The Geopolitical Fight Over Huawei w/ Yangyang Cheng

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. Support the show

22 Feb 202457min

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. Support the show

15 Feb 20241h 2min

Paris Marx is joined by Nastasia Hadjadji to discuss Emmanuel Macron’s plan to run France like a start-up, how that justified a further dismantling of France's welfare state, and how his desire to create national tech champions is having domestic consequences.Nastasia Hadjadji is a French journalist looking at tech from the lens of political economy and the author of “No Crypto. Comment Bitcoin a envoûté la planète.”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 Auckland on February 18 in an event hosted by Tohatoha. Emmanuel Macron aided Uber’s lobbying efforts as Economy Minister under the former Socialist government. France worked hard to attract the crypto industry. Macron even took a selfie with Binance’s Changpeng Zhao, who’s now pled guilty to felony charges. The group Technopolice documents police surveillance in France. La Quadrature du Net campaigns against algorithmic video surveillance. Louis Pouzin is considered to have almost created the internet. Support the show

8 Feb 202454min

Paris Marx is joined by Victor Pickard to discuss the continued layoffs in news media, and how they are symptomatic of a deeper, structural crisis in journalism.Victor Pickard is Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at University of Pennsylvania. He’s also the author of Democracy Without Journalism?: Confronting the Misinformation Society.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 and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode: Paris will be speaking in Christchurch on February 4 and Wellington on February 8. Victor wrote for Niemen Lab about the need to divorce news and capitalism, and argued for public newspapers in the Washington Post. In the US, two-thirds of newspaper jobs, or 43,000 journalists, have been lost since 2005. Robert McChesney and John Nichols propose a Local Journalism Initiative. Police raided a newspaper in Kansas on August 11, 2023, setting off a major scandal that’s now seen the police chief suspended. Support the show

1 Feb 20241h 3min

Paris Marx is joined by Eric Silver to discuss Spotify’s big plan to dominate podcasting, why it’s now pulling back from those efforts, and the difference between highly produced and more independent podcasts.Eric Silver is a podcast producer and head of development at Multitude.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 and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode: Paris will be in Christchurch on February 4 (details here) and Wellington on February 8 (details here). He’s hoping to get an Auckland date organized and is open to going to Australia. Spotify pulled back on its podcasting ambitions last year, canceling big shows and laying off staff. After buying Gimlet and Parcast, it merged them into Spotify Originals last year. Ashley Carman posted a slide from a Spotify presentation presenting the RSS feed as “outdated tech” because it’s harder for them to harvest data from. Support the show

25 Jan 202459min

Paris Marx is joined by Timnit Gebru to discuss the past year in AI hype, how AI companies have shaped regulation, and tech’s relationship to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Timnit Gebru is the founder and executive director of the Distributed AI Research Institute. 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 produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.  Also mentioned in this episode: Paris is speaking in Montreal on January 20. Details here. Billy Perrigo reported on OpenAI lobbying to water down the EU’s AI Act. Nitasha Tiku wrote about the push to train students in a particular idea of AI. Politico has been doing a lot of reporting on the influences on AI policy in the US and UK. OpenAI made a submission in the UK to try to get permission to train on copyrighted material. Arab workers in the tech industry fear the consequences of speaking out for Palestinian rights. 972 Magazine reported on Israel’s use of AI to increase its targets in Gaza. Jack Poulson chronicles the growing ties between military and tech. Timnit mentioned No Tech for Apartheid, Antony Loewenstein’s The Palestine Laboratory, and Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto. Support the show

18 Jan 20241h 1min

Paris Marx is joined by Vincent Bevins to discuss the mass protests of the 2010s, the role that social and traditional media played in them, and why the horizontalism of those movements ultimately didn’t work.Vincent Bevins is a longtime foreign correspondent who has worked for the Washington Post, Financial Times, and LA Times. He’s the author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution.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 and produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode: Read excerpts from If We Burn in The Guardian and In These Times. Vincent mentioned the work of Charles Tilley, Cihan Tuğal, Evgeny Morozov, and Andrey Mir. Support the show

11 Jan 202457min

Paris Marx is joined by Naomi Klein to discuss the problems with personal branding pushed social media, how the left’s insufficient response to the pandemic created an opening for the right, and the fight over the roots of Western society that will shape our future. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and a columnist with The Guardian. She is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice and Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia. Her newest book is Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. 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 produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.  Also mentioned in this episode: Read excerpts of Doppelganger in The Guardian and Vanity Fair. Naomi mentions Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism. Support the show

4 Jan 20241h