Tech Won't Save Us - The Human Side of the AI Underclass w/ Joanne McNeil

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Joanne McNeil to discuss her new novel dealing with the human labor behind self-driving cars and the challenges of being a good tech critic.Joanne McNeil is the author of Wrong Way and has written for Dissent Magazine, New York Magazine, and The Nation.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:Joanne has written about the need for tech critics that aren’t insiders and tech media warming back up to Facebook.Paris wrote about the recent scandal around GM’s Cruise division.In 2014, Ursula Le Guin was awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and gave a speech that skewered capitalism.Joanne’s fictional tech founder was in part inspired by Holacracy and Dan Price.The fantasy of self-driving cars is highly reliant on remote drivers.Support the show

What am I feeling as a critic? And this is like in film and technology and anything. If you state someone's ideas fairly and engage with their ideas, if you put in the effort, if you're generous enough to understand what someone is actually trying to say or do, and you disagree with that, you are criticizing fairly. And a lot of these companies cannot deal with critics because as soon as you see them for what they are, they crumble. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week's guest is Joanne McNeil. Joanne is the author of a new novel called Wrong Way, and she's also written for a number of different publications, including Dissent, New York Magazine, and The Nation.

Joanne was actually one of the first guests way back in the early days of the show in 2020, and I've been looking forward to having her back on the show. And it's unfortunate it's taken this long, but to celebrate her new novel, her first novel, I think it was a fantastic time to have her back to have a conversation. And this is just such a fun one. Like, obviously, we talk about the novel, which has this focus on self driving cars and kind of, you know, the human labor that exists behind that, you know, with kind of a novel spin, you know, a kind of fictional story in there. You know, it's not a nonfiction novel or anything like that, but it gets to these kind of key themes that we talk

about a lot on the show and that are very relevant in thinking about transportation and labor and technology and all of these other things. But then we also kind of get beyond that, right? We're not just talking about this novel, but we're also talking about Joanne's work as a tech critic. We're talking about how both of us really kind of got to start writing about technology and being critics of technology. And there are just so many like fascinating insights in this interview that I think that you'll really enjoy. Like I would highly recommend you going to grab Joanne's novel because it's great. And I think it's always nice to like escape the nonfiction world, which I've read so much of obviously for, you know, this podcast and for

my newsletter and just out of personal interest as well, of course, but it's so nice to like step outside of that and, you know, move into a fictional story and just like get into a different world and a different person's kind of experience for a while. And, you know, Joanne's novel really does this fantastically well. I think it's one of those like kind of key tech critical novels that I'll often be kind of recommending to people like Tim Mohn's Infinite Detail or, you know, the works of Ursula Le Guin, who of course comes up in this conversation. And of course, Joanne mentioned some other kind of science fiction writers as well. But yeah, it was just such a pleasure to have Joanne back on the show. I feel like I shouldn't, you know, go on too much longer in an introduction and should just

let you get to our fantastic conversation. So I'll just say, if you do enjoy the conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues you think would learn from it. And if you do enjoy the conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues you think would learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes into making the show every week so I can keep having these conversations with people like Joanne so we can keep holding the tech industry to account and giving you new insights and perspectives on how this industry works, you can join supporters like Kent in Mystic, Connecticut, Matthew in Seattle, Washington, which he describes as the capital of acquiescent centrism, Yuriko in Los Angeles, and Johannes in Falkensee, Germany. So thanks so much to all of you for supporting the show. And you can join them by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Joanne, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. It's always great to talk with you, Paris. I'm so excited to have you on the show again. Like you were a very early guest with your

original nonfiction book, I guess that you wrote, you know, geez, I guess a few years ago now the show has been running for three and a half years. So it has been too long. But it's really fantastic to have you back on the show because I'm a great admirer of your work. And, you know, I just think you do such fantastic work on the tech industry and beyond. And so I'm very excited to dig into your debut novel with you. Thank you. So, you know, I want to start with the novel, right? Obviously. And I'm wondering, you know, you have written a nonfiction book in the past. As far as I'm aware, I think you're working on another one. You've obviously

written a bunch for a bunch of different publications on tech topics, on, you know, film, on, you know, so many different things. Why did you decide you wanted to write a novel in this moment? Why did you decide you wanted to kind of expand into this other form of writing? In my case, it was returning to the kind of writing that I started doing. And it's a matter of there's writing that's public because you found someone to publish it and broadcast it outward. And there's a writing that maybe it's a little bit difficult to find someone interested. And that's been my experience with fiction. So, you know, 20 years ago now, I was pretty diligent about working on science fiction stories. And I was always working on a novel. I completed one. It was not very good. I had always been writing fiction. And then sometime around 2008,

