Tech Won't Save Us - The Left Doesn’t Hate Technology w/ Gita Jackson

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

Paris Marx is joined by Gita Jackson to discuss why the left’s hatred of AI is justified, why a different approach to technology is necessary, and how they’re reassessing their own relationships with digital tech. Gita Jackson is a co-founder of Aftermath. 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 Kyla Hewson. Also mentioned in this episode: Gita wrote about why the left doesn’t hate technology. Gita also wrote about downloading digital music onto a Snowksy Fiio Echo Mini. Chris Person wrote about the Boox Palma eReader as an alternative to Kindle. Learn more about Mike Pondsmith and his Cyberpunk TTRPG. Gita will one day get Paris to watch Frieren.

The technology itself that comes from these major corporations, they want you to use systems that don't actually work. And they want you to be happy about it. And that I think is what leads people to becoming tech pessimists is because you look at the technology that is surrounding you in your life. And it's just ceasing to work. And it literally feels like it's flipping you off all the time. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with the nation magazine.

I'm your host, Paris Marks. And this week, my guest is Gita Jackson. If you're a regular listener of the show, you will probably be familiar with Gita already, as they have been a previous guest and also appeared on the end-of-year live streams that I do. But maybe you also read their work at Aftermath, a great video game and culture news site that if you're not reading right now, you absolutely should. Really, I had Gita on this week because they wrote a fantastic piece about why the left doesn't actually hate technology. You know, the right is kind of making these arguments at the moment that the left hates technology and hates AI, and that means that the right is, you know, kind of more forward thinking, more embracing of the future. They are correct.

And we know that that is not the truth. So I figured I needed to have Gita on in order to talk about this. I thought it was worth having a conversation with Gita, especially to break up, you know, our kind of episodes on Jeffrey Epstein about why the left doesn't really hate technology or, at least, you know, most of the left. But the problem is the type of technology that comes out of this system that, you know, Silicon Valley has created, but that is associated with, you know, capitalism and the incentives that come from that system and the type of technology that comes out of that system that then produces tech that, you know, works against our interests, right? That doesn't really serve us. And thus, as a result, we have to push back on, we have to fight against

to make sure that it's not worsening our living conditions, our quality of life, our work, and all of these sorts of things that, of course, we're directly seeing with generative AI right now and why it needs to be so vigorously opposed and why the left, or many people on the left, not everyone, is quite active in doing that, right, and pushing back against generative AI and its larger societal effects. So that's kind of what we talk about in this conversation, but we also talk about the things that we like about technology and how, you know, we want a very different vision of what technology is and could be that actually serves us more broadly and that requires rethinking the idea of technology and of digital technology in particular that Silicon Valley has

pushed on us for these past few decades that especially in the past few years we have been reaching this moment where we recognize that it is really not working for us and that we need to pull back on that. So, you know, that is really the scope of this conversation, what we're digging into. And I think that, you know, if you're someone who likes tech won't save us, that this is really going to be up your alley and hopefully really resonate with the ways that you are feeling about technology as well. So I hope you enjoy the episode. If you do, make sure to leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think we'd learn from it. And if you do want to support the work that goes

into making tech won't save us every single week, so we can keep having these critical, in-depth conversations about, you know, so many aspects of the tech industry and how it affects our society, but occasionally these positive ones, or at least somewhat positive, like this week, where we talk about our vision and how we think that something, you know, could be different. So if you do enjoy those things, you can join supporters like Eric from Glendale, California, and Varun from Santa Monica, California, by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Gita, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us.

Hi, it's a pleasure to be back, Paris. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so excited to talk to you, as always. You know, it's been far too long since you are on the show, but we have a really good reason to have you back, which is, of course, as you well know, the left hates technology of all forms. I'm wondering why you can tell me why the left hates technology so much. Well, have you ever had a personal consumer grade printer before? That's my reason. Oh, my brother. Brother, the manufacturer of the only good consumer-grade printer. No, it's, there has been, I think, in the recent round, as Bryant, a friend of both of us, Bryant merchants pointed out, in the recent round of fundraising for Anthropic, there has been a sort of meme that has proliferated throughout the internet that opposition to or support for AI can be something you can predicate. along left, right grounds.

And baseline, that is not an argument I agree with, because I see people of all stripes, even people who politically are not on my side at all, say that they're grossed out and disgusted by generative AI and the things that it creates. And also, because, like, there are dumb leftists that also like this stuff. Like, it's that tweet. I do not support a woman. Some of you bitches are very dumb. It's true of people across the political spectrum.

But also, it's something I don't believe because. there is technology out there that I do enjoy and like using and think could be a net benefit for society. It's just that when people start talking about technology as a discrete object, frequently what they mean is the most extractive and most repressive and oppressive technology you could have. In this case, we're referring to generative AI and AI assistance and companies like, and OpenAI, who are all, I think I can say on this show, I think all those companies are evil. Absolutely, 100%. I just recently wrote as much about Open AI, but we feel the same way about the rest of them. It's fascinating to me, like there's many things like a pickup on in what you

just said, and we will get to a lot of it. But even the term technology, right, and how it is like defined. Like for a long time, if you talked about technology, you basically meant like internet technology, digital technology, right? Any other form of technology was not considered technology. It did not like fit under the term of what we're talking about when we generally talk about technology because this is what the industry is focused on. This is what the industry is pushing. And now it feels like, especially in these recent kind of like discussions, the kind of scope of that term is narrowed even further around generative AI and like what is being pushed in this moment. And like, it's such a reductive way to talk about.

about technology and what is going on, right? Yeah, like, let's expand the definition of what technology mean. What is innovation mean? I think MRNA vaccines are an incredible piece of technology. Love them. A huge innovation. I have a bunch of me. Yeah, I want to get jabbed.

Let me get jabbed even more. You know, I think high speed rail, the kind that is not being developed, but big fans of trains on this podcast. Yeah. I absolutely love that. Oh, my God. If I could get to Chicago from New York by train, if I could go to Toronto by train, I would be golden. I would be so happy.

