Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx is joined by Zachary Loeb to discuss the history of tech criticism with a focus on Joseph Weizenbaum and Lewis Mumford, as well as why the techlash is a narrative that suits Silicon Valley.

Zachary Loeb is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania whose dissertation research looks at Y2K. Follow Zachary on Twitter as @libshipwreck, and check out his Librarian Shipwreck blog.

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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:

• Zachary wrote about Y2K, Lewis Mumford’s criticisms on technology, the life and thought of Joseph Weizenbaum, and theses on techno-optimism.
• Books mentioned: “Dismantlings: Words against Machines in the American Long Seventies” by Matt Tierney.

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Paris Marx is joined by David Golumbia to discuss the ideology of cyberlibertarianism, the right-wing politics of cryptocurrencies and blockchains, and why the left shouldn’t embrace them.

David Golumbia is an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of “The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism.” He’s also writing a new book called “Cyberlibertarianism” from Minnesota University Press. Follow David on Twitter as @dgolumbia.

🚨 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:

• David wrote about cyberlibertarianism for Jacobin Magazine.
• Keith Spencer interviewed David about his book for Salon in 2018.
• Elon Musk’s tweets affect cryptocurrency prices, while China is cracking down on crypto mining.
• Marc Andreessen says “crypto is a right wing idea” in an interview with Noah Smith.
• El Salvador’s right-wing authoritarian president made Bitcoin a form of legal tender.
• Tether misled people about how much USD was backing its stablecoin.
• About 20% of Bitcoin — worth billions of dollars — is lost and recoverable.
• Other resources: Langdon Winner’s “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” and “Cyberlibertarian Myths and the Prospects for Community”; Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s “The Californian Ideology”; Fred Turner’s “From Counterculture to Cyberculture”; Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish” (article); and John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.”

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Paris Marx is joined by Eoin Higgins to discuss why tech companies and venture capital firms are launching their own media verticals, what Marc Andreessen hopes to get out of Clubhouse and Substack, and why Jeff Bezos may have a better approach to media.

Eoin Higgins is a freelance journalist and writes on Substack under The Flashpoint. Follow Eoin on Twitter as @EoinHiggins_.

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:

• Eoin wrote about what venture capital firms are doing in media and Marc Andreessen’s favoriting of alt-right tweets.
• In 2016, Marc Andreessen wrote a tweet about colonialism in India that received a lot of backlash.
• Coinbase started a “media arm” to “become a source of truth” in the face of critical reporting.
• Anna Wiener recently wrote about how tech may be shifting from a narrative of disruption to one of building institutions (to serve themselves).
• Sam Harnett critically examined tech journalism and its history, especially with regard to reporting on the gig economy.
• Zoe Schiffer and Megan Farokhmanesh detailed how venture capitalists used Clubhouse to organize against critical coverage of the industry and go after journalists like Taylor Lorenz.
• Ed Zitron wrote about how tech journalism’s shift from an enthusiast press to an industrial press was something venture capitalists and powerful people in the industry were not happy about.

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Paris Marx is joined by Avi Asher-Schapiro and Maya Gebeily to discuss how Facebook isn’t fully enforcing its ban on conversion therapy in Arabic, what that means for LGBTQ people in Arabic-speaking countries, and how social media has become a battleground.

Avi Asher-Schapiro is a journalist covering technology for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Maya Gebeily is the Middle East Correspondent at the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Follow Avi on Twitter as @AASchapiro and follow Maya as @GebeilyM.

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:

• Avi and Maya wrote about how Facebook is letting conversion therapy posts continue being shared on the platform in Arabic.
• Maya wrote about social media companies blaming glitches for disappearing posts about Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem.
• In September, Buzzfeed published an internal letter by Sophie Zhang on how Facebook was ignoring its impacts on the politics of countries around the world. Zhang has gone on to to do work with The Guardian and Rest of World.
• The United Nations says conversion therapy “may amount to torture” and should be banned.
• Lebanon provides more freedom for LGBTQ people, but there are still barriers.
• Saudi Arabia infiltrated Twitter to identify dissidents, and in 2020 convicted a Yemeni blogger for supporting gay rights.
• In September 2020, Algerian police arrested 44 people for attending a “gay wedding,” using the decoration as evidence against them.
• Israeli security agencies work to ensure Facebook censors Palestinian content at their request.

