Tech Won't Save Us - Why Tech Billionaires Want to Shape Our Future w/ Rose Eveleth

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Paris Marx is joined by Rose Eveleth to discuss the end of her long-running podcast, why thinking about the future is important, and how tech billionaires try to shape our idea of the future to serve their ends.Rose Eveleth is the creator and host of the Flash Forward podcast and the author of Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (And Not So Possible) Tomorrows. You can follow them on Twitter at @roseveleth.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. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.Also mentioned in this episode:Please participate in our listener survey this month to give us a better idea of what you think of the show: https://forms.gle/xayiT7DQJn56p62x7Elon Musk says Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a big inspiration, but he seems to have missed its message.Karen Hao and Gideon Lichfield explained how Facebook’s PR team nitpicked one of their storiesBooks mentioned: Ruha Benjamin’s Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want and Jimmy Soni’s The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley.The New York Times recently wrote about a group of Luddite teens.Tommy Douglas won CBC’s Greatest Canadian contest for winning public healthcare. You can see the episode here.Support the show

You can no longer just like get a job, have health care, you know, have hobbies and like home and just like sort of have a normal-ish life where you go to work and like your boss isn't exploiting you and you're not being surveilled all the time. And you're not worried that if you get hurt, you'll lose your house. You know, like we just like are all living in this like state of complete anxiety all the time because most people are one step away from losing everything. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us in 2023. I'm actually recording this in 2022, but don't tell anyone. Let's keep it a secret. I'm your host, Paris Marks. I hope you enjoyed the end of year conversation that I had with Brian Merchant, Chris Gillyard, and Gita Jackson. It was really fun to kind of reflect on the past year to get those people together, to have a discussion, friends of the show, of course. I hope you enjoyed it because I certainly did. I also have a favor to ask. This month, we're running a listener survey to find out a little

bit more about you, about what you like about the show, and about what you'd like to see Tech Won't Save Us do into the future. So if you wouldn't mind taking about five minutes of your time to click the link in the show notes where you can fill out this survey, I'd really appreciate it because we want to hear from you, the listeners, to make sure that the show is reflecting what you want to see. Of course, what I want to do with it as well, but also to know what you like, what you're not liking, what you'd like to see more of. The survey is completely anonymous. It doesn't collect your email address or anything like that. So if you wouldn't mind taking a few minutes, fill it out. I'd really appreciate it. Now, this week, I have a really fantastic interview for you with Rose Eveleth. Rose is the creator and host of the

Flash Forward podcast and the author of Flash Forward, an illustrated guide to possible and not so possible tomorrows. I've been following Rose's work for a while, and they've been on my list to have on the show for a long time, since very early on in starting the podcast. And for some reason, you know, it just took this long to get them on the show. But I thought it was a really perfect opportunity because after almost eight years, the Flash Forward podcast is winding down to a close. Rose posted the final three episodes recently.

Highly recommend you go check those out. And so I thought it was a good time for us to have a discussion about the future, about how we think about the future, about how the tech industry influences how we think about the future, and to critically dissect those things and to consider what the importance of future thinking is when we are trying to create a better world or think about better possibilities for how society could function. Obviously, that is one of the motivating forces of this podcast, right? It's not just to critique technology in the tech industry, though we have a whole lot

of fun doing that, but it's also to think about how technology could be used for better purposes, but also how, you know, the society that we live in could be better, could be improved, could better serve all of us, right? And that's really at the heart of this discussion and what Rose was doing with the Flash Forward podcast. I'm very excited for what this year is going to mean for Tech Won't Save Us and for everything that could be coming. Obviously, you know, we'll have more information about that as the year rolls on, but I have some cool plans and hopefully they come to fruition. But in the meantime, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with Rose Evelett. If you

do, of course, 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 who you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week so that I can have these conversations with people like Rose, you can join supporters like Alex, Nuria, and Erica from Nebraska by going to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus, where you can become a supporter and support the work that goes into making Tech Won't Save Us. And with that said, thanks so much for listening and enjoy this conversation. Rose, welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm genuinely very excited to be here. I love this show.

Thank you so much. Some of the listeners who are like regular listeners would be like, ah, another person that Paris has had on who is a fan of the show, of course. Yeah, that's the best part of having a podcast is you just get to like invite people you think are cool to talk to you. Exactly, right?

