Tech Won't Save Us - Can Europe Chart Its Own Path on Tech? w/ tante

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by tante to discuss why it’s hard for Europe to challenge the US and China on tech and why we should change how we think about innovation.tante is a writer, speaker, and Luddite working on tech and its social impact.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:tante spoke about innovation at re:publica 2024.Paris also gave a presentation on data centers.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron wrote an op-ed about shared priorities in the Financial Times.Sam Altman successfully lobbied to water down the EU’s AI Act.Support the show

Building a world where people feel that political change has brought them actual change in their life that they appreciate is important, especially in the face of Europe having like a growing fascist movement in all countries. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Maris Marks, and this week my guest is Tante. Tante is a socio-technologist, writer, speaker, and Luddite who works on tech and its social impact. Throughout May, I was in a number of European countries in Austria, in Germany, and in Denmark, and got to have some conversations with, you know, a bunch of different people about tech topics there to get an idea of how people are thinking about technology, about the tech industry in these different parts of Europe and how they were reflecting on how their

lawmakers were approaching things, how Europe as a whole was doing on the tech front, especially as we increasingly have this divide between the US and China. And it feels like Europe is trying to find its place between those two poles. And obviously, you know, those feelings are distinct between different countries who have different approaches on technology. Europe is certainly not, you know, a lot about these issues as well. And it happens to be that he is European. You know, he's German, obviously, but I think it would be fair to say that he has a better grasp on these things than I do, being that I come from North America. But since we were in Europe, because this episode was recorded live at Republika, a

tech conference that happens in Berlin every year and where I was speaking about data centers and Tante was speaking about innovation, that it seemed like a good opportunity since we were there, since we were recording it live in Berlin, to actually dig into these questions and explore how European governments were approaching technology, what that means for, you know, the tech industry and the rollout of different technologies in Europe in general, and how that affects the people of Europe, of course, who end up on the receiving end of those technologies, and whether it's possible to think about approaching technology in a different way, and whether Europe is in a unique position to be able to do that if

it really wanted to. So I know I'm speaking in very broad and generalizable terms in this introduction. I recognize that. But I think that this was a really interesting conversation, at least for me to have, because Tech Won't Save Us does look a lot at North America and does look at things often through a North American lens. I might be Canadian, but the United States is where a lot of these developments happen, where so much of the power within global technology is centered. Obviously, that is becoming more dispersed, particularly as China challenges it and as other parts of the world like Europe try to carve out their own place within this global tech industry. But for me, it was really fascinating to be able to dig more into these conversations,

to see some of these anxieties around Europe's approach to innovation and whether it can properly innovate and what people even mean when they say something like that, and to be able to interrogate those in this conversation with Tante to pick up on these brother conversations that I was having with other people during my time in Europe. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation. I hope that you feel that you learned something from it. I hope that the Europeans listening don't feel that I'm like a total idiot and totally misunderstanding what's happening on their continent. Apologies if you feel that way, but hopefully you will get something out of this as well. And I think it's very clear that, you know, I had a great time talking with Tante. And I think that he was a great interlocutor to have this conversation with, because he's someone who I've been able to talk about these

issues with for a long time. And it was really a long time coming to finally have him on the show. And I was really happy to have this conversation with him. So with that said, if you do enjoy this interview, make sure to leave a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us every single week, you can join supporters like Manuel from Brussels, Lucy from Chicago, and Lassie, who is moving from Paris to Helsinki, by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation recorded live at Republika in Berlin. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us here at Republika in Berlin. I'm joined by Tante,

European sociotechnologist, writer, speaker and Luddite working on tech and its social impact. I've known Tante for a couple years ago. We first met in person, but obviously we've known each other online for well beyond that. Welcome to the show, Tante for a couple of years ago. We first met in person, but obviously we've known each other online for well beyond that. Welcome to the show, Tante. Thanks. It's a great pleasure to be here. Long-time listener, long-time fan, first time sitting in front of the microphone. Yeah.

And, you know, even in a special recording environment where we can even see one another in person instead of, you know, over a screen, which is always nice. Throw stuff at one another and all that good stuff. Yeah, you'll throw that preamp you have in your hand. I didn't know I was in for like a physical threat here by recording in person with people. But here we go. This is a new territory. Now, since we are here in Europe, I figured we would talk a bit about European approaches

to technology to get us started. And then we'll get into some bigger questions because obviously the show, because I am North American and because Silicon Valley is located in the United States, often deals with North American issues. Certainly we do episodes sometimes talking about the gig economy, French tech, you know, things like that that are happening in Europe. But generally the show, you know, tends to look at what happens on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. So I thought it would be a good opportunity to dig a bit more into Europe, since we're here, since I'm talking to you. And as I say, you happen to be European. So that means you're an expert on all subjects Europe, right? But I feel like increasingly, it feels like tech

is torn between two poles, right? We have the United States on one side, and we have China on the other. And there's this big competition between the two. The United States seems to expect Europe to kind of play along with its vision for what it wants to do, be in its camp, and just kind of follow the American rules. But not everyone in Europe is on board with that plan. How would you describe the European thinking on technology at this time? I mean, Europe is a big place. It's like almost 500 million people and many different states that form like the European Union and all those states work a bit differently. So it's really hard to argue for like a real European strategy and thinking like... But I thought you

were all one under the European Union. Don't you all agree on everything? Of course we do. But like, that's why my perception, of course, is colored a bit by me living in Germany, being German and being very closely informed about German politics. But like the European apparatus, so to speak, has like a certain logic to it. And as you described, it's true. It's closer related to the US than it is to, for example, China, like in the EU and in Germany and many other countries, there have been moves to, for example, China, like in the EU and in Germany and many other countries, there have been moves to, for example, ban Chinese companies from building infrastructure

like telecommunications infrastructure. Huawei was a big thing. Are they allowed to build a 5G network here or not? And under which conditions and that kind of stuff, a conversation we never have with American companies, like they are just there. Like we might not like them, but they are kind of just in the environment, so to speak. But there is always like this push of Europe to kind of try to guardrail even the American companies a little bit.