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Paris Marx is joined by Legacy Russell to discuss how glitch feminism challenges existing ideas of what constitutes the body and the effects of having those conceptions embedded within our technological systems.

Legacy Russell is the associate curator of exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and will become executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen in September. She’s the author of “Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto” and is currently writing “Black Meme.” Follow Legacy on Twitter as @LegacyRussell.

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:

• Donna Haraway, Sadie Plan, and Katherine Hayles on cyberfeminism.
• Alondra Nelson on afrofuturism.
• Nathan Jurgenson’s work on digital dualism and IRL.

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Paris Marx is joined by Richard Barbrook to discuss how the Californian Ideology illustrated the neoliberalism of Silicon Valley, whether it’s still relevant in the present, and how games can be used for political purposes.

Richard Barbrook is the author of “Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village” and “Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism.” He’s a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Westminster. Follow Richard on Twitter as @richardbarbrook.

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:

• Read the original Californian Ideology essay in Mute Magazine and Richard’s thoughts on the 20th anniversary in “The Internet Revolution: From Dot-com Capitalism to Cybernetic Communism.”
• France Insoumise presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon released a game called Fiscal Combat that helped inspire Corbyn Run.
• Richard mentions Guy Debord’s “A Game of War” and Bertell Ollman’s “Class Struggle” board games.
• Other resources: Marshall McLuhan, Fred Turner’s “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism,” and Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle.”

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Paris Marx is joined by Benjamin Peters to discuss the proposals for national computer networks in the Soviet Union, the challenges they faced in getting approval, and what lessons they hold for how we think about networks.

Benjamin Peters is the author of “How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet” and the co-editor of “Your Computer Is On Fire.” He’s also the Hazel Rogers Associate Professor at the University of Tulsa and affiliated faculty at Yale Law School. Follow Ben on Twitter as @bjpeters.

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:

• Ben summarized his research on the Soviet network proposals for Aeon.

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Paris Marx is joined by Eden Medina to discuss Project Cybersyn, a technological system created by Chile’s socialist government in the 1970s to manage production, and what it can teach us about political technology and innovation outside the Global North.

Eden Medina is the author of “Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile.” She’s also an associate professor at MIT and the Rita E. Hauser Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Follow Eden on Twitter as @edenmedina.

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 2020, Marian Schlotterbeck spoke to Jacobin about the fifty year anniversary of Salvador Allende’s election.
• Independent and left-wing delegates won major victories in the election for Chile’s constitutional assembly, making it hard for right-wing delegates to stall the process.
• In October 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to draft a new constitution, following protests that began in 2019.
• Dictator Augusto Pinochet oversaw a brutal regime from 1973 to 1990, and the crimes of that period are still being prosecuted.

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Paris Marx is joined by Kevin Driscoll to discuss the history of France’s Minitel system, the insights it provides about the modern platform economy, and whether the internet will one day be shut down too.

Kevin Driscoll is the co-author of “Minitel: Welcome to the Internet” with Julian Mailland. He’s also a professor at the University of Washington and the author of the forthcoming book “The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media.” Follow Kevin on Twitter as @kevindriscoll, or find out more about his Minitel research at minitel.us or @MinitelResearch.

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 November 2020, Paris wrote about the potential future of the internet if the value of digital ads collapsed.
• Vice published an article about the artists on Canada’s pre-internet network, Telidon.
• In “The Internet Revolution,” Richard Barbrook wrote that he thought Britain would eventually import Minitel after experiencing it.
• Other resources mentioned: “The Computerization of Society” by Simon Nora and Alain Minc, and “The Platformization of the Web” by Anne Helmond.

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Paris Marx is joined by Margaret O’Mara to discuss how the state and military have been at the center of the US tech industry since the very beginning, but how it was written out of the popular narrative during the neoliberal turn in the 1980s.

Margaret O’Mara is the author of “The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America” and a professor at the University of Washington. Follow Margaret on Twitter as @margaretomara.

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:

• “Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, with a New Preface by the Author” by AnnaLee Saxenian
• Another relevant book: “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism” by Fred Turner

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