Like people must realize this, right? Like because it's not even like a small podcast anymore. I can really invite like almost anyone I want to come on here and talk to me and they'll come. It is the thing about journalism that I'm always like, you just get to ask anybody any question you want. And like they can't yell at you because that's your job. But I would say I'm also very excited to have you on the show. Because as we've been talking about before this, I like slid into your DMS a couple years ago to ask you about Italian futurism, because you wrote an article for wired about that. You've been on my list for a long time. And I was just like, how have I not gotten to Rose already?

But this is a perfect moment to to have you on because your podcast, Flash Forward, which has been going for almost eight years now, is finally wrapping up, has just released its final three episodes. So I wanted to know, you know, if we were looking back at like, you know, an eight year younger version of Rose, why did you decide to start Flash Forward? What were you hoping to achieve or do with the show? Oh, I would love to say that I like had this grand plan and this like arc and this thesis about the future eight years ago when I started, but that is not true. I had just graduated from grad school and I was freelancing and I was working in podcasting, making shows for other people. And I was having a conversation with Annalie Newitz, who is an incredible journalist, science fiction writer. Amazing. Yeah.

Friend of the show. Was on a year ago, two years ago. I don't know. Yeah. And at the time, they were, I believe, the editor in chief of io9. Or they were like sort of working at io9 and Gizmodo. And we're just like, hey, do you have any podcast ideas you know like this new podcasting thing that's happening you know like what like can we do a podcast and i

was like boy howdy do i have podcast ideas and so i sent over a bunch to them and we talked about them and i've always been really interested in science fiction and journalism and ways to mix them and so i sort of pitched this idea of a show about the future where you have kind of little audio dramas and fictional sketches and then also talk to experts about what that would be like. And so the first season was produced for Gizmodo. And it was really just like because it seemed fun. And I was really interested in thinking about the future at the time. I was doing a lot of tech reporting and sort of noticing that like as there is now, but I think even worse back then, there was just not that much critique happening.

It was a lot of like, look how amazing the new iPhone is, was like kind of the main like technology journalism was more like gadget reviewing and that kind of vibe. There were obviously people who were doing tech criticism like that was happening, but I think not as much as now even. And so I started sort of working on this show. And then it kind of grew into something where I now do actually have sort of a thesis about like what I'm doing with the show and what I think about thinking about the future and all of that. But eight years ago, it was like, this sounds cool and fun, and we can work together on a project. And so that's

how it started. Annalena, it's made it happen. That's fantastic. I did not know the origin story. So that's great to hear. And it's also like, obviously, I have a podcast as well, as people are very aware of. They're listening to it right now. And you know, your show is just put together so well. And like, you know, look, I have an interview show where I sit down with someone like you, we talk for about an hour, you know, it's pretty easy to edit together. Sure, there'll be a few things we need to cut out. But yours has like, you know, a lot of music throughout it. There are a bunch of different pieces, you're interviewing people, you're stitching in kind of poems and other writings, and you're making commentary. There must be a lot of work that goes into putting one of these episodes together. Yes, yeah, I it's sort of like a character flaw, or I don't know, like best worst thing about me is that like, if there is a thing to do, it's sort of like a character flaw or I don't know, like best worst thing about me is that like, if there is a thing to do, I, I just do like the most, like I can't not do like the hardest possible version of it. I don't know. I like, I joke about this, but it is, I think like

one of the things I need to like work on probably with my therapist and not here in this space, but like I was supposed to do a reading where I could have just shown up and like done a reading at a, like a bar. And instead I like created this like game for the audience to play with like note cards and glow sticks. And everyone was like, what is wrong with you? You know, like, so I just like have that constitution of like, making things harder than they need to be. But yes, the show is lots of different pieces. It's fiction, it's journalism. It's I mean, like I've worked at Radiolab for a little while. So definitely inspired by like that kind of trying to kind of cut between a lot of different things and synthesize a lot of different ideas together. And yeah, some days I'm like, man, I could have

just done an interview show and that would be so much easier. It's not easier. I think actually doing a good interview show is quite hard. I have the luxury of cutting out my parts when I interview someone for my show. And so I can ask like rambling questions or questions that like, aren't that, you know, you kind of can then you just use the best pieces. So I think that actually doing an interview show is quite challenging, but it is a heavy lift to make flash forward, which is one of the reasons I'm sad, but glad to be moving on to something else. Of course, you know, interview shows are challenging in a different way. And, you know, this goes for your show as well. I think people kind of maybe underestimate the work that goes into researching and putting