Like many people, even outside of the EU, know the GDPR legislation that was passed a few years ago that did have some impact. I think not always the impact that was intended, but it does have impact on big platform providers. Like for example, in order to comply, Microsoft actually put their Office 365 things into European providers.

Like in Germany, you can get a German hosted Microsoft 365 installation. So it's easier to legally deploy that kind of stuff. Whether it's fully legal is still up for debate, but it has impact just because Europe is such a big economic space. It's a very wealthy environment. Big corporations are also active in Europe. It does have some impact, and the EU tries to harness that impact.

We see sometimes they try to hand out fees to META or whoever they don't like at that specific time. But it's really hard to say like there's a really targeted strategy. I'd say like there's not a real big master plan of, okay, how are we going to do this? It's more like very reactive because the legislative processes in Europe take so long because it's not we vote for a European parliament, the parliament decides stuff. Like there's the parliament and there's the council council which is formed by like the governments of the local states and then there's the commission which is also kind of defined by this government of the

different states and they all have to agree and it takes like ages to get anything passed and if anything was passed like that topic is not going to be touched for 10 10 years like so it's very hard for europe to really be as agile as they might need to be when they really want to form how digital spaces work. They did the AI Act recently, which also was very hard to do. And we might get into that later. But they tried to structure new areas, usually markets, because the EU is still largely an economic alliance.

It's not so much a political alliance. But it just takes so long. And there are so many different goals of the different countries of the different member states, that's sometimes hard to get anything that has actual teeth. Yeah, I feel like, you know, obviously, it sounds like a very easy legislative protest process, and things just slide through, you know, the European Union. But, you know, you talk about how it's very distinct, right? There's not one kind of European opinion, one European view that is guiding technology. And I feel like, you know, one of the things that I have noticed is that on the one hand, there seems to be this approach where, you know, you're kind

of thinking about how you can get more tech investment in Europe, what that is going to look like, whether you can build some independent companies. And, you know, that approach that's just like, OK, let's try to get more investment. Let's try to kind of level up here so we can try to get on more of a level playing field with these other big players. But then there also seems to be, I guess, a more distinct, very specific approach that's kind of like, OK, we need to be the third pole in this axis. And Europe needs to be like technologically sovereign and build up its own technological champions or, you know, its own kind of technological capacities that is separate from what is happening in China and the United States. Can you talk about the distinctions between

those two approaches and how you see them? So the idea of digital sovereignty is very important in Europe right now. Different groups understand very different things when that term is used. Like when you look at the NGO space, like things like Wikimedia or the open source community, when they think digital sovereignty, they very much think about you being able to run your own email server, having access to the software you need to run your life. Right. On more of like an individual level sort of yeah maybe even a community that is allowed to run their own software or whatever but very much in like empowerment of people to do a thing without maybe corporate influence without depending on corporate uh overlords basically but if you look at it from the political standpoint, when they use this

framing, what they usually mean is not Chinese and not American. It's really about we need to be a power. Europe has been the colonial center of the world for the longest time, and it's really hard for them to no longer be that. Decisions are made in Shenzhen, in Shanghai, in Beijing, whatever. And that's hard for Europe because they can only react. And that's very frustrating. On the other hand, because there are so many different ideas of how things should be. And like, yeah, the French want to push the French companies. The Germans want to push the German companies.

And they are in competition. So it's really hard for them to build up that kind of capacity and with a lot of stuff that actually existed in europe like capacities for like there was some chip manufacturing there were also like sort of interesting tech companies like in the 80s and they they were different than the approaches that the us took they were promising but like after like the reunification like the eastern states kind of collapsed like the the block collapsed everything was just run over by the american way like okay this is how things are done this is how we're gonna do it and like that kind of gave europe kind of a blank slate we could

import american tech very easily very cheaply and, and it was there and we built everything on top of it. Like in you're in Germany right now, Germany runs on WhatsApp. Like that's the thing you need to have a WhatsApp account to be able to talk to like your community, to the daycare of your kids, like everything is organized through WhatsApp. Um, and everyone kind of realized this is maybe not great, but on the other hand, we don't have anything else to do. Like what else are you going to do? Go to signal that people can't use or don't want to use or that has weird features that people don't understand. So for Europe, they kind of want to be a power, as you said, but I don't feel like there's actually a meaningful strategy of how to do it. They have one tool in their arsenal arsenal and that is to kind of direct

funds somewhere and we've seen that in the in the last decades like europe tried to build its own google like their own search index and the trend spent a lot of money on that and it never got anywhere for a whole bunch of reasons but like one corporation is always going to move faster it's always going to have the better experience. There have been very successful European projects, like Airbus. That's the kind of plane that doesn't fall down, which is cool. Some people even specifically look for them now

when they go to book flights. I don't fly a lot, but when I fly, I try not to fly Boeing. Yeah, the Americans are really followed down on that one. It's kind of fucked up. But many of the other big projects, I don't know if outside of europe people have heard about gaia x which was a huge endeavor and they threw

billions at it to like build a hyperscaler infrastructure open source standards of interoperability blah blah blah blah it's a dud like no one used it it's bad and when they couldn't get adoption they also integrated like amazon into the consortium like what the fuck are you either you want to be sovereign and then amazon can't be part of it or you're just dicking around and okay then tell me you're dicking around then i don't have to deal with it but that is the kind of struggle that europe is really facing like they kind of want to do something but but they don't know how. They don't really have an in. They are European, very relevant European digital companies, but in very specific domains. Like when it's about enterprise resource planning, there's SAP, which is huge.

