute Alex Hanna were interviewed for this episode.
• Interviews with Sam Altman and Brad Smith were cited.

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Paris Marx is joined by Julia Black to discuss who Curtis Yarvin is and how his anti-democratic, far-right writings have influenced the politics of Silicon Valley and the wider American extreme right.

Julia Black is a features reporter on The Information’s Weekend Team.

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:

• Julia wrote about Curtis Yarvin and his ideas for The Information. She also wrote about the Musk-aligned tech CEOs trying to shape how we think about the future.
• Paris wrote about Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
• The Dark Enlightenment is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian political project.
• Gil Duran wrote about the Reboot Conference and how it put the connections between the tech industry and the Heritage Foundation on display.
• The Heritage Foundation is flooding federal agencies with thousands of information requests to identify government employees to be purged under a second Trump administration.
• Peter Thiel wanted Balaji Srinivasan to become head of the Federal Drug Administration under the Trump presidency.
• According to Nick Land, hyperstition refers to ideas that bring themselves into being.

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