How is there not a high-speed train between Toronto and Montreal? Like, this baffles me, you know? That doesn't make any sense at all. Like, that's the perfect corridor for high-speed trains and high-speed transit. There's also little things that I've been using in my life. I asked, I'm sure you're aware of Chris Person from Aftermath. Heard of him. Yeah, you know.

Recent guests on the show. Yeah. A totally normal, regular person, Chris person. We're recording this episode on his birthday. Happy birthday, Chris. Oh, happy birthday. Yeah. And it'll be belated by the time it airs, but, you know.

Yeah, of course. But, you know, I think anytime someone says it's your birthday, it should count as your birthday. You should just feel like it's your birthday. Totally. Totally. Because you're allowed. And we should also celebrate half birthdays.

That is my thing. I, yes. You know, you've mentioned that to me years ago. And at the time, I think I had lower self-esteem. But now I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I think you should just have a party whenever you want for whatever reason, and everyone should act like it's your birthday. I think partyful is also a meaningful piece of technology in my life. You know, like there's little things and there's big things like this, but the idea that in order to be in support of technology, you have to be in support of the financial interest of Silicon Valley is what really frustrates me.

because when you say technology is AI, is generative AI, that is what you essentially are saying, that there was a vaccine that just lost funding and will now have to be indefinitely shelved for the herpes simplex virus, which would have allowed people to be vaccinated against any derivative virus that is like illness that is caused by herpes, which includes shingles, which I know a lot of people of my generation have because they were encouraged to get chickenpox by their parents who didn't know any better. that is technology I would so much rather our government and our economy to vote, like, orient itself around. Instead, we are in this place where, as Chris probably mentioned,

rampices are through the roof, no one can buy a hard drive anymore. You're not going to get your fun consumer luxury electronics, like a new switch or a new PlayStation. Don't even try to get that steam machine that Chris is so excited about. Oh, my God. I'm going to be so bad. And it's not going to happen now because the entire world's economy is oriented around the finances of like two or three companies that are not even making a product that functions.

Like it makes me, it is very much an emperor's new clothes moment. Like the emperor, Sam Altman is out here nude as hell. And I feel like I'm being forced to tolerate him. It's wild to me too because like I just came across this study that was like published last year by Open AI. where they like basically admitted that hallucinations are part of the product. Like they're not going to come out. So it's like the whole notion was these things are going to get better. We're going to like get it out of the product at some point.

But here's open AI like the leader in the charge for generative AI being like, yeah, you know that thing where like, you know, the technology that we make that we say is so intelligent and like basically human level smart. Yeah, it's just going to make things that are wrong all the time because that's built in there. Yeah. Great. Yeah. You know, I feel like we keep coming.

across these cases. The blog that I wrote that you read and that you invite me on for the left doesn't hate technology. We hate being exploited. Which is in the show notes for listeners. Yeah. It was a response to a really dumb blog by some random person that I just kept seeing on the timeline. And you know what? Sometimes you read something and it makes you so angry that you write 1,500 words in about half an hour. And that is what happened to me where the insistence that the potential for good that this technology could maybe possibly do in the future is the reason why we have to invest in it now and we were foolish if you're a leftist for not investing in it. That is just speculative at best, you know?

Like that is something you could speculate about the abilities for AI to cure cancer. That there's a speculative case you could possibly make in the present right now. AI has caused a school shooting where the casualties were children. They were like eight, eight 12 year olds died, where multiple children, again, have taken their own lives because of this.

I used to say that Q&N really scared me because I'd never seen something drive people to psychosis, like with no previous history of psychosis so quickly. AI drives those same kinds of people even faster. And it's like you get your own personal Q&O when you really get deep into it. And there's examples and examples of it not even being able to do its core functionality correctly.

I know that OpenAI has said it's patched the R's and Strawberries thing, but I saw a video of someone a month ago asking OpenAI, asking ChatGBTBT, how many R's there are in strawberry, and it not being able to answer it correctly. So you have to be, the word I keep coming back to is credulous. You have to be a credulous buffoon in order to take these things and then project outward optimistically.

I believe the idea of fully automated luxury communism is something that I really wished would come to pass. But the more we can see the way that this technology interacts with capital, interacts with corrupt governance, the more it becomes clear that it's just corporations milking the government for all the money they can get and then not delivering a product, as they have done previously in the last. 10 years. Totally. And like, you know, you talk about how, you know, reading this blog kind of like,

you know, kind of motivated you to, to write this blog in response to it. And for me, like my version of that recently was, one, seeing Sam Altman say, you know, basically denigrate humanity and be like, you guys are concerned about the energy and water use of AI. Have you considered all the energy and water that humans use? And it's like, dude, what is wrong with you? And then for the very next day, as you mentioned there, the Wall Street Journal reporting that Open AI basically knew this person in British Columbia was planning to do a mass shooting. And employees inside the company up to a dozen were debating whether to tell the authorities. And ultimately, the leadership was like, no, we're not going to tell them. And then, of course, the person goes on to kill eight people, right?

And now they're trying to clean up the mess and all that kind of stuff and try to smooth it over. But this, like, totally incensed me, right? And if we're going back to talking about, like, AI as a technology and like, oh, my God, we need to adopt this. We need to put it into like every part of society. And oh, my God, the left is like so behind because it is not embracing AI like the right. And again, we can talk about the distinctions there. But like that argument just seems so fundamentally deeply wrong to me because it's not that the left doesn't understand AI or isn't interested in AI. It's that we have looked at AI.