these shows together, especially to be able to have an informed conversation with people. Like sometimes I have people reach out and be like, why don't you talk about this topic on the show? And I'm like, look, I would love to, but I would really need to do a lot more research on that topic first. And I just don't have the time to do it right now. But I would love to explore that in the future. And maybe we'll get there. It's just going to take me a little while because I'm not just going to have anyone on to like, talk about a topic and

me just sit here not really know, knowing what's going on, you know. So yeah, I totally respect that and totally understand where you're coming from. And so I wonder, you know, I want to get into your kind of thesis on the future. But you know, we started with where the show came from. And so I wonder, you know, I want to get into your kind of thesis on the future. But, you know, we started with where the show came from after those nearly eight years. You know, what did you learn from making the show, exploring these ideas, putting it together, kind of engaging in this kind of future-oriented work for such a long period of time? Yeah, I think that the two main things I learned, one is sort of about how to think about the future and sort of an argument for thinking about the future. I think that sometimes it can be scary and also just sort of feel a little bit useless to like play around in future thinking because

people are like, well, things are really bad right now. Like why? Like that's sort of escapism, right? Like I think there's an idea among some people that thinking about the future is sort of a way to not have to engage with the things that are happening now. And I think that there is certainly a version of future thinking that is absolutely that, that we should critique and avoid and not do. But so there's one is just the argument for thinking about the future in general as a practice. And then the other is the easier one, which is more about the format. So when I first started Flash Forward, it was actually really interesting to see the reactions to the show's format of blending fiction and journalism in both the

fiction and journalism world. It was actually really hard. It remained very hard for many years to get funding because it wasn't really enough fiction to be considered like a true fiction show. But then journalists were like, oh, there's made up stuff in this. And like, that makes us uncomfortable, right? And so it was sort of this weird hybrid that like made everybody uncomfortable and no one really wanted to like touch. And now I think there's more of an acceptance within journalism that there is use to the idea of thinking like creating these worlds. But I think I didn't really have a thesis about that format.

But now I really think that like it can help people to think about the future. When you have I mean, this is what science fiction does, right? It helps us like go to a place and consider do we like this? Do we not like this? Do we want to live in this world? Do we not want to live in this world? And it makes it very real and concrete in a way that sometimes is really hard when you're a journalist covering the future because like, it hasn't happened yet. There's nothing to report on you can't like show a scene or talk to a person. The utility of the fiction, I think, was something that I hadn't actually thought deeply about until I started really doing it. And then I was like, ah, this is what this is doing. But I think that the thing that I've really learned is like

how to explain to people why I think thinking about the future is worth doing and why I think that, you know, even among very like people who I agree with on most things, like, you know, like progressives who are like doing the work now to organize and to do all that work, even amongst folks like that, sometimes I get this like, okay, but like, I don't have time to think about the future. I have like a strike plan. And I have like these things happening. And like people are in prison now. And like, we need to like focus on making change now, which I is very valid. But to kind of be able to say, well, OK, but like the people in power are thinking about the future all the time and they have a plan and they are pitching you futures all the

time. They're pitching everybody futures all the time in political campaigns and advertisements and all their messaging. Like you need to be able to do that, too, so that you can at least examine what they are pitching and then perhaps like offer up your own versions of this. And there are lots of activists who do this already, even if they don't know that's what they're doing. Right. They're not it's not necessarily named. comes from a speech where she said something like, you know, we're engaging in imagination battles, right? Where like, we have these imaginations for what the future could be like without prisons or, you know, with like worker organizing, they have their own imaginations about what might happen. And the example that she gives in the speech is even in a more small scale context, like something where a person of color or a black person in the United States might be pulled over by a police officer, the police officer's imagination is actually like a very

dangerous thing in that moment. And there's this imagination battle of like, whose imagination of what this interaction might look like, wins out. Usually the person with the gun, unfortunately, right? Like, which is the cop. And so I think that like, being able to articulate the value of future thinking is the thing that I think is the biggest like overarching thing I've learned in doing these episodes. I mean, this all sounds very like important and highfalutin. Like some of our episodes are bizarro land. Like they're not really like making, you know, engaging in like deep philosophical thought. We have one where it's like, what if you woke up and everyone was face blind and we all

had to like learn how to recognize each other from our hands? Like, you know, we're having fun also. But I think like the utility of future thinking and a little bit of play and like fun too without having to be so like serious all the time is the biggest thing that I think I learned in the almost eight years of doing it. Yeah, you need to have fun, right? And like what you're talking about, like what if everyone kind of wakes up face blind? Like the first thing that shot into my mind was, I don't know if you saw everything everywhere all at once. It's like, what if we all woke up and we had hot dog fingers, you know?