2009, I was feeling a little bit alienated by writing communities and especially sci-fi writing communities because that was a time when the fascination in sci-fi writing communities was Joss Whedon TV shows and these products. And I was trying to talk to people at conferences about J.J. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, this tradition of 70s sci-fi writing that was very radical and experimental. And I couldn't find a community and I took a break from it. And I started writing a blog that was a lot about technology and culture, a lot of tech criticism. From there, editors found my work, commissioned criticism and essays for me. And that's how I went down that path. And because I was getting so much, not like a famous author, but I was getting attention for this work. It was validating. But at the same time, while I was working on Lurking, so I got the book deal on Lurking

in 2016, I made a goal for myself to publish a short story a year to at least not write that part of me off. And I stuck to it. And I also, I'd always had some novel idea in the back of my mind, nothing that came to conclusion. But the funny thing with this particular book, I started it basically immediately after I finished Lurking. And I had this idea, the concept felt right. I had a sense of what I wanted to put into this story in terms of character and setting. And I also knew that probably my experience following the tech industry would

be relevant here, that I could have a critical lens without overwhelming the actual human story that I wanted to tell. So that's, it was a winding path, but I am very lucky to have had this book now. I mean, by the time people hear it, it'll be on shelves and bookstores. Which is always so amazing, right? To like walk into a bookstore and be like, how is my thing right there among all of these other people, you know, like it doesn't feel right. Yeah. Um, but I, I find it so fascinating to hear that story of yours and it's, it's the first time I've heard you describe it in that way, because I don't know, like I, I relate to it a lot, right? Like

I used to write a lot of kind of fiction back in the day and then kind of gave up on it because I was like, I don't know, I can't do this. Like, I don't know if I'm doing this well. And then I started blogging on Medium and that was how editors found me. And like, you know, I kind of slowly started to write for like some smaller publications people have never heard of. And then like for Jacobin and then like, you know, it kind of grew from there. And then last year, you know, I had of grew from there. And then last year, you know, I had my first book published as well. And so just hearing you kind of like describe that trajectory, I'm like, wow, that's kind of wild that like other people have kind of had this similar-ish experience. Like it's still different in many ways, of course, but yeah, I don't know.

I wonder if it's kind of like how people kind of got their start at this particular moment when we both started kind of doing this kind of writing, I guess. I don't know. Yeah. This is something I think about a lot now in terms of if I were starting out now, how would I break into publishing? I really don't know. Because the good thing about blogs was the community aspects that someone was interacting with you through comments, through having a blog role. And there was something inviting and porous about the community aspects at that time. I don't know how someone could break in the same way through writing alone. I feel like there would have to be an audiovisual or image-based component

to it, which as a writer, you might not have a handle on. Because I can say many of those experiences... When I was working on this blog, I had a day job in a call center, and it was pretty bleak. And I think now, how does someone who has a day job in a call center get to not just write a novel, but maybe write a book review in The Nation, which of all places, The Nation should be aware that certainly there are astute readers who work in call centers. Yeah. Like again, I was also working in call centers and there'd be times where I was working like, like 40, 50 hours a week. And I was like, still trying to like, write articles and like feeling like, how, how am I doing this? Like I have no time at all. Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. So, you know. Yeah, absolutely. And I do think about those same things sometimes, because people do occasionally ask me like, how would you recommend I kind of get started in this industry? And I'm like, I have no idea because I feel like things have so

fundamentally changed. And like, I don't know, I feel like even if you look at now, like you have something like Substack, which is like kind of a commercialized form of what blogging was kind of back in the day. And that still doesn't work the same way as blogging used to. It's kind of like for a Substack to work, you almost have to have already, you know, developed a following somewhere else. And if you haven't done that, then what is the way that you get started? Maybe like you have a tick tock that takes off and like, you just kind of lock out with the algorithms and whatnot, but it seems so much less certain as to how that works today. I don't know. Yeah. And one thing I don't want to go down a bleak path that for those writers and

musicians and artists and filmmakers who might be listening that feel stuck and don't know their way in. I will say that there is an audience waiting for you. So we just have to figure out how to get you to them. Because the work that these conglomerates are publishing, are producing, it's so cynical. A lot of it is just driven for this vague, allegedly political, but just completely meaningless, upper middle class viewer that there really aren't that many people, and they're all in New York. But there are a lot of people in this country who love art, who love books. And there are people like us who want to help you get your work to them. And we just have to keep brainstorming on this. Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make. And I want to pivot back to something that you were saying, you know, as you were kind of writing science fiction stories, and just feeling that, you know, there wasn't really a community there in that moment for the kind of work that you wanted to do. I wonder if you feel that that has since shifted over the past decade or so. And if kind of the

science fiction community has kind of evolved in a slightly different direction than what you were seeing around 2008 and kind of that moment. You know, there are two shifts that I see happening. And one is incredibly beneficial and would have changed my life in my 20s if it had happened then. And that is just the diversity of voices in science fiction where, you know, when I was writing in the aughts, it was a big deal to have a woman author at all, a white, cis, straight woman who went to a good school. If that author had been published, it would be a big deal. Now it's obviously much more diverse. Many of the most successful authors with very passionate audiences are women of color. And there are many authors who are trans. It's incredible that this is happening. And that's changed the landscape a lot. The fact that Octavia Butler is now canonized. It's not that she genre in a sense that like Philip K. Dick and only a handful of others 20 years ago might have been. That's major. And it is thought of as this kind of like

