Are we losing what it means to be human? To experience the world around us? That's the thesis presented by the writer Christine Rosen in her book The Extinction of Experience, where she argues that the digital world is mediating our interactions with the real world, leading to a decline in our cognitive abilities. But does any of this really matter? And can we do anything to prevent the kids of today from descending ever further into the black hole of a smartphone screen? She joins the podcast to discuss!

The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.

Hosted by Nick Hilton.

Music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.

Artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How will the world end? You can take your pick from many of the scary options: a deadly pandemic that sweeps the globe, nuclear armageddon that vaporises our cities, climate change that drowns us all in boiling seas. Or will it be that one day ChatGPT and Gemini rise up and turn us all into subordinate meat-puppets?

However you look at it, the world has been on the brink many times. Tom Ough is the author of The Anti-Catastrophe League, a new book about the efforts made by humanity over the years to fend off the threat of extinction. In this conversation, we talk about those historic challenges and look ahead to the coming wave of things that might wipe us off the planet.

The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.

Hosted by Nick Hilton.

Music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.

Artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Would you date a chatbot? That might sound an unlikely proposition but new research suggests that 1 in 10 Gen Zers has engaged romantically with an AI companion. This looks like the next frontier in internet dating; one that could reshape how our society functions. Or is this just a case of a few weirdos on the web claiming to tabloid journalists that they're married to their iPhone? This week, we'll be trying to unravel some of the mysteries around AI companions and the growing romantic and sexual connections people feel with them.

My guest is James Muldoon, a sociologist based at the University of Essex and author of the recent book Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships. James has been researching this topic for a while now and talking to lots of people who have differing interactions with – and, yes, relationships with – AI companions. The book is packed with interesting case studies, a few of which we’ll touch upon in this conversation, so do stick around and listen.

This is a Podot podcast.

Hosted by Nick Hilton.

With James Muldoon.

Theme music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.

Cover artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last month, hundreds of anti-AI protestors took to the streets of London to protest the growing ubiquity of the technology. Is this the start of a Ludditesque movement or just a howl into the void? Alys Key – author of the UK 2.0 Substack – was on site, covering the protests for Transformer. In this episode of The Ned Ludd Radio Hour we discuss the protests in London and whether they're a case study for a movement that will accelerate in the coming years. What brings these disparate protestors together? And what can they learn from those in the climate activism world who have gone before them?

Hosted by Nick Hilton.

With Alys Key.

Music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.

Cover artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the age of literacy – the primacy of the written word – ending? Put another way, are we entering a new world where frayed attention spans, technological enshittification and political polarisation drive people away from the intentional act of reading, and towards more instantly gratifying cultural forms? Like podcasts…

To discuss all this, I'm joined by by the cultural critic James Marriott and writer and co-director of Galley Beggar Press, Sam Jordison. The dominance of the iPhone, the insidious control mechanism of short-form video, the destabilising impact of endlessly socialised media; all of these things were conspiring to make us less likely to read books. The question, really, is: does it matter? Is this just a natural evolution, as technology has given us increasingly diverse and accessible entertainment outputs, that shouldn’t be fought? Or does the decline in literacy present us with a real risk – that we will lose the critical skills established over the 600 years since Johannes Gutenberg inverted his printing press?

The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.

It is hosted by Nick Hilton.

The theme music is by Apes of the State.

The cover artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

PodotPods.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Much of how we see the world is governed by a sense of fear. It’s what keeps me driving within the legal limits. Fear of a crash and fear of the reprisals for speeding. Since AI became a big cause celébrè, it has also been the catalyst for fears. There is the fear that AI might cause the extinction of the human species, and the fear that it might render me redundant. What if an AI model launches its own neo-Luddite podcast and puts me out of business?

To discuss these issues, I dialled up Hagen Blix a New York based cognitive scientist and author, with Ingeborg Glimmer, of a new book: Why We Fear AI. As we try and rationalise our new Luddism, it felt like Hagen’s book might provide some instruction on responding, calmly, to the distant promise of disaster. With all that in mind, here’s our conversation.

The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.

It is hosted by Nick Hilton.

PodotPods.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When I started this podcast, I was feeling a bit gloomy about the way that technology was heading, but I wasn’t gripped by full-on panic.

Yet here we are, a year or so later, and I feel like I’ve been radicalised. Not a day goes by when there isn’t some announcement from Silicon Valley that would chill the blood of even the more rational of tech consumers. We are heading into the vortex.

This is a world that Ned Ludd predicted to me, when we first started exchanging emails more than a year ago. I haven’t heard from them in a while. I’m vaguely aware of what’s going on in their life and understanding of why they don’t feel the need to bombard me with their thoughts about how to arrest this techno-decline, but still, I feel the battle being lost. I remember something they wrote to me back at the start of this journey. “THE CAR DOESN’T GO INTO REVERSE, BUT IT MIGHT TAKE ANOTHER ROAD.”

It's not an amazing metaphor, not least because most – dare I say, all – cars do, actually, go into reverse. But the necessity for a different road still strikes me. I don’t want to just accept that all the bad things I fear will come to pass will come to pass. Can’t we do something?

