Tech Won't Save Us

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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