we have like analyzed what AI is, what generative AI is in particular, and have determined that it is like a social cancer and should not be widely adopted. And like that is the reason why we approach it like we do, not because we're just like, oh, we don't like AI, you know, we don't like. I would even argue that you don't need to have a robust technological understanding of how AI operates in order to be opposed to it. Because all we have to do is look at how it is being used. It is being used to eliminate human beings. beings from jobs. That's its number one purpose right now. And executives who adopt it will openly outright say that is that is why they're adopting it. You can be opposed to AI on those grounds without understanding how a large language neural network works whatsoever. I mean, even if you don't, Seamus Blackley, who like was one of the founders of Xbox and somebody who have a weird fondness

for on social media because he likes to bake bread. He like went and like baked bread with like four-ish yeast. in England. It was very cool. I think a very cool thing once you stop being a tech executive is just to get really into bread. I think that's such a good use of your time. And then two, he gave me like a cold interview. I cold emailed him when I was a baby journalist. So I just like, I have a fondness for him now. He was so sweet to me and very humble. But he posted a link to this blog, which I think is probably more tech boosty than he intended it. But I read it and it's like you can write a G like an LLM in Python in like 43 lines of code. And it won't be, it'll be an LLM that serves exactly one purpose, probably. This person wrote it for creating new baby names, like gave it a list of baby names,

then was like create baby names that are similar to this. But the only thing that something like Open AI is doing with that basic concept is adding scale to it. And that is it. And it's, it's not, like, once you get it down to its tiny little, like most tiny version, of it, you really see how much of a sham this entire operation is. The reason why they insist they need more and more data isn't necessarily because the AI models are going to get better. They will all be flawed in the same way because once you reduce them to their tiniest little form, it shows you exactly how those programs work and that more data doesn't mean anything. They just want access to copyrighted materials. And they want government grants and they want to make large,

like multi-million dollar deals with corporations like Disney. That's what they want. And like you don't, you don't really need to be technologically savvy to understand how capitalism works. Or even if you don't want to call it capitalism, just call it business, right? This is how business works. Businesses work to create more money for themselves. Why would you say, well, our technology is basically only good for sorting large data sets and that's it, if what you want is millions and millions and millions of dollars. Totally. And, you know, this is also why they're building out this massive infrastructure, right? Because they're trying to cement this idea of what technology is, you know, this notion that we need to all be reliant on generative AI models, on chat pots, on image

generators, and all this kind of a thing, right? This is going to be a core feature of technology going forward. And everybody has to adopt it. And of course, now we're in the moment where Open AI is losing money, Anthropic is losing money. You know, I'm sure Google and Microsoft are losing money on these products, but the idea is we are going to lock you in to using generative AI. And then once you are dependent on it, once you have built it into the way that your company operates, the way that you as an individual, kind of, you know, live your life or do your job or what have you. Then we're going to jack the price. And because you are dependent on this technology, now, you're just going to have to figure out how to pay for it. You're not going to be able to,

like, fully pull yourself off of it. And it's like, this is a tactic that we have seen so many times in the past with the tech industry. This is how they work. And it's like we feel baffled that they're doing this again, you know? You know, it reminds me of the, my first foreign to the job market was in the height of the millennial optimism like movement where we all wanted to work mission-based jobs. And wouldn't it so, isn't it crazy how all these tech sector jobs all insist that they're going to change the world? Like, suddenly you can, people forget that you can lie. It's like something that comes to mind frequently when I see the way these companies

talk about themselves and what they want this technology to do for the world. Why would you tell the truth when you get money for lying? You know? Like it just really, really, really frustrates me. The same playbook happens with like,

WeWork. WeWork positioned itself as a tech company. Why? Because when you say you're a tech company, you become eligible for a lot of grants and a huge valuation when you go public with your IPO or whatever. business words, business words. But if you say that we're going to revolutionize the world, we are a tech company, how we are

a tech company is not really clear. And we're going to do something so fundamental that you want to get in on the ground floor as the economy reoriented itself around WeWork as a business. You can just say that stuff. You can literally just say it. And historically, it'll work out great for you. Uber and Lyft also did these things. NFTs, cryptocurrencies.

They all said these things, but they are not actually changing the world. They never did any of that thing. They enriched a small number of people, and that is exactly what is going to happen here, and is in fact currently happening. Absolutely. And only the biggest players can get in and even participate, right? It's like Sam Altman is on his quest to become one of these, like, dominant figures of Silicon Valley, but like what other good is actually going to come out?

And that's not even a good. Like, you know, that's just Sam Altman kind of carving out his space, right? But like, what else is really going to come of this other than the cementing of the power of these massive tech companies? Okay, sure, you might get like open AI sort of added on to the side. But even then, it's like highly dependent on the cloud services of Microsoft and Google and I guess Oracle now or whatever. But it's like, you know, they're still all tied together. You still have the major players who are there. I remember, do you remember early on in the AI wave when there was all this discussion about how open AI was presenting this massive threat to Google?

It's like, at the time, I even wrote a piece being like, this makes nether. sense. But it's so funny to me in hindsight that that was like the early argument because it was so clearly like not going to displace Google from where it is. And now Google is like, again, more powerful than it's ever been. Yeah. You know, it's Google school's fucking Gemini. I had to go deep in my Gmail. Again, a technology that I like because it makes it easy for me to communicate with people around the globe. Had to go deep into my Gmail settings so that Gmail wouldn't write emails for me. And it was an important email to an editor that I was writing. And I was a important email to an editor that I was writing. And I I pressed reply to this email and it had a draft filled out for me. Yes. I was disgusted. It made me

want to shoot my computer with a handgun. Like I felt like weirdly betrayed. This is supposed to be a technology that just works. And what doesn't help me is when you're doing the communication for me. That's my job. I'm a writer. Don't take that job away for me. But it's also like I, it is become such an obvious fad in trend that it just makes me really angry sometimes. Now, when I use these devices that I've used every day, I've talked with Chris a lot about the idea of, I'm wearing my fucking Johnny Silverhand t-shirt as I think of this, but the idea of looking back to the cyberpug like hacker ethos, the 90s hacker mindset, and thinking, where did we go wrong from here? These people were, like, if you read the cyberpunk 2020 and a rulebook for the tabletop game, you can see, like, Mike Ponsmith worked at Microsoft.