It's a huge company, huge profits, very relevant. Half the globe runs on it. But yeah, that's very unsexy tech. It's also kind of annoying. And how many of those systems can you sell there's a limitation to what you can do like you don't have these explosive here's a unicorn here's an uber here's a whatever like those things don't happen here for maybe even good reasons but i think there's this problem for them to to face reality if we have

these specific companies and we could just focus on these specific things we we're good at we maybe have an in we might build upon but everyone wants to have like these sexy projects like the the sexy app the the thing that everyone uses on the planet we want to have the next google the next facebook the next whatever and that's just something that you can't manufacture like if you could manufacture even like china would probably do it. And even different American investors will try to do it. But it's always like catching lightning in a bottle. And that's, that just doesn't happen here. Yeah. And I feel like you also see even when those projects can be undertaken, you know, as you were saying, you can see the American companies or some other companies get in on it too. So then is it really like necessarily European in the way that we would expect? And I feel like one place, you know, to kind of expand

on what you're saying and to make it even more concrete is I know that Europe is trying to work on like an alternative to Starlink, you know, so its own kind of low Earth orbit satellite system. And I know there's divisions on that. I believe if I'm right, Germany is more opposed to it, whereas France is more pushing it. And I wanted to ask more about that division, right? Because I feel like Germany and France represent two distinct approaches to this potential issue problem, however we want to frame it, where, you know, on the one side, France seems to be really strongly pushing this idea of digital technological sovereignty for Europe, really investing in that. And Germany seems maybe a bit more on the fence. I saw just yesterday that Chancellor Olaf Scholz

and President Macron wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times together, where, you know, they talked about a number of kind of shared European priorities, because President Macron is visiting Germany at the moment, of course, trying to shore up relations there. And one of the things they called for was, quote, we call for strengthening the EU's technological capacities by promoting cutting edge research and innovation and necessary infrastructures, including those regarding artificial intelligence and health. And of course, somewhere else, they talked about a number of other technologies like AI, quantum technology, space, 5G, 6G, biotechnologies, net zero technologies, mobility and chemicals.

I've got bingo now. Yeah, but all the technologies they they want to do right and i feel like one of the things that we see very clearly is macron seems to be pushing this big time you know in france you do have all of these kind of new ai startups that seem to be doing quite well you know mr all is is one of the key ones that is getting a lot of attention but there are a number of other ones too and they really put that on display recently at the viva tech conference that they held. Whereas I feel like in Germany, one of the stories I've seen recently is kind of Germany competing for an Intel plant,

you know, to build the chips here. And of course we have the Tesla plant here in Berlin, but it doesn't seem to be so focused on, you know, pushing that idea of European tech, but rather, you know, again, whatever tech investment we can get here. And I recognize there are a lot of other countries in Europe beyond France and Germany. But, you know, France and Germany are two of the main power players. So how do you see that relationship and those kind of divided priorities in terms of how things move forward? No, I don't live in France. So I have an outsider's view. I mean, Macron has like this, I think he was at McKinsey. He has this consulting background and very much like, yeah, we need startups. We need to like, and that has been his policy for a while now.

And I think it's starting to, whether you think financing startups is such a good investment or not, but it seems to work at least to a certain degree. As you said, especially in the AI space, France has had some interesting developments and Germany would love to have some. But really, like who outside of Germany knows Aleph Alpha, which is like the German thing that no one uses because it's bad. I know France is now trying to position itself as like the third pole in the AI fight between the United States and China. Not even Europe, but France specifically and its kind of companies. Because like the rest of Europe really isn't following up on that kind of stuff, because Germany and tech is a very complex issue. Like on the one hand, Germany sees itself as like the country of engineers. We built the cars and the machines that build the cars and all that

kind of stuff. But on the other hand, there's always like a very, yeah, tech is a bit icky. We don't like it. It's rotting our brains and all the kind. It's But on the other hand, there's always like a very, yeah, tech is a bit icky. We don't like it. It's rotting our brains and all the kind. It's not like we follow up on it, but it's like a vibe. You can make a comfortable living less just telling people that tech is ruining their brains.

Hey, I make a comfortable living doing that. Yeah. Your criticism has substance. Thank you. Thank you. So Germany is kind of like, yeah, we kind of want them, but we also kind of

don't because it's, but then you have on the political level, everyone kind of wants to fund these things. But a key difference between Germany and France is France is a very centralized structure. Like France is run from Paris. Like that's how France runs from Paris makes the decisions and that's how everything's going to go. Even you're as far away as new caledonia paris is making the decision exactly and germany is a federal state with many decisions having to include the federal states having to like agree on things so that makes it hard because like okay aleph alpha is sitting in baden-württemberg is one of the southern big states like they also have a lot of car manufacturing whatever baden-württemberg pushes for a certain agenda and wants that and others don't want that and so germany is always kind

of hindered by this whole federal process of having to agree and different parties rule the different states and like it's a whole thing that makes germany very very passive it looks very passive from the outside just because there's so many conflicts of interest going on and everyone wants to push the company that is close to your party kind of like as it's everywhere like you try to get the money into your region because that's what your job as a politician kind of is so germany wants to have this whole ai stuff going but really my impression is that they really don't have any idea how they fund a lot of research like there's calls and you can get a lot of funding for ai

german has a center for artificial intelligence like every university has a center for artificial intelligence these days but a lot of the stuff you see is like yeah they also installed the open source libraries that everyone else uses and like there's not so much going on also because it's just so so expensive like stable diffusion the idea of stable diffusion was developed in munich like that's a team from munich but they couldn't really get it done because they didn't have the hardware and then stability ai the company came into we have all the nvidia cards you need like go through it so germany has like people who want to do things but we don't have infrastructure for it we don't have data centers that could work in this

ai race that everyone's going through like and that's not just a german problem like even american universities if you don't partner with google or microsoft or meta you don't have access to enough compute like you can't do research in that regard like you can toy around with little systems but not really in competitive environments so that's a big big problem for Germany to build up any form of capacity. And because Germany is most of the time following, okay, everyone's doing AI, we're going to do AI as well. Before, like when blockchain was kind of done everywhere else, Germany was still talking about it in the parliament,

if blockchain is maybe the future of anything. Like we're always a bit behind because we're following. Because we don't really have an idea of what to do as a society. We have corporate interests who want to push. Yeah, we also have to do AI because we might be able to sell it. Or we need to digitize everything because there might be a bug in there. But on a societal level, there's no vision for how does that fit in with how Germany sees itself. The German economy is very proud of being strongly defined by SMEs, small and medium enterprises, not big corporations that control everything.