Exactly. Exactly. I love that movie so much. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yeah. No, me too. It's such a fun movie and such a deep movie as well. But, you know, we don't need to go into that. And so you closed off the show recently with three final episodes. You know, I think kind of a summation of some of your thinking on how we think about the future, how we should think about the future, maybe. And in one of those final episodes, you talk about hope. And I wanted to discuss that a bit because I feel like hope is something that is really tied up in any discussion about the future. Right. I feel like hope is something that is really tied up in any discussion about the future, right? And there's a lot of talk today about hopelessness, about, you know, the material conditions leaving people feeling like things can't get better or won't get better in their lifetimes.

And they just kind of need to trudge through, right? As you were saying, why think about the future when things are so bad in the present? And I wonder how your exploration of hope and of these futures has affected how you think about that question. The three episodes at the end are really just like three things that I think about all the time and I don't have good answers for. It was sort of an excuse to truly try and like drill down and figure out like why I feel uncomfortable talking about hope. Like, it's the question I get asked all the time. Like, anytime I give a talk, anytime I go on a show, people ask me some version of,

okay, but given the state of the world, how am I supposed to be hopeful? How does one have hope? What keeps you hopeful? And I never feel like I have a sufficient answer to that question whenever it's raised, even though I know it's coming. And so I think one thing that the episode explores, and the thing I think about a lot is whether hope is necessary, right? Whether we have to be hopeful in order to do the work to make a better future. I don't know if it is or not. I think that, you know, expecting it to be there for you all the time is probably setting yourself up for disappointment and failure. And maybe we shouldn't do that. But also, I do think that like it is unrealistic to expect humans to just like suffer all the time for a cause, even if that cause is a good one, right? That's just not sustainable.

There's a lot of talk in activism spaces around like the need for joy and the need for kind of like some amount of, if it's not success, at least some kind of support or reflection or community or something that can give you the thing that maybe like the folks in power or like the battle is not giving you. We talk in the episode a lot too about the way that this probably universal desire for hope can be weaponized by corporations and by companies to kind of offer you like an easy version of it. I sort of try to coin a term in the episode hope washing of like kind of like pink washing and green washing where there are all these advertisements where it's like, ah, Wells Fargo is going to like give you hope for the future. And it's like, Wells Fargo isn't doing

jack shit for the future, right? Like, you know, Wells Fargo is not helping anyone, right? I thought that was a great term, by the way. Oh, thank you. Yeah. And I think that like, it's so, but it's so, it is like alluring, right? Like who doesn't want that, right? I would love, like, it would be so nice if that were true, if it were easy to just be like, ah, yes. And now we can all be hopeful. But of course, that's not realistic. But there are other ways of framing hope that lots of activists have talked about, like Mariam Kaba and Mia Mingus and lots of other people around sort of hope as a practice, hope as a discipline, hope as something you kind of choose to do every day, hope as like not necessarily like the reward for success, but the thing that drives you forward. And I think that those are ways of thinking about

hope that can be useful when it is in short supply, frankly, right? Like it's hard sometimes to like wake up in the morning and be like, ah, yes, another day burn out really quickly because there's sort of this expectation of easy wins or like it kind of being really like exciting and hopeful, especially if you enter in a really big moment that feels really important, right? If like your first touch point is like a huge protest that's actually successful, you're kind of like then later you learn that turns out a lot of activism is just boring and bad and you lose a lot, right? Like that's just like part of it. But I do think that like reframing our expectations and maybe even definitions of hope can be useful for getting to futures that are in fact more hopeful without sort of necessitating that feeling all the time as we get there. Yeah, it's so important. I thought it was fascinating because in the episode, you also talk about hope being like faith in a way and how some of these corporations want you to see hope as kind of faith, right?