It's a really built-in and personal resentment of those corporations. There was a basic distrust of corporations that existed. And now I feel like everyone has kind of just given up on this idea that you can resist them. But there is a lot of, like, cool gadgetry that exists. and exists outside of these wheelhouses. And I'm like seconds away from becoming a Linux person at this point. I'm so disgusted with these technologies. There are alternate ways for us to live and be technological and also engage and be

participate in society without having to like the fucking line up and suck at the teat of Bill Gates. Like there's no we, the longer this goes on. I do not like that image. I don't appreciate that. I just need to say that. I know. I was discussed with myself as I was saying it, but I was like, there's no other way for me to describe how to, like, I feel repulsed by this. There's so many things that Microsoft does, not to mention like the BDS boycott of like Microsoft product projects. But I, the longer this goes on, the more I'm actually realizing like, I actually really love tech. And for that reason, I want to return to like a personal, non-corporate and modular experience of technology that I used to have that people used to be very excited about.

Like I wrote a blog, which we mentioned earlier, about my little MP3 player that I bought, right? Like a digital audio player. That's like a really, it's a fun new hobby space that I'm really enjoying. I'm actually about to write a blog. People have started making themes for that specific MP3 player I bought, the Snow Sky File Mini. and they're like, someone made like a Fallout theme, like Winamp themes, basically.

Someone made it, so like it's just a video, like an FMV of a tape going into a tape deck, and then every time you push a button, it animates like the different buttons of the tape deck. And it's just like, people used to have fun, like fiddling around with their tech and making it personal to them. People used to show off, like, their hacked iPods

and like all the random things they do to make their tech personal and a part of them and not an expression of their corporate allegiance. Now what I see is like you go online and people want the technology itself that comes from these major corporations. They want you to use systems that don't actually work and they want you to be happy about it. And that I think is what leads people to becoming tech pessimists is because you look at the

technology that is surrounding you in your life and it's just ceasing to work. And it literally feels like it's flipping you off all the time. Totally. Like, I could not agree more, right? I feel like I hate tech in the sense of like the industry that is known as tech. But like technology itself is like so fascinating, right? You know, even earlier, you were talking about the trains and, you know, we could add like renewable technology and like battery technology and like all this stuff that is like so

fascinating and so cool and like changing so much. But I feel like I'm kind of. of coming around to this view, like, as I think about this more and more, that I feel like the smartphone was in some sense as a mistake. Not that I think that we all need to give up our smartphones because it feels like it's so like built into life in 2026. You know, like, you kind of need it to get by. But it's like the idea that everything or like virtually everything should be done by this single device that is in the corporate interest for these. companies to make us feel that this needs to be the center of our lives, both digital and physical,

I think was a mistake and I think is something that, like, I'm increasingly challenging, but that I'm seeing more and more people be like, we need to take a step back from this. And it has gone way too far. I completely agree. I completely agree on that point. You can see a lot. The smartphone was maybe the first time I really, like, embodied and embraced, like, techno-optimists. like techno optimism as like an autonomous person.

I was in college. It was like I was no longer under my parents' roof. It was the fucking Obama era. I was like iPhones, give them to me. I used to watch the Apple keynotes, you know? Me too. Oh my God. I loved them, the spectacle of them.

And it felt like they were giving us candy. Totally. It felt amazing. But when I look, I think it was, it's probably around the existence of Spotify, where you begin to see what the real mission of the smartphone is. And the mission of the smartphone is become addicted to this device. Like, that's it.

Reorienting high listen to music so that I am buying MP3s largely from band camp, occasionally from iTunes when the artist is big enough, like too big for bandcamp. And physically putting them on a memory card and listening to music that way has made it so that I discover more music, listen to more of my existing library, and have like a more intimate connection to the music that I listen to, to this device. I hardly ever use my phone to listen to music when I'm on the go anymore because it's also just a worst device for listening to music. When you stream things, you're compressing them so much, the music sounds way worse. And there's like literally nothing worse than being underground

on the subway and you're in the middle of a song and it cuts out. Like it makes me angry. Like it makes me mad. And an MP3 player, you don't have to load anything. It doesn't have to connect to the internet. That and I have Chris wrote a blog about this too. The books Palma, which is a phone sized MP3 player, not MP3 player, e-reader. It is an e-ink cell phone size device. It can connect to the internet, no cell phone signal. So I downloaded Libby on it, which is the library app. And I am reading so many library books now. It is a feast. I go, I went to the strand downtown. And I saw a bunch of books I wanted to buy. And instead, again, I'm using, I sign up for Storygraph on recommendations of Molly from

Citation Needed, Molly White. And you can just take a picture of a book that way. And I added it to my To Be Read list on Storygraph. And then I checked them a lot from the library. So it just made me feel like I'm actually invested in my literal local community, right? The library card that I use to sign up for Libby comes from the library that is down the block for That's a real physical location. I'm invested into a system that needs my support and is local to me.

And I'm using technology to bolster to that connection to my specific community. I buy my friends albums on Bandcamp and I put them on my MP3 player. I am not just like being flung around by an algorithm. I am no longer chained to a device that tells me what I can or cannot do. You can see this a lot in Game Dev. Also, I know a lot of independent game developers who develop stuff for mobile. They hate working with Apple because Apple has made it very clear that they do not think of games as art and they will expel you from their walled garden as anytime they want, basically,

and you have no ability to argue with them. Steam is the same way, et cetera, et cetera. If I could have a Game Boy-sized device where I could play all my mobile games on them, I would never download anything in the app store ever again. And you can really feel how much you rely on this piece of shit when you try to divest from it and you understand that it wasn't better. It was just convenient. And that is like, again, what Open AI is trying to do. Like, I have Gemini has made its worm its way into my fucking email. I can't go on Google without getting an AI summary. They want these things to be ubiquitous so that we don't remember what it's like to not use them. But I do. I do. And I remember when you can search things.

on Google and you would find what you were looking for. Oh my God. Like, I'm resonating so much with like everything that you're saying. Like, I feel like my motto lately, and I've said this to a few people, is basically just like, I hate phone. Like, I'm so done. I hate phone. I'm so done with it, you know?