intellectual style of writing. It's very professionalized. I see people kind of want to write science fiction because they think that is going to be valuable in a marketplace almost, because we know how Silicon Valley will just mine sci-fi stories for ideas. And this prestige, if you go back to Ursula Le Guin's writing, when she was mid-career, which is a pretty lonely place as an author speaking from experience. But when Ursula Le Guin was mid-career, you can see her feeling very despondent about how her work is just not going to be nominated for awards. It's just not going to be taken seriously by the New York Times, because it's science fiction, and they think science fiction is just like kid stuff. And she had that chip on her shoulder. And I'm glad

that she expressed it in her writing, in her nonfiction writing, because it shows how much can change in a handful of decades that we have all seen that video of her accepting, I think it's the Lifetime Achievement Award at the National Book Awards. I doubt she would have thought that was possible when she was writing her letters to friends about how no one takes my stuff seriously. I think like the transition that it's, it's taken seriously in literature, but it's also has this function and prestige is a corrosive force. Prestige is elitism. Prestige is how people decide whether you were worth something or not based on looking at you based on, did you go to a good school? Okay, well, I'm not going to take you seriously. The number of writers of color who did not go to Ivy League schools is incredibly small. And it's basically impossible for those writers to break into publishing. That worries me a great deal. Because it's the

corrosive power of prestige. It's this belief that you can decide if something's worthy of your attention based on the aura it gives off, based on whether people you think are important think it's good. And science fiction getting mixed up with prestige has come with some benefits, but it's also come with its own kind of problems. Yeah, I think you can definitely see that. And, you know, I also think, you know, when you speak about someone like Ursula, Kayla Gwynn, like who listeners will know if they've been listening for a while that I absolutely adore. I find her work just incredible and was like some of that science fiction that really kind of, I felt was kind of like, you know, mind opening and really helped you to think about things in a different way that you would hope that

I guess maybe some good science fiction would do that. That certainly doesn't need to be the goal of all science fiction. But to think about how someone like her, who did really seem like on the fringes, has increasingly come closer to the center and can be recognized in the way that she was kind of, you know, before her death. But then I feel like also when you talk about kind of that elitism, which I feel like is something that has always been there. But I wonder if you feel like it has almost become in some ways more corrosive and more present and not just in kind of the art world, but in a way where we see it increasingly kind of throughout society, especially when we have a society that is so, that has become so much more unequal than it has been in such a long time. And you have kind of this class of people who is always kind of able to kind of get by in this way, or has these kind of privileges that are just kind of inbuilt. whereas you have this kind of growing kind of mass of everybody else who is just stuck constantly competing for not nearly enough. Oh, absolutely. And I think

this is something that's been a problem with arts forever, because it's just a matter of assigning value to something that we know, the whole economics example of if you're in a desert, and someone offers you a bottle of water for $20, okay, you're probably going to take of if you're in a desert and someone offers you a bottle of water for $20, okay, you're probably going to take it if you're thirsty. A diamond, on the other hand, had to be the value of a diamond had to be invented. So with the work of art and literature, the value has to be invented. And I find as a writer, one thing that I do value as community are those people who they can walk into a used bookstore, pick up a book off the shelf they know nothing about, read it in the privacy of their mind, commune with someone else's mind, assess it on its own merits, and have a really beautiful experience that was not shaped by someone else or shaped on who you are for liking this author, which is another problem too. It's like, are you a smart person?

Because you picked up this book by an author who's allegedly smart. But I think there are still so many people and I'm lucky to have a lot of friends like this who I know love that privacy that you can have with a book and love just making up your mind in that privacy. And I hope that my book, like my book, I'm really lucky that it's doing well, but it's not like a, there's definitely not this PR machine making sure that, you know, booksellers get like a pizza when they get the arc. Like that's, that's definitely not happening. So anyone who's picking it up is having a chance to read this book without pressure to be something because you're reading it. And that makes me feel good, no matter how it performs. I know that that's still an experience that can happen.

Well, if you are reading this book, then it says that you're a good tech won't save us listener. Definitely. I'll take it. Yeah. On the necessary reading list, if you haven't read Wrong Way, then what are you doing? But I do want to pivot to talking about the book itself and, you know, more of its content rather than the wider world of kind of literature that it lives within. And, you know, obviously, part of the reason that you're on the show is not just that, you know, I have a deep respect for you. But also, this is a book that, you know, really kind of touches on a lot of the topics that, you know, I talk to people about on the show all of the time. And so tell me about kind of the idea for this book. You know, where did it come

from? And why was this the story that you ultimately decided you wanted to tell in your debut novel? You might like this. I have ideas for novels, especially like sci-fi kind of ideas all the time. When the idea of doing something about self-driving cars occurred to me, this was 2018. And I just figured, okay, there is no way this technology is going to be here by the time I finish this book. I appreciate that. Yeah. And I mean, I think the companies would say that they're much more advanced than the technology on the road in my novel, but I don't know about that.