Something that is passive that you just kind of carry with you. So you don't need to take action and try to achieve something better because as you say, you know, Hope USA, like in the Wells Fargo commercial, will just kind of arrive if you let these corporations continue and do the things that they do. But then on the other hand, I feel like to some degree, like, I don't know if I kind of see hope as faith a bit as well, in the sense that I feel like I have hope that the future is going to get better, even despite all of these things. Because I feel like if I didn't have hope, then like, I'd be a much worse place than I am. Right. In terms of how I feel about the world. And that doesn't mean that I don't wake up some days and like read about a massive disaster that has been made worse by climate change and how all these people are suffering and think like, man, the world is just fucked. But then like I still have hope that we can do something about it. Because if I didn't, I feel like I would just, I don't know, fall into despair and it would be really terrible. Yeah, totally. And like, I think also one of the points I try to make in the episode is like, if you are a naturally hopeful person, that's like really great. And like, you should seize that and you should like keep it. And also that like hope isn't

the only emotion that is required, right? Like there's so many other things that like we have at our disposal and tools we have at our disposal. And sometimes hope is the tool that you need to use, whether that's for messaging or for your own personal sanity or whatever it is. But other times it doesn't have to always be there, right? Like it doesn't always, it's not sort of a necessary condition, I think, is the thing that I think about a lot in terms of hope. And I think that the other thing that I didn't actually make it into the episode, but is a thing that I think about a lot. We ended up cutting it just because it was kind of a little bit of a tangent. But I'm sure this is something that you hear all the time, which is like people see critique of technology or like these us like saying like, hey, hold on.

Let's like have a conversation about like what is going on here. And people will say like, oh, why are you so negative? Like, why can't you just have hope for the future? Why can't you just be positive? Right. And like, I think that's a really interesting, I'm sure you hear that all the time. I hear it all the time too, for flash forward. All the time. Yeah. I think it's really interesting because to me, what I think of as being very hopeful is saying like, actually, no, we don't need all of this stuff. Like we have the tools that we need to

make a better world at our disposal in our communities and with our people. We don't need all of this stuff. Like we have the tools that we need to make a better world at our disposal in our communities and with our people. We don't need bazillionaires with like questionable ethics to like agreeing to everything and like being swept along the tides of progress or whatever it is. And like saying no is actually quite hopeful in many ways to me. And so I think that's another piece of this that I think about too, which is that like, I think people often think of hope as just sort of being this like forward momentum, kind of like always being like, yes, yes. And let's do it. Like, let's be hopeful. Let's like charge into the future when actually like hope could also be saying, no, let's go this other way or like, no, let's pull back and re-examine what we have here in our own worlds and our own people. And that is very hopeful to me, but it's often not framed as hope by the folks

who want you to just be like, yes, of course, let's carry on and go into the metaverse or whatever. I still don't even know what the metaverse is. I don't think whatever it is, I don't think I want it. Rose, metaverse is the future, a place where we can have legs. I thought you knew this. Listen, my email inbox says so via PR pitches that I get all the time. Luckily, I haven't had too many VR ones. I used to get so many NFT pitches, though. I'm happy that moment is over. Just picking up on what you were saying there. Like, I think it's so important to be able to see that kind of pushback to be able to see that saying no as a hopeful thing. Right. Because I think I also think on one hand, like this notion

that we just need to keep holding out for a new technology to be invented to solve our problem is kind of takes that ability to act to improve the world away from you. Right. It's it's taken away. It's you know, we need to rely on the billionaire or the tech company to deliver a better world. You can't do it yourself because you can't develop the technology or you don't have this inherent power. But I think it actually is empowering to say, you know, we don't need the Hyperloop or whatever other thing they're trying to sell us to actually improve society, right? Like, one of the things I say all the time, and it's just repeating scientists who say it, is that we don't need any new technology to address the climate crisis, right? We have all the technologies we need right now.

What we lack is the political will. And that is something that we can take action on right now in order to change, right? In order to help realize we don't need to wait for Elon Musk to like come up with the amazing sports luxury car that is going to save the world or like any of these other, you know, the great way to put together a carbon market or to track carbon sinks or, you know, whatever else, you know, all these technologies are proposing to put carbon credits on the blockchain so they can be traded with crypto. Like, you know, all this stuff is bullshit. We don't need it to address the crisis. But there are a lot of companies who would want us to believe that that's the case because

it serves their interests in the end. And then I think the other piece that goes along with that, that goes along with what you're saying, is that being able to say no is also an act of kind of future making, right? It's you are telling us that there's this particular future that you're trying to sell us that depends on this technology being realized.