Yeah, I literally do. Like, and obviously I still have it, you know, because I travel for work and blah, blah, there's shit that I need on the phone. But it's like, I don't want to use the phone. I don't want it to be like the center of my life, of my existence to be this thing that I'm like so dependent on. And, you know, I've talked about this with Liz Pelly on the show in the past who wrote this fantastic book about Spotify, about how like I noticed. And obviously, there were other things going on in my life. You know, I was going to university. I was getting

busier, all this kind of stuff. But like when Spotify entered my life, the way that I related to music changed a lot in the sense that I was not like seeking out new music as much anymore. You know, I was not trying to discover what was out there. I was just kind of like being served up what was given to me, listening to things that I had listened to in the past, which inherently, I think that second piece is not inherently bad, right? If there's stuff that you like, it's fine to keep listening to it, you know, well into, you know, the later parts of your life or whatnot, right? That's totally all good.

And I still do plenty of that. But I felt that I was like really missing out on discovering new things, on finding new music. And that always kind of disappointed me. But unfortunately, I was like so busy that I never really. really tried to go seek out and do something different. And again, it comes back to what you were saying about the convenience, right? It was like it was very convenient to use these services.

And I still have a streaming service at the moment. I have Dizer, which is a French streaming service, because I haven't made the full step that you've made yet, but I have an iPod classic that I'm planning to mod, but I've just been too busy to do it so far. And I'm going to stick Rockbox on it. And I can't wait to see all the different themes and stuff, you know, saying like you were saying about your digital audio player.

But I feel like the piece that really resonated with me from what you were saying was there are these devices where maybe they can connect to the internet, right? If you're talking about like the books palma, but the fact that they can connect to the internet is not like the key kind of component of what they are. It's like they are doing a specific thing. Maybe you can connect to the internet to get something, but that kind of constant connection to the internet is not key to what is happening there. And I feel like that is like something that is really distinct in the gadgets and the type of technology that has been really pushed on us for the past couple decades now basically, like, you know, since the smartphone really, where one of the things that used to stand out to me, and I'm sure some like listeners who are more familiar with Japan will be like, oh, you're misunderstanding it. But like when I would go to Japan, I would notice that or like learn about Japan, they would have all these gadgets, right? They would have all these different technologies, all these unique little things. but the fact that so few of them seem to be connected to the internet.

That was not a key piece of the gadgetry that was happening there. And as in North America and Europe, we converted to like everything needs an internet connection, everything needs to be connected, everything needs to be producing data for these companies to absorb. It felt like that kind of piece of it never fully took hold over there in a way. And it feels like one of the things that I find exciting is like going back to gadgets that again, are not centered around the internet and are doing specific things and doing them well in the way that you were saying. Yeah, like a modular personal cyberpunk with a relationship to

technology where each piece can be removed. It's not like I have to upgrade my entire phone if one aspect of it isn't working in the way that I want it to. I so love the books, Palma. I can do some basic like browsing, but even most websites too much for it. I love it. I love the e-ink screen and e-ink screens are only getting better and smaller and more compact. We're all going to have the shell-shaped e-reader from it follows by the end of the decade. I really, I really feel that that's true. You know, I do think also you're correct. I look at where a lot of the technology I do like, like consumer technology I like is coming from. Almost exclusively, it's stuff from Japan and China, especially China. All the really cute little digital audio players are seeing,

they're all from Chinese companies, and they're fantastic. They are kind of still chasing the utility of the iPod, but they don't make the iPod anymore. So that's why these companies exist. But even then, you look at things like dumb phones. The flip phone coaster lasted for so much longer in Japan because not everyone thought you needed one in order, they needed a phone to be on the internet for all the time.

That's a good point, yeah. A lot of people were happy playing really lightweight mobile games, on their flip phones. And like, that's why those markets, like, they were still producing newer and better kinds of flip phones and bar phones. And I think that it is lucky that that technology persisted because now we are seeing a renewed interest in divesting from having an everything box, essentially. It's interesting to think about how the difference between discoverability of music changed before and after Spotify. But before Spotify, I really was like a music blog person. I was reading Brooklyn Vegan.

You know, I was reading all these different human curators of music. God, my favorite was The Buddyhead. And Buddyhead has now become like, they only do socialist memes on Instagram now. Love it. Yeah, I mean, oh, great turn. Great turn for them. Love that. And I really relied on human beings to tell me what bands were good or and bad.

The Buddyhead is where I discovered the band Girls for the first time. and they had that really beautiful first album that I loved. And then after that, it was really like I was, yeah, I mean, the first time I heard Nikki Minaj, the first time I heard Itty Bitty Piggy, it was because a human being recommended Nicky Monage to me. Now I feel like if you're hearing a new song for the first time, it's because the algorithm added it to one of your playlists. And that is really disturbing to me. It is, but in the same way, it's like everything old is new again. I remember growing up and we had a really, really good rock radio station.

Radio 104, God out of Hartford, Connecticut. And it was really good. My brother's music taste is 100% a result of that radio station. They had a local music festival they would host every year. And then when I got to high school, they got bought by Clear Channel. And then they started to just suck ass. And like they used to be like a really anti-Nicholbach. I'm sorry, I know you're Canadian.

When I was younger, I actually saw Nickelback in concert. Yeah. Wow. Wow. I, well, listen, here we go. My first concert was Hansen. Okay. Because I love those three little blonde boys and they love Jesus. I had, I had burned CDs of Nickelback music. Wow. Wow. Wow. No one else liked Hansen like I did.

I think I had a Hansen CD back in the day. You know, I was just a, I was a rock chick. I was born to be a rock chick. So Hanson is like, you are in the kiddie pool of rock music similar, similar to Nickel for sure, for sure. But it was, yeah, the Radio 104 went from like a, we do not play Nickelback because we human curators of music have taste to this is our clear channel mandated playlist and we cannot not play any songs from it. And that you, I mean, when you look at the way the world is right now, where really regressive, like fascist forces are trying to close culture down around you and make it possible or impossible to say certain things even. Every time I see someone saying unalive, I want to unalive myself. I don't. I don't have suicidal urges. But it's a funny thing to say.