Yeah. And maybe you should describe, I don't know how much you want to kind of give away in spoilers or whatnot, but... I can say a little bit, which is that this is a company that is running a fraud. And I think what they are investing all of their time and energy into is the, again, with the aura, the marketing, the messaging, the messaging that sounds a lot like leftist slogans that might, that has a purpose of confusing people. It's a company that's not just allegedly progressive at hiring policies, but also a lot of its core beliefs are anti-hierarchical, which as the novel goes on, you'll see do not wanted something a little bit more like if one of the Silicon Valley billionaires started following a lot of DSA types, like the really public DSA types. And it was like, huh, I bet I could do this. I

bet I could say these things and still be everything like I've always been. I mean, Dan Price would be another influence here, the guy in Seattle who was, I feel like he probably did tweet out things like every billionaire is a policy failure. Absolutely. And to be clear, Dan Price is the guy who like paid everyone at his company $70,000 and got this big like kind of PR boom out of it. And then, there were some stories about how he was pretty terrible human being actually, but a lot of this stuff was like swept under the rug because he got this kind of marketing lift from this big kind of PR story that he did basically.

Yeah. And there are a few others out there who have made it a mission to solve capitalism or say things like we're going to be like capitalism has failed us. And I'm like, okay, it doesn't seem like it failed you. What exactly are you proposing if it doesn't involve giving your money away? The billionaire types who are far right and clearly believe these things, who are no joke, I mean, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk cannot overstate how frightening that power and that belief system attached to that power is without money. But then there are people like Jack Dorsey who are really vague and will spin some fairy tales if it puts them in a position that they feel like they need to be. Yeah. And one of the things I was quite

struck by reading the book, especially when your kind of founder, Falconer Goody, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly. Falconer Goody. eyes given, you know, how long you have been kind of writing about these companies and these people, but you're so skilled at kind of replicating the language that these tech companies and these founders use in order to like, you know, kind of boost their products and themselves and talk about these weird ideas, like the one you created for the book, Holistic Apex. What was it like kind of having to come up with your own version of tech bullshit for the book Holistic Apex. What was it like kind of having to come up with your own version of tech bullshit for the book? I kind of set as a goal for myself to make this incredibly satirical and fantastic, but also as people are reading it, realize this could happen. Like there is something like grounded in reality here. And what I was thinking is, how do I imagine something that's so absurd,

but enough kind of wiggle work with a copy and the messaging, the founders and the company can present it as normal long enough. And then it's just running out the clock because we're seeing this right now in this moment. We had this when your show debuted Paris like in 2020 or so, there was quite a lot of attention to these tech companies and it felt like something was going to happen. It was called the tech lash. I never really liked that term because I feel like that descent had been there for a really long time. But there was definitely the issue of reigning in big tech was galvanizing.

Right now, we're seeing Facebook basically normalized. It's back to square one with the nonsense ideas that Mark Zuckerberg put forward that Facebook is a democracy and friendship taken seriously after all this time. And like it's a neutral force as opposed to a corrosive force. It really just takes sticking to that message and exhausting the public to let something that's clearly a disaster and continues to be a disaster continue. And with Facebook, we know what we know the underclass that is making Facebook possible. We've heard so many stories at this point about the content moderators that make your fun times with your aunt and uncle leaving birthday messages or whatever people do on Facebook, who make that possible in the end, which is that they're driven to extreme mental distress. We all know that's happening. There are no real solutions in place other than allegedly AI, which is not going to

happen. And I could see that with this book, I wanted to put forth an idea of a kind of gig labor that would not be any more toxic or objectionable than what gig labor is already supporting these big tech companies. Yeah. And I think it's important what you say there as well, right? You know, we had this moment of tech clash, this kind of idea that we were actually going to do something about these companies. Some people would probably push back on this, but I think that it is fair to say that that moment has really kind of evaporated, right? Like even the antitrust push that we were seeing in the United States has, I would say, been quite firmly defeated by the tech companies. You know, certainly there'll be some small kind of wins that will come out of it, but nothing near to the scale that was kind of

hoped or expected in, you know, kind of 2020 and that kind of moment, right? And then even with the release of Threads recently, you really saw this kind of rejuvenation of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook as like the good guys in relation to Elon Musk's Twitter. And it was just so shocking that, I don't know, maybe it shouldn't have been shocking that that could happen, right? That someone like Mark Zuckerberg could be treated as the good guy again, after all that we know he has kind of put people media was ready to say, oh, no, he's the good guy now, you know, because he's not Elon Musk. And it was like, is the bar really that low? Is this the point that we've reached? Yeah. And I guess when I try to understand it, I put it in terms of is big tech as crucial an issue as, say, climate? I mean, we can all say they're linked. I mean, they're absolutely linked. But it's like,