But if we say no to that, if we kind of assess this technology and its potential implications, and we say, you know, what if we don no to that, if we kind of assess this technology and its potential implications, and we say, you know, what if we don't rely on this technology and we take some action in order to change kind of the direction of what we're doing, in order to rely on a different kind of process in order to address this problem that you're saying this technology is addressing, then that also, you know, changes the direction that we're going, the potential future that we're achieving, how we're thinking about human society at the end of the day. Totally, totally. I have stickers that I send to patrons that say, seize the means of

future production, because like, you can produce futures, like that is like what we are doing here. Like that is the project of Flash Forward and of so many activists, I think, even if it's not named that. There's a great book that just came out by Ruha Benjamin called Viral Justice. And it's all about all these like small ish interventions or changes that like actually make people's lives demonstrably much better. Right. And like all these things exactly that you're saying, you know, that like tech companies and politicians and, you know, folks with money and power have sort of tried to convince us that we can't do anything. We just have to kind of like wait for them to deliver the future to us, you know, in an Amazon box. And like, that's not like, you have the power to like make futures and you should seize that power can sometimes veer into the like personal responsibility, like for climate change,

right? Where it's like, ah, you can recycle your way out of climate change. And like, of course, that is not true, right? Like that is not what we're saying and not what you're saying, obviously, too. Yeah. If you buy an electric car, if you buy a Tesla, then you've solved the problem, right? Right. Exactly. Right. Like, yeah, like just, just, just click the button and like you can, that's it. No problem. Like do your little carbon calculator, which was like created by the oil companies. Right. You know, whatever it is, carbon offsets on the blockchain, et cetera. And that is not really like what we are talking about. But I think it's so easy for these tech companies to co-opt that messaging to be like, yes, of course, you can change the world by buying our products, right? Or like by doing this thing. A big thing we talk about on Flash Forward a lot is this kind of question of like identifying reformist reforms and non-reformist reforms, right? This is like the ideas of like, when are we actually resisting and changing? And when are we just sort of like tinkering within the system and actually reinforcing

it? And all of those things, I think, partially what I'm trying to do with Flash Forward is to like teach people how to identify places that they can build futures and like give people the tool that or at least the questions to ask, right, when things come up. And like understanding what the places you can slot in and be like, oh, here's a place I can make like a real difference and actually resist and make a future versus like places where, you know, you're just kind of like playing in the mud pit that they've made for you off on the side while they go make billions of dollars, you know? Yeah. And just as you're saying, like, it's usually, you know, we talk about the power, the actions that can be taken in order to

realize or change these futures or to think about taking a different path. But so often, that is not an individual power, right? As you're saying, it's not about recycling or buying an electric car or what have you. It's a collective power, right? You need people to come together in order to exercise that power in a way that can actually challenge these more dominant power structures, these billionaires and what have you, in order to push back on what they are trying to sell us in order to make us believe the future should be in order to realize something different. Yeah. There's another person here on the series finale, but it's also just someone who I'm like a huge fan of is Dean Spade, who wrote this great book about mutual aid

and sort of identifying places that you can, like in your community, actually build a better world like right now. And like, you could just go do that literally right now. You can make the world better for like actual people who are living right now, you know, and identifying these power structures and collective organizing and figuring out ways to, you know, use the skills you have to like

come into a movement. I think this is one other thing that I find just watching the ways that tech thinking has infiltrated. So, I mean, you talk about all the time on the show, like tech thinking has infiltrated so many different pockets of the way people think about things and hustle culture and this idea that you have to like build a brand around yourself all the time. And every time there is sort of a big moment where people kind of have some kind of political awakening or impetus or sort of like, you know, fuel to do something, for example, you know, Roe v. Wade being overturned in the US, like all of a sudden,

all these people, instead of slotting into the abortion networks that exist currently that are doing the work on the ground and have built sort of like the networks that they have, you have all these people doing like little abortion startups or like their own thing and little their own individualized kind of techie, almost like companies, like sort of in the framing of like a tech company trying to build a brand around like starting their own project and sort of reinventing the wheel in ways that aren't really going to help very many people. Whereas if you had gone to the abortion network, you probably would love someone to rebuild their website. Like they actually probably do need that, right? Or whatever it is, or like do the unglamorous work of like schlepping stuff from place to place or like going to the