Of course, we have them as well. We have Volkswagen, the big car manufacturers, whatever. But like a car is usually built not by the big company that prints the logo on it but they have all their suppliers and the suppliers are like companies that have between a hundred and maybe maybe a thousand people working for them like medium enterprises sometimes still family-led and germany is very proud of that but this kind of setup of smaller companies that are super focused on a specific thing that they do very well maybe even the best on the planet, doesn't fit in with how digital tech is developed. Because that is like scale and running everything for everyone as fast as you can burning through money. And that's not how most German companies see themselves. Like they want,

okay, I build a small thing and I sell it and then I make some money and then I build it up and I want to build this reliable thing, which doesn't work well. Like a few years ago, I was as an expert in the German Ministry of Economy. And some guy stood up in that meeting, it was about innovation and what topics would be interesting and relevant for Germany in the future. And he said, the problem we have is like people here in Germany, they build interesting digital tools and digital products, and then they grow to like 100 people and then they stop growing because they just want to run their company and everyone makes a comfortable living and everyone's happy how dare they and i really ask and you you think this is a problem like you build responsible companies that feed 100 families like that is a problem yeah but they

don't get you they don't become unicorns yeah who gives a shit like you don't get these very marketable things like we got a tesla factory here in it's not in berlin it's in brandenburg which is the area around berlin um but like there was so many protests against it and even like the official the water management organizations that we can't have that here like it's they take too much water we don't have the water like actually a friend of mine lives nearby and they couldn't build a school there because the water supplier said we don't have the water to build a school i'm sorry like it's not there and people brought it but like everyone wanted to open a tesla factory like they threw so much money at elon musk to build the thing there even though everyone told them like, no, this doesn't make sense. And that was before Elon Musk like ruined his image by running basically everything into

the ground. But they still gave him the expansion recently. Of course, because like now Tesla still makes you look like, oh yeah, they are the future. Self-driving cars in Germany is like guns in the US. It's a very, very emotional relationship. But that is like the challenge that Germany has. There's like a tradition of how business is supposed to work. And of course, you have like young people, especially here in Berlin, who try to do the whole startup and venture capital and just have something explode, sell it and then do whatever else.

But there's still a tradition and a way to see the economy and i think that's a bit in in conflict with how how to scale up digital things and i think that france just chose a different path has a bit of a different tradition and that makes it a bit easier for france to to do that well and they're doing it well they're doing it way better than germany is that's that's really interesting right especially that point about how, you know, when you have an economy focused on small and medium enterprise, that's working for a lot of people. But of course, when you look at this tech economy, that is not only about scale within a country, but global scale and needing to dominate so many markets just to be on a level where like,

you're maybe somewhat competitive and then still not even with these like American giants who have so dominated the world of technology and whatnot that it makes it so difficult to do that. And I feel like one of the good things about being in Europe the past couple of weeks and getting into being able to like talk to people in a number of countries about how things are going in European tech and how Europeans are feeling about technology, you know, in a way that I don't always get to do because, you know, I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, has been this real kind of anxiety about Europe's ability to innovate and what that looks like and who is doing that

innovation and whether Europe can keep up with everybody else or, you know, at least the United States and China. And I feel like one of the paths that Europe has very much carved out has been being this regulator, right? This government or this governing body that figures out the regulations for what these tech companies should be, setting a model for a number of other countries to follow through. And on the one hand, there seems to be a certain pride in doing that, you know, because it is moving this forward, it is kind of holding some of these companies to account. But then on the other hand, there's this concern that like, maybe it holds Europe back from being able to compete in the space with these other major companies. So I wonder

how you see that regulatory effort, what you think, ultimately, the goal behind it is, and how, you know, I guess European lawmakers in particular, but you know, just in general, how people are feeling about how this regulatory push is going. When like the AI Act was released a few weeks ago, now it's a month ago. The interesting thing is how Europe and like the European organizations framed it. I understand that they were relieved because it was a very hard, like, it's called a trilogue, like the three big parties in the European Union have to agree on a thing and it takes ages. But I understand that they were very happy. But the way they framed it was, this is the first comprehensive AI legislation in the world. And it's interesting that it's the

first. As a politician, it's very hard to innovate. Like you're not building shit, like you're writing legislation that everyone's pissed off about. But the EU kind of sees itself as an innovator in legislation. It's like, yeah, we are so creative with legislation. We understand all the things. And like, it's a very interesting framing of politics that sees itself as we need to innovate as well and communicate that they see themselves that way, which I found a bit

revealing, to be honest. But they try that. And of course, there's like a rift in European companies. Like one half says, yeah, this is a problem. We can't do stuff. Like the Americans can do all this stuff. The Chinese can do all this stuff. We can't do all this stuff. We're just limping along. Like we can never do anything. And they'll say, yeah, this is a big advantage for us. Like, because we do tech based on European values. It's always European values is a very important statement that one can talk for like three hours about here. But certainly the question of what those European values actually are.

Yeah. Having kids drown in the Mediterranean seems to be European values because that's what we're doing. But when we look at how different legislations played out, like GDPR for example, is also like, yeah, but we built this thing and European companies will be the first to adapt it because they're forced. But if other companies want to go to the EU, which they will because 450 million people, huge market, they will then have to adapt it and it slows them down. So then European companies have the advantage. And when other legislations introduce privacy laws or whatever, the European Union always has it.

They've tried to frame it as an advantage for companies. But that's really not what we see in the real world. If you look at, for example, digital advertising as a market. People say, you have GDPR, and now Google can't do what they're doing. But they're still doing it. They are compliant. And because the burden of compliance was so big, all the smaller platforms kind of died. It led to more centralization because every regulatory burden, of course, helps the big players who are already in the market.

Google can hire like a thousand more lawyers who gives a shit. 10,000? How many do you need? Who are like the American companies that are already dominant of course exactly they have the money and they can hire people and i mean they spend a lot of lobbying like they don't they make sure that the european union doesn't pass laws that they can't comply with like it's not the the conversation in the us right now with forcing bite dance to uh de-invest of tiktok like that's not what what the eu does it's like okay yeah you can still be in can all be meta and google and whatever you just forcing ByteDance to de-invest of TikTok. Like that's not what the EU does.