is someone's attention better off served doing everything possible to see forth climate justice policy? Or even in this moment right now, I mean, do I value calling on my congressperson to do a kind of data privacy act versus like getting them to call for a ceasefire now? That's a pretty clear-cut answer. And the priorities here, big tech has never been a really top priority. It got a lot of attention. But for whatever reason, as much of a force as it is in our daily lives, as much of a force as it is in our workplace, in the way we consume media, it still can just feel like air and water of the internet. And that to me is something that I feel like as a critic of technology, I have to continually remind people that this is a company that is expressing its values through you. And

you might think you're interacting with your friends in a neutral way. But in fact, they've made these tiny decisions that are impacting how you can even communicate with them or what you're saying. And it's not the same as being out in a park and hanging out with your friends as much as it sometimes does feel like that. I hope this is just a temporary thing. And knowing Facebook, there's bound to be another big drama. And we'll see when that happens. If this good guy, Mark Zuckerberg moment continues through that, I don't necessarily know will, but I do imagine he might just take a step back a little bit as

a public face of Facebook. And that actually worries me a little bit more where without him as kind of like the face of the company, it can so easily rebrand itself. Yeah, almost like Bezos kind of moving back to the chairman role instead of CEO. And, you know, he's still there. He's still kind of pulling the strings, but he's able to distance himself a little bit from what is going on there. Talking about the novel again, you mentioned how it's a book that really does kind of deal with self-driving cars. Self-driving cars is kind of the technology that is quite central to what is going on here. You talked about how the book and the idea for the book emerged a lot from 2018. Of course, 2018 was this moment when you had an Uber

vehicle in Arizona kill a pedestrian. And there were a ton of kind of revelations that came out of that around, you know, how these systems were not working the way the companies were promising and all those sorts of things. It feels like that degree of hype never really returned. But it does feel like in the past month or so, we've reentered another one of these phases as Cruise in San Francisco has been going through something similar, I would say, as to what was going on there. And I wonder, you know, as someone who has a novel now coming out that deals with this technology of self-driving cars, that deals with kind of the kind of, I guess, deceptions that really have existed around this technology and

continually kind of show themselves to be there, what it is like kind of having written this book, I guess, you know, kind of probably expecting that it would have some degree of relevance today, but maybe not the immediate relevance that it does seem to actually have. It's actually really funny because I was in San Francisco about this time last year and I could see all the Waymos and cruise vehicles on the road. And at that point, I had turned in my book with copy edits. I was going to go through a few other passes with a copy team, but I couldn't make any substantial changes to the document. And I found myself like, has this technology advanced more than I thought when I wrote it? And I felt like I had to commit to what I, the research that I had done about the margin

of error of these cars on the road. I trusted that more than what I could see with my own eyes with these cars on the road. And I had this incredibly funny experience where I flew out to Phoenix, Arizona, just to ride a few Waymos because they had set up their ride hail service and it was raining. And every single car I booked was driven from start to finish by one of the remote operators. And that's when I kind of first learned about the remote operator workforce, which I think I kind of assumed that there were people who were pressing buttons or something if the car got stuck at a left turn. But I wasn't aware of that. If it's a rainy day, they will drive the car. And to someone else in the road, it looks like a Waymo going about its business. You have to be in the car to see that it's not a

safety driver who's just observing. It's actually a driver driving. That struck me as very telling of this illusion that Waymo, again, that's a point that you've made in your newsletter, Waymo is not like much better than Cruise. And another thing that's funny about this, this moment is they're going through all these layoffs, like Google is not invested in Waymo's outcome at this moment, they've cut that stuff, they clearly do not intend to deploy many more of these vehicles, because it is just like they shipped a demo, they are showing this as a demo. It can do quite a lot. But when there's a little bit of drizzle in Santa Monica, no, you're going to have the remote operators in the driver's seat again. And so who knows, maybe in five years, it'll be an idea that gets a lot of energy again, because these Silicon Valley types are excited about the idea of a self-driving car. And I think that's something that I really dug into in this book. It's like, what is it exactly that excites them? Why don't they want to be the billionaire with a driver of their Bentley or Rolls Royce?