warehouse and organizing it, right? There's so many things that just need to be done that don't require special skills that don't require special skills, that don't require special knowledge necessarily, that I think that like I just watch the ways that that individualism and that sort of tech startup-y thinking infiltrates, I think even without even realizing it, the way that people get activated and start to work in activism and then get frustrated when they don't really make much of an impact because like, yes, you alone with your Instagram account like probably aren't going to have the same kind of impact as like an abortion network that knows where to go and knows the doctor, like has been doing this for years. Right. And so I think that's the other piece of it, too, is like, you know, people get excited. They're like, all right, I want to make a better future. I want to do things.

And instead of looking for what is being done currently, there's this idea they have to like invent something for themselves. And I think that's a very hard to do, be very exhausting themselves. And I think that's A, very hard to do, B, very exhausting, and C, often not very rewarding because like it's hard to do on your own. And so people burn out or they don't succeed or they don't like it or they don't see the effects that they want. And then they kind of just like, like, ah, well, what am I going to do? There's nothing to do, right? So like linking up in that collective power way that you were talking about is so important. Yeah. It's interesting to think about, you know, the kind of myth of the tech genius, the founder or whatever, and how, you know, someone like Elon Musk kind of feels like they

can go into all these different sectors of society and revolutionize it because they like, can see how it should work in a way that no expert who actually knows what's going on can think about these topics like transportation, of course, but so many others. And then to see that kind of thinking move down into the rest of society through kind of this personal branding, this hustle culture, all these other things that are pushed out there so that everyone else has to act as their kind of individual who's going out to solve this problem on their own rather than acting in a collective way.

That's so fascinating. I want us to switch to thinking about the tech industry and how it interacts with futures as well. Kind of keeping in mind this idea of hope washing that shaping how we try to think about the future, right? They want us to think about the future in a particular way because it not only aligns with how the people at the top of these companies want to think about the future themselves, often influenced by science fiction, things that they read when they were younger, particular ideas of how we change the future through technology, but also because it benefits their commercial and their business interests as well to shape the future in a particular way. So how do you understand the way that the tech industry engages with future thinking and why they do that. Yeah, I think that there's been such a strong movement

to think of tech leaders as if they are almost characters in science fiction. I think they've styled themselves that way. They like that idea often of like, I am the like, weirdo genius man in my lab, and I'm inventing the future. And you know, all of those sort of tropes that are fun to read in science fiction, but not so fun to live through as, you know, citizens. I think that, you know, and you, it's not even, you know, it's relatively explicit, right? Some of these, you know, tech leaders will say things about their favorite books or the people that they look up to in these science fiction books. And sometimes I'm like, you know, that guy's the villain, right? Like, you know, he's not, that's not the hero of the book. I believe at one point, and you should fact check me on this, but I believe at one point,

Elon Musk said that his favorite book was Hitchhiker's Guide and that he really loved Zephyr Beeblebrox, which I'm like, that's funny because you are that person. But also like, that's not flattering. I don't think you understand that that's not flattering. It's interesting because I sometimes will hear people say like, oh, you know, tech people should just, they're like, if they just read more science fiction, maybe they would like be better at ethics. And I'm like, oh, they read a lot of science fiction. It's just not like the ones you want. Or they relate in the wrong ways. But I do think that they're the ones that you might want them to, but they do not get the context or the message at all. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's like we've read

totally different books, even though we've read the same book. Yeah. And I think that there are a couple of reasons why these folks have really tried to position themselves as these kinds of like futurist mogul kind of people. One is that when you are positioning yourself as someone who is creating the future, you build in a buffer for being wrong, right? Because like, in fact, we all sort of know that you cannot accurately predict the future necessarily, right? Like, we can make some vague predictions, like, you know, we can do a little, but there is sort of a bit of an excuse, a built-in excuse that if you get it wrong, it's like, okay, because who can know? Who can know, right? We can't really know these things. Like, we're on the bleeding edge of technology, right? We're in this, this like liminal space between what is real and what is not, you know, all of that. So that's nice, right? Wouldn't

