Tech Won't Save Us - A Brief Introduction

Episode Date: April 12, 2020

Tech Won't Save Us challenges the notion that technology alone can solve our problems. Full episodes coming very soon.Support the show

Hello, and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, a podcast critical of the notion that technology alone can solve our problems. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this is episode zero. I don't have a guest today. I'm just going to introduce you to the podcast and what you can expect from here on out. The goal of Tech Won't Save Us is to be critical of the tech industry, tech companies, tech leaders, and particularly the worldview that's sort of pushed out from Silicon Valley around the world that says we don't need to worry so much about politics. We can just focus on technology and the improvement of technology

and new innovations. The idea has been described in several ways over the years. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron described it as the Californian ideology, which brought together the neoliberal capitalist project of Thatcher and Reagan in the same way that these tech leaders suggest technology will do. But it also brought together the countercultural libertarianism of the time, and this notion of technological determinism to create this ideology that springs from Silicon Valley, that puts technology at the forefront and suggests that it is our main solution. And of course, this was developed further by Yevgeny Morozov, who talks about technological solutionism, this notion that tech leaders, when they talk about the problems in our world, they design the problem so it appears as though

it can be solved through technological means instead of having to deal with politics. Often their solutions sound really good in a TED talk, but when you actually dig into what they're proposing and what they're doing, there are negative consequences to what's happening that don't get the same kind of focus as the big idea, the big headline that graces the cover of magazines and gets a ton of media attention. When I think about this in particular, I think about the challenge that we face with regard to the climate crisis and the different ways that we're told it can be solved. On one hand right now, we have a political movement that is pushing for a Green New Deal and radical policies that would not just address the climate crisis but significantly alter the way that our society is currently constructed to make it fairer,

to make it more just. But then we also have this group of people who suggest that there's not much that really has to change about the way we live right now. What we really need is some new technologies that can address the problems and the challenges of climate change. Tech Won't Save Us will be a weekly podcast. However, because we are in very extraordinary times right now with the spread of the coronavirus and a lot of people being at home, for at least the first four weeks it will will be a twice-weekly podcast. So this coming week, I'll be speaking to Wendy Liu, the author of Abolish Silicon Valley, and James Wilt, the author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Cars? And we have some really fascinating conversations on the effect of coronavirus on the issues that

we're talking about, but also focusing on their books and how these technological solutions that we are presented aren't necessarily going to solve all of our problems. So stay tuned, make sure to subscribe to the podcast, and you'll be hearing from me soon. Thanks so much.