Why don't they want some driver they can order around who can be their servant who's going to do a better job than a self-driving car would? I think that's something that I really want to tease out. Those kind of did those class dynamics. That's so fascinating. You know, I have never actually been in one of these self-driving vehicles. I was just in San Francisco last week and I was like, should I try one of these Waymos? Like, should I give it a shot? I was like, no, because I don't know. My stance is always like, if I don't need to use it, I'm not going to bother. Like I don't use Uber. I don't, I've never used chat GBT. Like I don't know. My stance is always like, if I don't need to use it, I'm not going to bother. Like I don't use Uber. I don't, I've never used chat GBT. Like I don't care. Right. And I don't feel that that makes my criticisms any less valid. So I didn't actually know that they had the remote drivers in the way that you, like, I know that there are remote drivers there who can intervene,

but I didn't know that they kind of so actively, you know, were engaged in moments when, you know, the weather is so bad and things like this. And, you know, as you say, this is a point that is really, you know, obviously very present in the book. And that I feel like we see time and again, and that the book illustrates really well is that it's always like a desire with these tech companies, not so much to get rid of the human labor, but to hide the human labor so that we don't fully know that it's there. You know, what are your reflections on how that has kind of played out and how it's kind of so continual? It is so funny that the same people who will say something like, well, humans are lazy, humans make mistakes, they sleep too much, humans are not good at tasks that automation can do. And then when you look behind the curtain, who is solving the most difficult tasks that an automated system can do? Humans, of course. And humans who are like, pay the least, respected the least. It's with every single AI application. As far as I know, because Chat2BT, this is the same.

They are imperfect. And those imperfections prevent these products from shipping to customers or enterprises. So they have to hire humans to do these really menial tasks and make sure that the failure rate isn't what it is. But I guess I wasn't expecting my book to be released in a year of AI. I guess I was still invested in what I had read about AI. And what I knew about the failure rates were that I didn't realize they're going to push this even with flaws and all because humans can always... A bunch of humans in a call call center paid nothing and respected, not at all, can always fill in those gaps, because that's their product. In fact, that AI underclass.

And I think the other thing, too, is part of the reason I wrote is because like, I'm a writer who can see myself taking one of those jobs. When I read about the content moderators for the first time, like, knowing the kind of, I didn't take that call center job because this was my dream to work in a call center. It was because I was, I needed to work and that was the only place that hired me. I've been in those circumstances where a really terrible job is the only one that I can take to pay my rent, to buy groceries. I could see myself working as a remote operator. I can see myself working as a content moderator. And I work very hard to make sure that comes through in my writing because I think there's a lot of academic writing about gig labor. There's a lot of academic writing about this AI underclass.

And sometimes it really has that surveillance, like another layer of surveillance, because it's coming from someone who, you know, as soon as they turn 18, they went to Harvard and they have just from there, they've, they've lived in a really isolated world and not had much contact with these people, not as subjects, but as people. Yeah, no, I think that's really well said. And I think that the book does that really well. Like it was, you know, obviously I went in, I was like, this is a tech critical book because Joanne wrote it. I'm so excited. But then as I was reading through it, I was like, you know, she's really kind of hitting the nail on the head with not just kind of, you know, the problems with this industry, but also kind of what this has meant and what kind of, not just the inequity that comes with technology and the way that technology kind of forwards these

unequal kind of work practices and, you know, the kind of precarity that a lot of people have to experience today, but also what kind of living in this increasingly unequal society actually means for people and how that experience has kind of been transformed, right? Where it's so much more difficult to get one of these kind of stable jobs. Like as we were talking about, like I've done the call center thing. I've, I've worked in a number of call centers. I've done the thing where, you know, you go to like a temp agency and they place you somewhere and, and all those sorts of things. Like I've been through all of that and it's terrible.

And I feel really like privileged that I don't need to be in that position anymore, but there are so many people who are and I feel like those numbers are only growing as this kind of economy and society kind of is transformed in this way. I don't know, I just wonder if you could kind of speak to that a little bit more, because you do illustrate it so well in the book, I think, in relation to kind of the main character that you follow. Yeah, I'm glad that came through. Because with Teresa, it was very important to me to show someone who is incredibly intelligent, has so much potential, and just things did not work out. I think there's a tendency in the sort of novels that conglomerate publishers publish

about working class lives, about people who are poor, to show them as just like these characters in Ben Affleck movies or something. Like they're just not the idea that there might be this woman who goes to the cinema and sees some classic film or like reads a bunch of books and is quite aware of the world and curious and fascinated by art. Also working in a call center is something I did not see. And I know that these people exist because I was one. I also felt that it was very important to like depict a character in midlife because I was seeing the data on Ubers and how the drivers of Ubers are typically, I think in their 40s or up.

The passengers are always like late 20s, like average or so. And that rings true with what I know of Uber and its client base. I have been in an Uber and I have noticed that the drivers tend to be maybe my parents' age. And it's worrying to me to see that at this stage of life, there are many reasons why someone would not have a retirement account. There are many reasons why someone would end up, you know, in their 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or later, and have nothing to do, have nowhere else to go, except something that isn't really paying all that much and just requires so many hours to continue with it. So these were like a few things that it was important to me

building this character just to make sure that she is human. And something that I've liked is a lot of people who have read the book have said she's relatable. I know there was this whole thing about we don't need women who are relatable. It's like, it's okay if they're bad. And yeah, whatever. But it's just like, when people are talking like that, it's always about like some novel about some rich girl who was just like gross and mean. And I just didn't want to do that. I wanted someone who's maybe like her suffering, which is not even necessarily aware to her. She's quite accepting of her life. She's accepting of a lot of things. I felt this is someone who, like the women I grew up knowing, someone who doesn't need to be famous or the best at anything, but just wants a decent life and is doing everything she can to get that. Yeah, I think it's really important. And I think it also kind of, you know, to me, as I hear you describe that, it also kind of brings to mind the other work that you do, right? You're not just a critic of the tech industry, but I don't know if it'd be right