It's like, okay, yeah, you can still be in, can all be meta and Google and whatever. You just, if you comply to these rules, we're fine. Because the EU, as I said, it's an economic system. And they are a lot about like free trade and free market and fair playing ground for everyone on the market. Yeah, they're not going to tell meta to divest from WhatsApp because Germany is very dependent on it, right? Exactly. Because they're like, no, Yeah, they're not going to tell Meta to divest from WhatsApp because Germany is very dependent

on it, right? Exactly. Because they're like, no, no, we're going to regulate it and then it's going to be fine. And I think that that approach, while it's interesting and it is being received, like when GDPR came out, I think many people on the outside didn't read it very closely. I think it's idealized. I see it a lot in the US when people say, yeah, Europe has this GDPR and it's so amazing. And I think that story is a bit overblown. Yeah, I think you see it a little bit less so now, but like it's still, there is this narrative that like, look what Europe can

do. Look at how it's protecting data rights. Why aren't we doing that here? You know, in the discussion about even having a federal privacy bill in the United States is still like pretty much dead on arrival, right? Exactly. And it's not like there's nothing and it was a big undertaking. It took a long time to get done. And there's a few good ideas in there, a few less good ideas in there. But yes, you can regulate these companies. And it showed that they will try to comply, sometimes maliciously, like Apple is very, very well known to comply only very maliciously but it is kind of a success story but it's not a success story that gives any velocity to european

activities like we don't see this as something that enables european companies to do anything other like if you see bigger european companies usually the complaint is either uh yeah but we have this legislation it's kind of annoying and then they move out so they don't have to obey the legislation or they try to get exceptions carved out like the the german ai company that i mentioned alfalfa is very well connected to the to the german federal government they basically wrote the german position on the ai act and like they got a lot of like legal loopholes into german legislation so like you can scrape as much as you want if it's for scientific and blah blah data purposes so they can claim we're under the eu law and all this oh yeah they are very well regulated

but basically they still can do whatever they want so i think that it's a replacement action, kind of. Like, we're doing legislation, and doing legislation is good. I'm not saying it's not good to build legislation. Yes, every legislation has its issues, and not everything is perfect. That's fine. But I think it's very much the focus right now, because they don't know what else to do. Like, you can't throw enough money at this AI space

to quickly enough catch up. Like, you can't. Soon you will catch up space to quickly enough catch up like you can't soon you will catch up because the whole ai development thing's slowing down yes we can catch up to the level that everyone else is at but like that's a very expensive catching up for something that you can just download on github like why yeah and i know we also see with a lot of that european regulation the ability of companies, whether they are European or even American, to get in and try to shape those regulations to serve what they ultimately want to see, right? Whether it's with the AI Act and OpenAI and Sam Altman kind of coming over and making sure that their products have a lower level of scrutiny and regulatory compliance that's

necessary versus other types of AI models or whatever we want to call it. Or, of course, you know, what we saw more recently with the platform work directive, where these major gig companies, whether American or European or, you know, wherever else they're from, being able to very effectively lobby to ensure that the ultimate rules that are supporting the gig workers and ensuring their rights have been incredibly watered down and are now basically thrown back to the national level to figure out what governments are going to do, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that Sam Altman is a great example for like, when he did his tour through Europe, like his PR tour, and I mean, OpenAI, they're very good at

lobbying, interestingly good for how young that company is, like, in Europe, the member state that leads certain things changes that every few years like okay then and next time it's going to be blah and and open ai understood that spain would be the next one to lead the ai acts negotiations to the final phase so they started lobbying spain way before spain was in that position right so they were already massaged and properly prepared like they offered an office in madrid and all that kind of stuff they were really good about uh being there before the park was there like being there before they needed to be there and that was very well and then like even if you see like the european commission who says yeah we need to build up sovereignty european capacity when sam altman comes in like

uzula von der leyen like the the commission president she does the whole let's take a selfie with another and smile into the camera sam altman is coming to us and talking to us it's like europe wants to be its own thing but it's still very much when a big corporation from the us comes in they are treated like a head of state and that shows really how much of their own ideas they have how comfortable they are with themselves, because they still want like Big Daddy to come and tell you're doing good. Some of the pitchers to come in and tell you're doing good. And that's kind of where we are right now. And in some cases, they almost are like heads of state

with the power that they have and the infrastructures that can control, especially someone like Elon Musk and the space infrastructures. But I wanted to pivot a little bit because we're talking to a certain degree about innovation and ideas that we have about what innovation is and what different countries or different players should be pursuing when it comes to innovation. And here at Republica, you gave a talk about innovation. You

know, it's a term we often use to talk about technology, but you gave a broader definition of how you understand what that actually means. Can you talk a bit about how you understand the term innovation and how it's been reframed or even poisoned by these tech billionaires to serve their own interests? Like I think innovation is very much a defining term of this age. As I said, like even the European Union innovates in legislation. Everyone has to be innovative. It's not just a tech thing coming up with new technologies. Everyone needs to be innovative.

Everyone has their workshops and their post-it events and whatever. It's just a thing you need to do. But I think many people associate innovation just with technological inventions, like coming up with a new technology that does a new thing or that is interesting or that's, I don't know, smaller, bigger, whatever. But I think that's kind of misunderstanding what innovation actually is about. Like innovation isn't about a new thing. Innovation is about changing how things are. The assembly line wasn't so much a technical innovation.

Of course, some things needed to be figured out, but it was a different way of structuring work. A way of reducing labor power, of course, as well. But it's a thing that isn't really depending on a new thing. It's a way of changing how things are done or how things are seen. And I think that that is what innovation means, like change. And change is always a very political thing like if we especially if we live in democracies we want to be able to influence change we want to have a say in how to change and where change leads like what are the values that

guide the change that we are moving towards and i think in the in the last decades we've been really focusing on we need to innovate we build we're building new stuff but especially in the last years like in the last two years i gave talks here about like cryptocurrency and i.i and like all the hype things and like there's a pattern of we're building these new things and claim them to be very innovative and the innovators like sam altman and who cz and all these very innovative people that are very trustworthy. It's interesting that they're all compulsionary liars. They frame this, yeah, things are moving forward.