But it is, these corporations have learned that when you have total buy-in from everybody. And if you can make that impossible for people to not use your product, you determine what culture is. You just do. And I think if there's one thing we need to remember from our. Gen X brethren. It's Nirvana going on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine wearing a shirt that says corporate music media still sucks. Like these things suck. We don't have to happily participate in this. If they're going to drag us along, let it be kicking and screaming. Like, I want to make it as difficult as possible for a corporation to extract value for me.

I do not want to just lay down and be like, well, okay, if AI is the future, I guess it's the future. No, you're going to have to make me. Put a gun to my head, Sam Altman, with your weak little forearms. Like, totally. And, you know, one of the things that makes me really excited recently is seeing this, like, renewal of physical media, of bookstores, of, there's this article in the New York Times recently about younger people kind of bringing back video rental stores. These things didn't suck. They were dismissed because. there was a lot of excitement around the convenience of the internet and services delivered

through it that were not always better than what existed before. And now it feels like there are people being like, you know what, we kind of like this experience. Sure, maybe it wasn't as profitable as what was possible by making these massive platforms. But there's still a role in communities to have bookstores, to have video stores, to have these types of physical spaces, certainly record stores and music stores and things like that, right? And I'm in like, you know, it's not a complete thing at the moment, but I'm in a massive process of shifting back to like, I like buying Blu-rays.

I have a bunch of physical books. I am thinking about buying a record player and having some mix of like CDs and vinyl and stuff. And, you know, I'm, I'm just living this life. I'm trying it out. I'm seeing how it goes. But like I was saying,

I want to retreat more and more from this idea that, you know, this one device to go back to Brian Merchant's book about the iPhone, is going to be so key to our lives and to everything that's happening. And on that point, I was interested in asking you because you brought it up and you mentioned it in your piece, but I was also a big techno optimist for a while. And I know that you've written about being one as well. I was wondering if you could talk to me about your journey from like being a techno optimist, being very optimistic about what this technology was going to deliver

to us and shifting away from that. You know, I'm so glad you asked. me that because I feel like in the piece, it's not the point of it. And I, I didn't get a chance to fully explain my journey. So my parents are both like old hippies. So I always, like the, the household was always going to be a left-wing household. You know, my parents didn't want to indoctrinate us, but they allowed a lot of space for us to ask questions like, why does everybody need money? Why are some people poor and stuff like that? They were generally in support of me and my brother becoming politically active and especially for me like during I mean none of us knew what was going to happen with Obama and that was my freshman year of college and they had had people from the

campaign come out to overland college and put us on buses and say let's go you're going to go canvas in this neighborhood and let's go do it and I participated in that you know it was impossible not to get swept up in that emotion and my parents who are more left wing than that they also wanted a black president right like even if he didn't align a hundred percent on their views and their values. It is like my dad grew up in the Jim Crow South. You know, like I called him crying when it happened. You know, it was a moment that feels emotionally resonant even though I now hate Barack Obama with my life. But at the time, like adding on to that, my dad's career is in IT. So my mother got a, has a tenorship at a college and he, up until a few years

ago before when he retired, worked in IT as a PC specialist. So for me, and for him, hand in hand with our liberation from a oppressive government was an excitement for the communication networks that the internet could provide. We got a modem before anyone else I knew. And I was just a sponge for information. The idea that I could talk to people from other countries who live totally different lives for me. I completely ate all that up. I made friends as an awkward teenager kind of for the first time

with the aid of the internet. And it introduced me to more joy, more discovery, more books, more movies, more kinds of people. I was deep in the fucking

internet piracy game too. So I was voraciously like downloading and more information, more art. To me, that is what technology meant was just a window into, I downloaded a torrent of stranger things when I was in college because it wasn't available anywhere. And so I felt like I was doing some kind of magic spell that allowed me to have access

to culture that had otherwise disappeared. I remember being like in Eastern Europe and downloading a torrent of House of Cards to watch like the season or second season or something like that. Like this was back in 2013 or something. God. God, I meant strange days, not stranger things, but it's fine. Catherine Bigelow, way better than those two weirdos in Netflix. But, yeah, I remember a freshman year of college, I was downloading fan subs of the anime

Madico Magica in my dorm room every Sunday hungover before I went to the dining hall. And I was just like, this to me, like, I, and what was so cute is the fan subbers, like, left in one commercial every episode because they thought the commercial was. was so funny. It was for a drink called Morning Rescue. It always show like a sad office worker exhausted and then rest of like emergency like 911 firefighter people going in through windows singing morning rescue. It was just cute. Like people did that, right? Like a human being made that choice. I felt connected to those people. I felt like I was participating in a special community by watching that show. The internet is what made it possible. And it was like a little

transgressive too. I'm stealing. Ooh, almost I'm pirate. By the time I graduated from college, though, it had become clear the major corporations understood what that optimism was and wanted this workforce that was now really super jobless and around to buy in hook, line, and sinker to what they were offering as employees, right? So you've got all these tech companies saying, we're going to change the world. And I did want to believe that companies like Uber and Lyft and Airbnb and WeWork could affect the market in ways that made things more fair. But as my cynicism with Obama grew, so did my cynicism with what these corporations were saying. I think it was around the time Lyft was offering loans for, it was Uber offering loans for drivers to buy cars, where I was like,

Okay, so now you're, that just sounds like script to me. That sounds like you're, but you're buying at the company store. You're relying on this company to buy a car for you on a loan that they finance for you and you have to pay that loan back with the wages you earn from driving that car. Tell me how that makes sense. And if I remember like the interest rates were like kind of ridiculous. Yeah. If I remember correctly as well, I remember like arguing with someone my own age about this and

being like, yes, it's good that these people have access to transportation, but you have to understand, like, that now it makes lift in charge of their whole life. They might as well move to a company town. And people were like, no, but they're providing things for you. You blah, blah, taxis are bad. And in some places, it's really difficult to get one. And it's like, that is true. And I do think some things about the hotel and taxi lobby needed to be broken up, but it doesn't mean just handing control to another corporation. Like, there needs to be a diversified market if we want to still believe that capitalism works. And this is when I started really doubting that capitalism worked. You know, I think it was becoming so invested in Silicon Valley and all the

things they said they could do for us. And then seeing how they just consolidated money and power for themselves where I was really just, I became a cynic. I became pessimistic about all of these things and I became angry because they they lied and there was no consequence. That was like the scales had fallen from my eyes. I can no longer take anything tech corporation says in good faith because I look at the humble beginnings of something like Amazon as a bookstore and I see Jeff Bezos renting out a town for his stupid wedding now. And like that's that's what they all want to do. line go up until you're the richest man in the world. Totally.