to call you a film critic or, you know, you obviously write a lot about film and are really kind of engaged in kind of broader kind of cultural discussions. And I feel like one of the things that really stands out is when you look at kind of the depiction of the working class in a lot of kind of the mainstream kind of cultural depictions that people have, whether it's books or television shows or movies or whatnot, like it really doesn't get to, for the most part, what it actually feels to kind of be an average person in especially like American society, if we're talking about this kind of today and having to experience the types of things that you're talking about, rather it's a lot of the characters we see now are like somewhat wealthy or are in this kind of milieu where they kind of come from familial

wealth or they don't need to worry about it, or they're presented or depicted as being like broke or poor or working class or whatever, but actually have like a big apartment. And like, you know, there's not this kind of like real reflection of that in the kind of lived experience of this person. And there seems to be just a poor kind of not only depiction of the working class, but it feels like part of that is because the working class is not allowed or, you know, kind of pushed out of these sorts of cultural professions, I guess, in a way that they weren't in the past, which I feel like is another reason why your book particularly stands out. Oh, yeah, these were things that I had in mind as just pressures that I have felt. I've certainly had those moments where I've been in like a party full of leftists,

and they're saying how, oh, well, working class people can't afford to be writers. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm here. And you can give me some opportunities if you want some working class writing. But then at the same time, we have this sort of messy way of reading right now is like reading for an identity. So I know a lot of writers of color who have been struggling with this where it's like, from their mind, they wrote a novel, it's a novel. And a white audience, a white upper middle class audience is reading it as like instructions like oh i read this book now i know what it's like to be black in america because everything is just like they're perpetually learning like they didn't stop going to harvard and i'm so worried that my book is

going to be like read like that that like you read my book and it's a lesson in working class lives. No, it's more just like a snapshot of a reality that most people in our country are experiencing that is not depicted in literature because publishing as an institution, especially New York publishing, is extremely biased against working class writers or biased against a lot of types of writers but there is a class bias there in play definitely yeah so like it was important to me to show her as someone who can still find joy who can still have friendships who can still be present in the world and is not just someone on this treadmill for money is actually in many ways has refused that treadmill. And one might perhaps say did it to herself because she doesn't want

success that way. But from my perspective as the author, it's that that's a lottery. You can strive and you can strive and you can strive, but only a handful of win in that system and they're lottery winners that she is already kind of deciding not to be on that treadmill is something that I wanted to bring to this character and see what she does value instead of like these traditional markers of success. Yeah. Which as you say, is kind of very outside the, you know, kind of what cultural norms that we have or kind of the messages that we receive of kind of what people should be going for, or, you know, trying to attain in life. I do want to go back to something that you were saying a little bit earlier, though, because one of the things

that people may or may not know about you is that you've been a tech critic for quite a long time before the tech lash, you know, sometimes I feel a bit bad when I say like, there wasn't very much tech criticism in like the earlier part of the 2010s when obviously people like you were very much doing that and pointing out the issues of companies like Facebook. And many people were, but they just weren't getting the attention of the mainstream opinion or whatnot. But going back to what you were saying about kind of the Waymo and kind of being in San Francisco and seeing these vehicles like last year when the book was pretty much finalized. But, you know, you were kind of questioning whether the technology had actually advanced kind of more than you were aware of. And I feel like this is something that I experience a lot where I see this kind of new thing that is out there or this thing that has

kind of been recycled and is back again. And kind of the mainstream kind of public view and a lot of the reporting is like, look, it's moved so far. It's so great. And I'm like, I don't necessarily have the proof to say that it hasn't, but like my gut tells me that it's not because I've seen this so many times. So I wonder, you know, kind of your reflection on that after having done this work so many times, after being through so many cycles, but still being able to kind of maintain that kind of clear eyed view on these technologies. Oh, I think that's crucial for any good writer on technology. It's like having your gut, you know, when we had five years ago, these sort of like, stories in the tradition of bad blood is like, expés on yet another Silicon Valley company as broken promises,

and it's all, you know, hyped and made up. It starts with a reporter who is just noticing something doesn't add up here. Unfortunately, I think there are too many companies where things don't add up, and there are too few reporters. And at this point, we all kind of know that the audience for these stories is all kind of prepared. You know, if you have some new startup that's promising something, most of your listeners are going to be like, are you sure about that? I don't know. But I think it is a good skill to kind of like, listen for what they aren't saying. And remember that the flashy demos is that's how they get their money. That's how they find investors is just like doing something really dramatic and doing these magic tricks for the public. times to kind of push through that kind of questioning that you have yourself. Like,

do I have it wrong this time? Have I misjudged my, in my criticism, or do you feel quite confident in seeing these things and saying, there is this history here. I can see it very clearly. I just need to kind of stick with how I feel, you know, and kind of go for it because it's proven right in the past. You know i feel like i i i need more space to decide things is i am looking for technologies that are beneficial i am looking for projects that would be like arpanet in 1969 you know i'm looking for that that use of technology that would be to advance progressive society to to offer a better future for us. And there are few avenues to do that. One would be through nonprofits, through government projects, through academic projects.