Like, look how we're moving forward. But then when we actually look at the things, like AI is still telling us to put glue on pizza. It's obviously not really there. Yeah, it's a cute thing. It's a cute invention. And it does a few interesting things. And there are use cases.

But the narrative doesn't fit to it. The narrative is it changes everything. The world's going to be different. And everyone's going to do yada, yada, have a humane AI pin on their lapel because that works so well. We've kind of adapted to talking about innovation with the new tech that we get,

a thinner iPad, a smaller iPhone, or a a bigger iPhone or at least a more expensive iPhone. Definitely a more expensive iPhone. Of course, because number needs to go up. And this gives us this feeling of progress. Like new things are happening all the time. Every month there's this new thing, a new AI model that can do whatever. And this gives us a feeling of progress that's not really there because they're actually not changing things.

Like we're claiming to live in an age of innovation with new things coming out, but in the end, what does it do? Like it gives Apple more money. Apple already has all the money. When it was about crypto, like Andreessen Horowitz was invested in all of that and made all the money.

Yes, we can do AI now. We can decide to give the money to open ai slash microsoft or to google or to meta or maybe to amazon so nothing changes but we have this constant feeling of change like and i think that that's a way that innovation has has changed from like it's ideal where it was like people come up with interesting ideas and then it gets tested maybe in production or in some some other process and then people write this is a better way of doing things and then the whole circle starts again and it's this constant idea of improvement everything gets better because we're innovating to like the same people are selling us something that doesn't mean anything but that

they can keep selling us every few months a new iphone that no one really cares about it there's a reason we don't care about new smartphones. It's not just iPhones. Android phones are the same. Nothing changes. But still, they do the whole event thing and it all looks very fancy. They try to frame it as this new huge leap about things that no one gives a shit about. And I think for them, that's a very useful narrative

because everyone feels like everything's moving. Yeah, we're moving. And we have problems like we have the climate crisis. We have so many issues and inequality everywhere on the planet. But we're moving. We're doing things. Things will get better because we're still in this innovation circle. But we're not moving.

We're doing the same thing over and over again, buying the same iPhone every year, renting from the same companies, having the same iPhone every year, renting from the same companies, having the same people making the decisions for us. And I think that that's a way that the idea of innovation changed. And we're still clinging to it as a way for us to manifest a future, like a way for us to feel like we are in charge and we're making decisions that lead us anywhere. But we're not moving. We're spinning in circles and we need to get moving. The problem is that a lot of the things that, if we look at climate change as an example, like I'm an old man, I'm like in the middle of my forties, like I see the end coming. But like when I was in school,

people told us CO2 is a big thing. Like this needs to stop. We've known that for decades, for many, many, and not in research papers, no one reads, like mainstream stuff. Schoolbooks had that. And we're not doing things. It's obviously not a problem of innovation, of coming up with new things. We know that solar panels work. And of course, engineers can maybe tweak them and make them more efficient or easier to produce and all cool. But the general thing is done.

We're just not doing them because they are not benefiting the right people basically and i think that that is a very problematic shift not just because it keeps the rich people rich which also is a big problem but because it keeps the population this a in this constant feeling of anxiety of new things are coming out that i need to adapt to what is my content creation strategy now that the new model is out and whatever. And we're always running and have this feeling of being pushed around and needing to adapt, which also is, as I said yesterday, it also is a bit relieving because we feel we're moving, but nothing is really moving. And I think that that is a very problematic turn that this whole innovation speak has given us and kind of locks us in place yeah i think that was a really compelling framing that i found in listening to your talk right in the sense that the companies

keep up this feeling of change or this feeling of momentum right this this feeling that things are getting better because they're the these new technologies being out there because now we have crypto and then there's the metaverse and then there's ai and there's always something new that they're kind of putting in the window to keep us entertained or distracted or, you know, at least like dunking on their stupid ideas on Twitter to give us something to do. Whereas at the same time, it increasingly feels like we're not really moving anywhere when we think of the big problems that we face, the crises that we face. And even I would say increasingly like technologically, right? Sure, there's the new iPhone, there's the new iPad, you know, there's some AI tech or whatever. But it feels like rather than really moving forward, it feels like that technological

push is increasingly stagnant as well. And on top of that, of course, is the idea that we can't seem to figure out how to make housing cheaper, we can't seem to figure out how to, you know, reduce our emissions to the degree that we need to. Obviously, Europe is better on that than we are in North America, but there's still challenges there. And it feels like increasingly that these companies, you know, use this narrative to help their business purposes. But in doing so, they also work to distract us from, you know, the real things that we would need to do to address these real problems and even see the type of technological progress or innovation or whatever word you want to use that would be socially beneficial to people and not just drive the next wave of tech investment in Silicon Valley or whatever other tech hub we're talking about. Yeah, I think that as a friend yesterday, like the, we kind of have taken all the political

values and meaning out of innovation. Like it used to be, you innovate for a certain purpose. Like, of course, as a company, you innovate to like cut down costs or be more productive or I don't know, fire a bunch of people, whatever. Like you try to do something that increases your bottom line which at least that's the purpose of a capitalist corporation i understand that that's how they're set up that makes sense like it's and you could innovate even as but as a non-corporation you could innovate based on your values like the world you want to see that's what

you try to work towards and current tech feels very much like it's lost that. It's just doing a thing. Like the Vision Pro, it's a VR headset, okay. But who was asking for that? You mean you're not working every day in your Vision Pro headset, loving the world that is around you now? Exactly. And getting a real neck workout because of the weight of it on your

head i'm actually one of the few people who sometimes works in vr because of the job i have but a lot of the stuff lost its meaning and it's very very hollow like yeah yeah there's a new thing and you you see that and people like i remember when people were excited when a new phone would come out because there would be something new and these days okay whatever and yeah the fans will buy a new thing but most of the time it's like who gives a shit because yeah that thing has been kind of played out like we've done it and it's fine totally there's a new color the camera's a little better maybe the processor has a new number on it like yeah but the camera has been great before yeah the camera is fine like it's fine like maybe we can direct all that energy and all that creative power of people towards something else but of course a corporation can't