And it's fascinating to me to hear your story because I feel like it mirrors so closely my own as well. Obviously, I love the early internet too. I love going on to all these forums. I love being able to rip music and, you know, get movies and shows and like all this kind of stuff, right? And there was the piece of like the 2010s and seeing the discourse around AI and stuff that that really radicalized me. And like, you know, the kind of fully automated communism stuff of like how it's going to destroy all the jobs, but then we can use the technology to free us and blah,

blah, blah, and how it actually just meant like algorithmic management and more pressure on workers. But like, the piece that even kind of came before that was Uber, really, you know, and the gig economy, right? And that was like, for me, it was like, no, this is like, this is like terrible. And it's being sold as like liberation and freedom. And this is just crazy to me. I was, observing it, but then also reading the work of, like, people who did great analysis of this, like, you know, Hubert Horan, of course, who is like, you know, one of the like original uber critics who did this so well. But yeah, it was just like, that was like a real turning point for me and a real moment of like wake up to what is really going on here and like how this

industry works and, you know, the kind of extraction and control and whatnot that is so that this whole industry is wrapped up in. And I'm sure like, you know, the Snowden revelations and stuff. played into that as well. It was like, you know, because there's so many discourses around technology that are like, oh, it's so liberatory and blah, blah, blah. And then you look at it and it's like, no, this is like private companies building out a surveillance network that then the state can piggyback off of. And we're supposed to act like the government is the bad guy, but the tech companies are the good guys? Like, what is going on? You know? Yeah, exactly. And it's also liberatory for whom, right? Is it liberatory for the workers in Africa that have

to look at extremely triggering material all day long in order to train these algorithms? Is it liberatory for any nation in Africa where they mine the minerals that are necessary for building computers. And then these countries are not asked to share in the profits whatsoever. Is it liberatory for the small towns where these data centers are being built where there are water and air is being poisoned? Who is it liberatory for? Then you understand what class struggle is, right? You understand there's workers and bosses and you're one or the other. And there if you, I think being on the autism spectrum can help a little bit here where it's just like if you understand binary thinking in that absolute if you understand that nuance is there but it doesn't matter really then you really see the

entire world for what it is there is a small small class of people that are at the top and they want to change the world so that everything funnels towards them and we are their serfs we are in a fiefdom we live underneath them i had this novel idea years and years ago and don't see case I ever end up writing this, but I don't know if I have the ability. But it was like a Game of Thrones style like dark medieval fantasy where there's a succession crisis. But the longer you read the story, you realize that this is like the fantasy like Reddit island that people have like, like SoCal and parts of the Bay Area have like broken off from

the United States and created like a fucked up feudal island. And it's just revered into the worst most disastrous form of. serfdom that could possibly exist. Because that's what they want. You look at Peter Thiel. Totally. I mean, he looks like a skull.

Yeah. Peter King Deal looks like Skeletor and that is the future that he wants to bring into the world. Like, it is, you don't even need like the fucking Epstein files to understand that all these people are in cahoots. Because if you look at the way that they position the works that they put out into

the world, it's you need us and fuck you. I think this is a really good actually way to pivot to the final thing that I wanted to bring up, which is going back to like the core of what I wanted to have you on the show to talk about is like, you know, this notion that the left hates technology and the right is like totally on board with AI, right? And we've talked about how the first premise of that is like completely flawed because we do like technology. We just don't like the corporate technology that's being pushed at us that is so extractive and horrible and has had these

negative effects that we're very clearly seeing. And that generative AI just like kind of really puts very clearly, right? But then there's the other piece of that argument, which is like, the Wright loves technology, loves AI though, right? And it's like to me, I feel like there's two segments of that where on the one hand, it's like, okay, there's a lot of people who are both in tech or who are like, you know, kind of like vehicles of capital who, sure they love AI because, you know, it like serves their interests in many ways. But then there's this other segment of the right as well, like, you know, the whole Steve Bannonite, like a lot of the MAGA movement that actually hates AI too.

I'm wondering if you could talk a bit about that. I mean, yeah, the idea that you can determine someone's feelings on AI based on a left-right basis is completely farcego, right? One, because the people that work in Silicon Valley are incredibly slippery about what their actual politics are. I remember, of course, during my tech optimist phase, they positioned themselves as left wing. They would say, like, this is liberatory. This is about empowering working people. They all are buzzwords. They all knew because it's not like secret knowledge. And then they used it as marketing against me. It's difficult to think of them of having a politics that is

based around anything other than the self. And when you look at that big picture, yeah, that is a right-wing that is a right leading worldview. But it is not right wing in terms of the way that American politics works. They are not socially or culturally right wing. They are specifically economically right wing and fuck everything else. They don't really have a feeling on it. In fact, I would say they're socially a culturally left wing only in the sense that they hate artists for whatever reason. They hate you if you're an artist.

They hate you if you're a working artist. And they think your talent is unfair. which you can only explain as bald-faced jealousy. Like in the same way that Ben Shapiro is jealous of every screenwriter that got work because he comes from a Hollywood family and nobody wanted his screenplays anyway. Makes you think about how like this is probably a bad. Maybe I shouldn't even go into this direction. But like how Hitler used to like be obsessed with Disney and like use the paint and stuff.