And I do have to at least keep my eyes open that this might be happening, whereas I'm that recognizing kind of what VC and what venture capital does to these companies can really allow you to kind of see through a lot of the bullshit. And maybe as we start to wrap up this conversation, one of the things that kind of jumped out a couple times in the novel was hearing kind of your kind of founder type guy, Falconer, particularly kind of chide the socialists and the neo-Luddites a couple times. I wonder kind of your reflections, you know, having done this work for so long, where you see kind of tech criticism, kind of the tech industry itself in this moment, because we were talking about how, you know, they did kind of get away from the 2010s kind of criticism and desire to take action on them. So how do you feel about where things stand today? Well, my feeling as a critic,

and this is like in film and technology and anything, if you state someone's ideas fairly, and engage with their ideas, if you put in the effort, you're generous enough to understand what someone is actually trying to say or do. And you disagree with that, you're criticizing fairly. And a lot of these companies cannot deal with critics, because as soon as you see them for what they are, they crumble. That's something that I always keep in mind, whether it's a film or it's a new gadget. If you spend that effort to actually see what it is and not just like knee jerk, well, you know, it's, it's another startup. It's, it's gotta be garbage. I wouldn't write that piece because I, I just don't think it's needed. If I'm going to write

a work of tech criticism right now, I'm going to like actually engage with these companies and see what they're trying to build, why they're building it, what their purpose is, and then engage from there. And if they have a problem with my criticism, that also is revealing in itself. No, absolutely. I think it says a lot that the tech industry is so bothered by people who just need to call out the very basic kind of harms that they do and can't even accept that very basic level of harms that they do and can't even accept, you know, that very basic level of kind of skepticism of what they're doing today, but what they've also been doing kind of the past couple of decades, right?

Yeah. I mean, pointing out that these self-driving car companies have remote operators as a labor force, that's just a fact. That's not criticism. These companies receive it like it's criticism. You can't show, you can't hold a mirror up to them. And that says enough. Definitely, definitely. And what we've learned about cruise recently is that it's something like one point, I think it's 1.5, like remote drivers to the vehicle that they have in San Francisco, which is like, you know, uh, they claim to be making everything more efficient and driverless and blah, blah, blah. And then you see the reality, but only once, you know, there's a real kind of scandal or something really bad happens. And then we finally learn that the people who

have been looking at it, who have been skeptical of it, like you and I for so long, we're actually on the right track. Yeah. It only took dragging a woman through the streets of San Francisco for, I don't know, a couple blocks or something. It was something really horrific to get this sort of coverage about what they're doing. It only took an incredible tragedy. That was kind of a bleak moment. And it does make me wish that there were more invested into technology reporting, which I would imagine that if you are a tech founder, and you are sincere about what you're doing, you should want these stories to be published. Because you don't want to be confused with that kind of something as dangerous as that on the

road. I think there probably are a lot of people working in the AV space who have very sincere belief in what they're trying to achieve. And that cruise reporting is crucial to what they're doing. And I hope they see that. Absolutely. And, you know, I guess to close off our interview, you've written this novel, this fantastic novel that I would recommend everyone go pick up. What is kind of the takeaway? What is it that you want people to kind of take away from reading this and kind of the experience of spending 270 pages with you? Well, I hope that the characters come to life for the reader. I hope the reader has a moment with it. I mean, I read a lot of fiction and I wrote a book that I did not see in the world, which I feel like is, many novelists will say

this, that you write a book that you couldn't find and you needed. So I hope that comes through. And I'm grateful for anyone taking a chance on it because it actually does mean a lot as an author to have people willing enough to spend 70,000 words, like follow you along with those 70,000 words in a world as overwhelming and stressful as this one. I hope this book is an actual moment of respite for the readers. Really well said. I always find that I read so much nonfiction because of obviously the work that I do and I don't get to fiction nearly as much as I would like to but then occasionally when I do get to pick up a book like yours and spend that time to just kind of give myself to it it's always such a wonderful experience and so you know I would just wholeheartedly recommend people pick

up the book because it is really fantastic. And congratulations on having written it, having it published, on having it arrive in this kind of perfectly precise moment that works so well for it. And thanks again for coming on the show, Joanne. Thank you so much, Paris. It's so great talking to you. Always great speaking to you as well. Joanne McNeil is a tech critic and the author of Wrong Way. Tech Won't Save Us 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 tech won't save

us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening and make sure to come back next week. Thank you.