and maybe that's that's okay but as a society we need ideas of how to push forward of how to manifest our not just european our values like what do we want how do we change our economy to be more climate compatible like how do we fight the climate crisis because there's a lot of talk and we kind of like it's not that we don't know what to do we can only buy dinosaurs no no we know what to do where to get energy from just have to organize it and maybe there's even some tech around like managing the grid in a smart way to like harness the sun where it is and then transfer the energy somewhere like and battery tech is still a thing that we can develop a lot on but like we have most of it there but now it's about

okay how do we organize that if we need innovation that space is probably about organizational innovation and probably about that's my personal opinion just reducing markets a lot of the time and saying yeah this maybe these are infrastructures that shouldn't be privately owned and maybe we need to get them back into our public control and manage them in a way that they do things in a way that we need maybe even data centers shouldn't be privately owned maybe they should be maybe not set up as a government but it's like public entities that the public owns and can decide, okay, this data center, when there is no sun and when there's no water, this data center doesn't run. Because no, because our value is that we want to save this planet where we keep all our stuff. That's the important point where we keep our stuff.

Yeah, of course. So like, but that is the kind of innovation that we actually need right now, which is based on political values. And yes, not everyone has my political values because other people are wrong. But that is what politics is about, like presenting your values, your demands and talking about it and like figuring out a way to build, if not consensus, at least like, okay, then it's not fully what I want, but at least it's getting us somewhere and then do the next step and do the next step.

And I think we've kind of lost that because we've outsourced this idea of innovation to corporations whose only plan is like, okay, for next fiscal year, we need something to sell you because the bottom line needs to go up. Because again,'t just you can't keep making money you have to keep making more money and that only works if you keep selling stuff which and you can't do like this also in in europe this whole idea of that we need to build green growth no growth isn't green if you grow you require more resources and that is problematic right now we haven't figured out a different way right now we don't need more. We need less.

You also had that in your presentation yesterday. How much compute do we need? And then organize, how to organize it? Who has access to it? And then I'm not saying no corporation should have access to compute. That's not the point. The point is we need to structure this thing that it corresponds to how we want to shape our communities, our societies,

and the world. And that's not something that the market very obviously can do. And that is a space where a lot of innovation can happen and where especially governments could have a very strong hand in pushing for certain things. Of course, I'm always very open to socializing things, but also even if it's just about funding certain trajectories and saying, yeah'm always very open to socializing things, but also like even if it's just about funding certain trajectories and saying, yeah, we're going to do this and this is how we see the world. And this is where we want to go, because that is according to our actual values. Yeah, I'm, of course, also open to socializing things.

But even when you describe this idea that these major companies, they need to have the line keep going up. So there always needs to be something new, whether it's this new thinner iPad, or they need to like tear their platforms, their successful platforms like Google search or something apart, just to try to extract a bit more ad revenue from it to show investors that they can make a bit more money. It really seems to be in contrast to me with what you were talking about before where, okay, maybe you have all these small and medium enterprises who are able to, you know, feed 100 families or whatever, because that's the number of employees that they have. And like, that's just fine. Like, even then, there's two very

different ideas of like, what capitalism is, right. And the thing that really kind of brought home your points for me was, when you were talking in your presentation about this idea that we have of the future, right? And how we think about the future and the tech industry really wants us to think about the future in a very particular way that they are in control of and that they are trying to shape ultimately for their own ends, right? Because the future is brought into being by creating new technologies that they say that they are going to create for us, right? And that is how we build a better world. But you noted how in the past, when we were often thinking about

what a better world looked like, it wasn't about the technologies that made it up. It was about the social progress that we were actually able to achieve, whether that is going back to Thomas More's utopia in like the 1500s, or even a property that all of these tech billionaires or most of them are pretty obsessed with in Star Trek.

And you quoted Captain Jean-Luc Picard, of course, one of the best Star Trek captains. Yeah, second best Star Trek captain. Yeah, I would tend to agree. I love Deep Space Nine. Cisco all the way. Totally. But so he said, the acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

When he was explaining kind of, you know, what the Federation was about, what the society was about. And I feel like when we hear the tech billionaires talk about Star Trek, people like Jeff Bezos, it's not about this idea of what Star Trek is, right? Where material wealth is gone, where we're working to better ourselves and humanity. It's about how can we go to space? How can we have these new technologies that we see in Star Trek? It's the technological vision of what a property like that is rather than the social vision that they are not super concerned of. And that seemed to me to be a very clear dividing line between what we should be going for and what Silicon Valley and the larger tech industry, whether it's in Europe or anywhere else is trying to push us toward i mean it's an ongoing joke that all these tech entrepreneurs can't read

like also like sam oldman who complained that oppenheimer was not a movie that motivated people to become physicists like yeah oppenheimer is not an uplifting story yeah who would have thought but um yeah they keep reading this thing and not understanding it. Like there's also this joke about, science fiction writers write about the torment nexus and the story, please don't build the torment nexus. And then the corporation comes out, hey, we built the torment nexus from the story, please don't build the torment nexus.

And that's a lot of what we see. Like, yeah, Star Trek, the replicator in Star Trek that just creates everything out of thin air, out of energy, and you have free energy everywhere. That's a storytelling device. That's a thing you need so you don't have to deal with how is stuff produced because you want to talk about interesting things. That's not what the story is about.

In Star Trek, even the starship doesn't matter. It's about confronting different ideas. A different planet is just a different idea. It's a different chapter and story to talk about something. But they don't understand reading, really. And that's really tragic, because we have this wealth of thinking, and not just in Western science fiction. There's so much science fiction and thinking about the future all over the planet that comes from different traditions, different values,

that could be very enlightening. And that could also be integrated in technological progress. It's not like tech never matters. No, of course, sometimes you need technologies to make something happen. And yes, the replicator is there. So no one is hungry. So people can express themselves and develop themselves and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, if someone comes up with a replicator, cool. But we all know if Elon Musk came up with a replicator, it would be a it would explode when you order the wrong thing. And B, it would be so expensive that most people can't have it. And I think that, again, that science fiction is by definition a political medium. Like, yeah, you write about tech, yada, yada, but you're trying to present visions of how, criticisms of how the world is. And there's

always a vision of how the world should be. Like if you say this is bad, that means you want something different. Usually you show what the difference should be. And they don't get that. And that's really impoverishing our discourse and our societies. Like it's very hard these days to present a vision that's not tech. Like, yeah, and then everyone will have this,

even sometimes science fiction movies these days, they feel a bit more hollow, like because it's everyone will have this device and that device and this magic thing that you can talk to. And yeah, okay, whatever. Ambient computing is interesting, but it's very rarely a compelling social vision where it's like, okay, what is interesting here? Like Star Trek is, I mean, that's space communism.