And it's like, I can't do this. I'll just be a fascist dictator and kill a bunch of people. Ben Shapiro has the same art. It's crazy. though, like, it is. For me, it is the best argument for universal basic income. I can possibly think of, like, what if Ben Japiro really did just get to sit on his ass and write his bad screenplays? We wouldn't have to hear from him, you know? He could just get his dumb, bad act. Him and Kevin Sorbo could make all the stupid movies they want. And they would have a happy life because he wouldn't need to make

money to live. He wouldn't have to sell multi-million dollar screenplays in Hollywood in order to have his James fulfilled, he could just make a movie and not bother the rest of us. When you look at, like, the right-wing people that love AI, they are in the same class where it's like, I wouldn't even call them crypto-fascists. They're just libertarians. And that is like, you can't treat a libertarian the same way you treat like a crypto-fash. They're just dumb people. I don't, I think came out of my mouth before I was just thinking about it, but it's true, like, oh, it is true.

Yeah. Like, ask any libertarian what they think should happen to people with physical disabilities. And then you'll figure out that they haven't really, they either are evil or haven't thought about it.

And like, that's, that's how you know if they're a good or a good person or a person that's evil. Whereas where you look at, like the White House loves AI because they know the left hates it and it's all about politics of grievance.

You know, they love using AI generated bullshit because they know it pisses off their biggest critics. It's why they keep using pop stars songs and their stupid TikToks and stuff, because they know that these pop stars really hate it when they do that. And also because Trump can stand next to some executives who say they're going to pour a bunch of money into building stuff and creating jobs and whatnot, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And it's, if you look, though, at someone like a abandoned figure,

that's someone who really deeply understands technology and has for a very long time been on the sides of, all the worst parts of it, like hiring impoverished people in the global South to mine for gold on World of Warcraft, which is like, one of the more evil things you can do, I think. But like, what an origin story, you know? Where did he get to start? Gold farming. Yeah. I'm going to start with my literal human slavery and work up to more different versions of

human slavery, essentially. Yeah, like he understands what's bad about AI. in the sense that he understands that this puts power in the control of Sam Altman when he wants power in the control of him personally. You can't look at right-wing critiques of AI as being populace. They're all about power going to the wrong people. But they are, they do exist, right? It is actually pretty difficult to find a politician on any side of anything who embraces AI in terms of like in our everyday lives. They too have concerns about regular people being able to.

get jobs. And it doesn't really have anything to do with like artsy, fartsy writers or anything, but just like, is a normal person going to be able to go to work and work a job? Like, that is ostensibly the concern of the right. And there are rightward critiques of this mostly because they are critiques of the tech sector's entanglement with the U.S. government. Like there's a lot of distrust and mistrust there. But again, that is just about literally, we don't want those libertarian freaks to have all the money and all the power. And then again, on the left, like, I think that people think that if you are a leftist, you are inherently against AI.

There are a bunch of liberals who kind of don't care, right? Yeah. There are also a bunch of leftists who, like, actually love AI. Like, I met leftists last year who were like, you know, I won't use the American AI, but the Chinese make AI too, and I love it, you know? And it's like, uh, I don't, I like, don't, what are you getting? out of it. Yeah.

Like I, that's my big question is like, what are you, what are you getting out of this? What is it? Grant Morrison is another person that loves AI. And I love their comic work. And I think that they generally have a pretty good politic about understanding how power flows and like the big guy versus the little guys, itescapable when you are a comic book writer. But they're obsessed with the idea of Dolly and making Dolly art because they have always been interested in this idea of the collective unconscious. And they see AI as a representative of that.

I understand that, but it's also like, dude, the dolly art is bad. You know so many cool artists that you could just send a bunch of gibberish to and they draw it for you, Grant. Come on, please. And I saw that, um, what's her name that wrote Fun Home? She used AI to help her compose a comic for the New Yorker. And I think with certain people, they are just lazy. Like, I do think certain people are just lazy and do want to take that shortcut. And I don't know how to tell people not to other than I believe in the actual immortal soul. And I do think you're hurting your soul. Like, I've become like a real, I saw the testament of Anne Lee and it changed some things for me. Like, I do think work is like a work in labor doing things physically with your body, thinking with your real brain and not out.

outsourcing those thoughts, I do think those are enriching, and I do think you should embrace the difficulty that comes from things. But if you're a boomer, man, I get it. We just don't want to do things anymore. You're old. It's time for you to retire. You're a Gen X or you're getting up there too. Sorry, buddy, but it's true. The tech industry found religion in like trying to create the AGI God and destroy the world in the process. The left found religion in the soul is real. The soul matters. we need to embrace creativity and art. And I think that's a much better way to embrace faith and spirituality than whatever the tech billionaires are doing. Absolutely.

I feel like we are edging closer and closer to making the world of Final Fantasy 7 real. And we're all going to have to get together and kill God. We got to do it. We got to do it. Sephiroth is chat GPT and we're going to have to shoot him with a gun. The Butlerian jihad is coming. It has to happen. We're getting there.

We're getting there for sure. Gita, this was such a fun conversation. I think we went in so many directions that I didn't even expect, but it was brilliant and lovely to talk to you, as always. Thank you so much for taking the time. Oh, my gosh. It is so much fun to talk to you. I feel like my brain expands every time we speak.

So I had a lovely time. And one day I will make you watch the anime for your end. You will like it. It's just about elves. Come on. It will happen. It has to happen. Every time on this show.

We were going to hear about this every time I come on. So remember. And at some point, I will finally find the time to do it. And then we'll have to have a discussion. Never at home when I talk to you. Finally once I am, which is good. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And then it'll be like a premium podcast where we discuss it.

Yeah, exactly. Share between aftermath and Tech won't save us. I actually would love that. Let's make that happen. We need to do that. All right. All right. Thank you for the conversation. Absolutely. All right. No problem. Gita Jackson is a co-founder of Aftermath. Tech Won't Save Us has made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Kyla Houston.

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.