The Luddites, who inspired this show, smashed up automated machinery in the 19th century. They didn’t want to lose their jobs, their livelihoods – their purposes – to new fangled automation. They’ve gone down in history as belligerent refuseniks, railing against the inevitable tide of history. But as you’ll hear in today’s discussion, they’ve had a real lasting impact on little things like labour laws and trade unions.

My guest is Mauro Lubrano, author of a new book Stop the Machines: The Rise of Anti-Tech Extremism. Originally hailing from Italy, Mauro is now a lecturer in international relations at the University of Bath, and someone who has thought, and written, about the action that might be taken (for better or worse) against our machine overlords. Have a listen to our conversation now.

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This week on the Ned Ludd Radio Hour a piece on 'subscription addiction' and spreadflation. Are consumers being screwed over by the rise and rise of different subscriptions to media and entertainment services? And are creators headed for an economic cliff edge? Listen – and then subscribe to my Substack, duh.

Written and read by Nick Hilton.

Music by Apes of the State.

Cover artwork by Tom Humberstone.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A couple of weeks ago, Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old American, allegedly shot Brian Thompson, the CEO of a major health insurer in the US. Suddenly, a lot of the ideas I’d be gently noodling with on this show were being discussed as potential sources of violence. Was Mangione a Luddite? Someone who felt that technology had atomised a generation? Or was he, in fact, an accelerationist who believed that artificial intelligence would expand human capability? And, ultimately, did any of this matter?

Now, disaffected young men pick up guns with shocking frequency. They perpetrate violence with shocking frequency. They veil this horror under the cloak of ideology with shocking frequency. In a way, Mangione is no different.

But, in another way, he is very different. Just look at how the violence has been received. For days, Mangione was on the run, seemingly shielded by an American public whose anger over an exploitative healthcare industry was spilling over. He became a pin-up, for a moment, of a generational anxiety. There were echoes of how the Unabomber, Ted Kaszynski, was received by some climate activists. Violence might not be an answer, but sometimes it make a point. In big capital letters.

But looking at Mangione – and his digital footprint – only confused me more. This didn’t feel like a revolutionary left-winger lashing out at a social evil. In fact, the more I saw, the more I felt like I was seeing someone quite familiar. Basically conservative, intellectually ambitious, in thrall to the technological structures that they also blamed for our ills. Is this just the modern aspect of the age-old libertarianism that has been a constant companion in tech circles?

To discuss all these things – at Ned’s suggestion – I dialled up Io Dodds, a British journalist based in San Francisco, who’s currently a Senior Reporter at The Independent. She had written on Mangione and, in particular, his relationship with an ill-defined movement called the “grey tribe”. In this episode, we’ll try and unravel some of that and put together a definition, however boggling, of what could be a very consequential movement.

Music: Internet Song by Apes of the State

Artwork: Tom Humberstone

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Julio Vincent Gambuto is a New York based author and marketing professional. His new book is Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!: How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a Relentless World. As you’ll hear from our conversation, most of the ideas that Julio posits in the book are things that came to him during the covid-19 lockdown in 2020, when the intricate structures of the world where exposed for all to see. But Julio’s book is not really about decluttering your inbox. It’s not even about stopping yourself from paying £30 a month for watery high street mochas. It’s about using that word – unsubscribe – as a manifesto.

I asked Ned, quickly, what they thought about this idea of an unsubscribe culture, and whether we might be at a turning point. I will caveat their response by saying that they – like me, to be fair – have some business interests at stake in that not happening.

“NICK, ALL THE DATA SHOWS THAT SUBSCRIPTION GOES IN ONE DIRECTION: UP. THIS QUESTION OF DECLUTTER AND DISENTANGLE IS ONE ONLY DISCUSSED IN SPECIFIC CIRCLES – THE SORT OF CIRCLES WHERE GUYS ARE BUYING 500 DOLLAR DUMB PHONES AND GOING ON WORDLESS YOGA RETREATS THAT COST THE ANNUAL SALARY OF SOME BLUE COLLAR SCHMUCK. AND THE INTERNET HAS MADE RELATIONSHIP SUBSCRIPTION – AS YOU PUT IT – ALL THE MORE COMMON AND VALUABLE. HOW MANY OF YOUR HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS ARE YOU STILL LINKED TO, EVEN VIA INSTAGRAM OR FACEOOK, NOW, AS OPPOSED TO YOUR PARENTS GENERATION WHO WILL BE TAKEN TOTALLY OFF GUARD WHEN THEY HEAR THAT THEIR KIDDIE BEST FRIEND ACTUALLY DIED FIVE YEARS AGO? CONNECT, CONNECT, CONNECT; SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE. LIKE IT OR NOT THIS IS THE FLOW OF TRAVEL.”

Even though I don’t really disagree with the premise that people’s subscription obsession and consequent connectivity is broadly still trending upwards, I don’t think the move to Marie Kondo our digital worlds is unique to technological toffs. It’s a bandwidth issue as much as anything. Maintaining a multi-platform social media habit, listening to podcasts and watching YouTube and reading newsletters, keeping on top of your work email, your personal email, the email you just use to get fresh voucher codes. It’s a lot. And people aren’t just actively rebelling against it – they’re running out of time.

So I do think we should think more proactively about what we subscribe to, and that’s where Julio comes in. He spoke to me last week from a house in New Jersey, and hopefully you’ll glean something useful from our chat.

Presented by Nick Hilton.

Music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.

Artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

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