That's what it is. And that's why it's interesting because you see, okay, if everyone's basic needs are met, what happens? Interesting stuff happens. And that's something that's still so hard to communicate these days. Like even if you, and it's not just American tech people, like many people kind of don't understand what stories are about. And that's very sad.

And it shows us we need more liberal arts education and teaching engineers how to read a science fiction story so they understand what the actual meaning of it is, that would be very helpful. And even when the Ferengi come in contact with the Federation, you know, over time, they start to change and change their kind of capitalist ways. At least a bit. A bit, exactly. Not completely.

To end off our conversation, we have a few minutes left. We've been talking about this idea of innovation and also how Europe kind of sees its own, you know, sees it, how it approaches innovation and, you know, how it wants to try to be more innovative. I'm wondering, how do you think we challenge this idea of innovation that the tech industry has foisted on us? And that I feel like, you know, a lot of European countries are trying to emulate and kind of catch up to when they look at the United States and Europe and the economic success that those kind of tech monopolies that come out of those countries have achieved. How do we challenge that broader idea and how does that play into or how does it hopefully try to animate how Europe sees its own technological future? I think the most important, as you said, like Europe tries to

emulate a lot of what the US is doing because it sees, oh, numbers are very big there. But what is often overlooked, like we want an Uber. Like I think they made a bit of money in a few quarters, but that was basically bookkeeping tricks trying to get, and this is a thing that maybe works at some point in Europe, trying to get back to like, okay, what's a reasonable way of running an economy? And even a capitalist economy. Like, okay, the idea is people make a profit and that leads somewhere. Like Uber doesn't make a profit. What it does is it tries to destroy public transportation. That's what it does. Like that's what it's for. It's actually a goal to

get rid of that. And I think making more of a case of, yeah, we could build these things, but they are not really reasonable. A, they don't solve a social problem. Like if you look at these things, they're from Uber's promise. Yeah, people would just use their cars that are parked all the day. And that is just magic and everything's cool. And then people are like, no, no, this just creates more cars on the streets. Like that's what this thing does.

And it makes the work of driving people more precarious and focusing more on these kinds of things and actually trying to like whenever i talk to european politicians which sometimes happens i try okay explain to me what european values are and how what you do aligns with that because i think there could be a story about european values that is based on a more sustainable kind of economy, even a capitalist economy. It's kind of a buzzword. But in Germany, after the Second World War, the economy was called soziale Marktwirtschaft, like social market economy, which the history of the term is very complex and was a bit of a bullshit buzzword. But the idea was that the economy has to serve

certain social goals. And back then, unions were a lot stronger than they are these days. And it was like, okay, the economy grows and everyone should feel that to a certain degree. And looking back at that tradition and trying to say, this could be constructed as a European value. Saying, yes, and even in digital spaces, how do we build that? And maybe, yeah, maybe American companies will have higher stock value but who gives a shit like who doesn't matter like stock market is gambling so that shouldn't be relevant and we can build a different way of building the world even within a capitalist hellhole like but it could be a better hellhole it could be less shitty hellhole and i think that that is a path for Europe to actually be innovative, to build an

economy that has a lot of things that people might even want, and not just access to healthcare, which also is good. I mean, you're in Canada, you also have healthcare, which is good. But many people in the US don't. This would be a path for europe to show that there is actually a different way in comparison to the us and to china i'm not saying it's necessary always a better way it's not but a different approach to things where you can show this is how we do things here and this is what we as european government or institutions that's what we put money in that's how we structure legislation that's what we want to see more in the world and that could be like we want many small companies that all do their thing and maybe a hundred of them do the same thing in a slightly different but that is

cool and everyone can find their thing everyone can go home at five and be with their kids and friends and have hobbies and all those kinds of things. That is, I think, a vision that many people, not just in the EU, but if you are the EU, of course, you're caring mostly about the citizen. That is a vision that many people could get behind and say, hey, this is where we want to be. Because feeling like, okay, the stock market value

of whatever corporation just exploded, like no one feels that. Like no one has anything. Yes, Jeff Bezos is even richer. Congratulations. We don't care. Building a world where people feel that political change has brought them actual change in their life that they appreciate is important, especially in the face of Europe having like growing fascist movements in all countries, in France, in Germany, in Italy.

In Italy, they're actually governing. And I think that is a large part of what makes that growth of fascist movements possible is like the promise of progress no longer working. The promise of progress was your life will be better. You have a better life. And that doesn't always mean you're richer. Like sometimes you can just ask,

there's like a number for every society, like how much money do you need to make a year where more money doesn't make you happier? And it's way lower than people think. I think in the US it's like 60,000 bucks a year or whatever. If you have that, you have housing, you have all the food you need, you have entertainment and you can do whatever the fuck you want and that is outlining that as a vision

not like we need more billionaires no no we need fewer billionaires way fewer we need no billionaires but we need to distribute things so that people can have a a life where they probably still have to work a bit for their income but have a clear path of doing something with their life that enriches their life, how they can express themselves, how they can create art or go see football matches, whatever, whatever they want to do. I think that that would be a European way that makes sense

and that has also a tradition and that I think people could get behind. And that could actually be innovative and where the world could say, hey, this is kind of neat. Let's maybe take some of that. That's cool. Absolutely. You know, think about the people and not just the billionaires. You know, it's been a long time coming, Tante. Happy to finally talk to you for the podcast. It's been a huge pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you. Tante is a sociotechnologist, writer, speaker, and Luddite. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks.

Production is by Eric Wickham and transcripts are by Bridget Palou-Fry. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week Thank you.