that be nice if like you and I could just like live in a space where like it's fine to just be wrong all the time and that's like part of it. The second thing is that, yeah, and you can just make things up, right? Like which is very fun to do, right? You don't have to have proof of your claims. You can go out and be like, I'm going to do this thing. And no one can really tell you that you can't because like, maybe you could. Like, it's possible, right? Like it is within the realm of possibility, right? So you have, just to pick on Elon Musk, because I feel like this is a safe space to do so. You have like these brain computer interfaces, right? That like he's constantly claiming are going to do X, Y, and Z and all the neuroscientists are like, ooh. But like, he's claiming it in such a way that like it is a couple steps beyond what we could do,

but it's not fundamentally impossible. A lot of what he's talking about, his timelines are obviously, you know, bananas, but like he's able to sort of say things that could be true and that people are in fact working on. Right. And so there's this really great way that you can, if you are one of these people, make claims and make promises and then not necessarily have to be held to them because, you know, it's the future. Who can say, right? Like who can know? But also that you can kind of just say anything and not have proof of it, right? We have Elizabeth Holmes, right? We have lots of people who are making claims about what they are going to be

able to do in the future where it's like, OK, that would be cool if you could do that. And like weirder things have happened. We have had breakthroughs in science that have been weirder and bigger than some of the things that people are claiming. And so you can live in this really cool space. That's probably quite fun and quite lucrative to just sort of make things up and have people pay you for that future nonsense. And then, like, if it doesn't happen, who could, what's the future? Who can say, you know? So you end up in this like really incredible space where there's all this money and there's all this hype and there's all this excitement and the public loves it, right? Because we want these futures to be real. We really want to live in this world where you can cure cancer or you can, you know, do all these things. And then, you know, when it doesn't happen quite the way it's supposed to or

quite the way it's described, you know, there isn't really any consequences for it. It's perfect. It's a great place to be. If you can live in that space, I mean, I would love to do that too, except for all the like taking advantage of people and, you know, the unethics of being a billionaire. But, you know, all that aside, those are a couple of reasons why tech people really love to be in that space of trying to dictate the future. And there is a culture of sort of celebrating that kind of place, too. So you get to also be a little bit of a superhero, right? You get to be this kind of like big, larger than life figure that, you know, gets to live in that world. So I think that like, those are a couple of the places that we see these tech, particularly like quote unquote leaders, which I feel like a weird way to use that word,

because I would not necessarily call them good leaders, but the people you see in the news, right? Who love the spotlight or love to kind of be in that realm of building the future. And of course, the rest of us are just supposed to sort of sit there and like let them invent their way to wherever land we're going to live in in the future. Yeah, it's really interesting as well, like as you talk about that, because I'm reading Jimmy Stoney's The Founders right now about the founders of PayPal and effectively what they go on to do. And there's one kind of anecdote that he tells in that

about how one of the people who was living with Elon Musk like went into his bedroom and there were just like biographies of business leaders like all over the place. And he was like kind of studying like how to become the famous entrepreneur that of course, you know, the media kind of later frames him to be and all this sort of stuff. So that's kind of very fascinating to me how this is all very much planned, right? To be this way for these people to be framed in this way by the media gets people very excited. I wonder if you have a theory or thoughts on why these tech leaders, to use your language, it's language I use as well, have been so successful in capturing our imaginations over the past couple of decades, right? You know, I feel like we kind of, I feel like how we think about the future or our ideas of the horizons that we could achieve

were maybe in the past, to a certain degree, driven more by governments, by politics, by putting out political visions for what the future should look like, for what we should achieve as a society. But I, and you know, maybe that is a wrong take, but especially in the past couple of decades, I feel like these people from Silicon Valley, from this particular kind of node of the tech industry have been very successful in taking over that space and kind of colonizing the mind of the public and our idea of what the future could actually be. Why do you think they were so successful at that? That's a long way of asking a short question. Oh, it's a great question. It's a great question. And I don't, I don't know, I have some theories and I'll tell you them,

but I would be curious what you think too, because it is a really, it's a thing I think about all the time because like, to be rude, like these men are not that charismatic. Right. They're not that interesting. Right. Like, you know, like they're also like they're not super conventionally attractive. I don't know. There's many things about them. And like, nor am I. But I'm also not trying to become the leader of PayPal or whatever or the leader of the world, which is, I think, what some of them would like to be. So, yeah, it is a great question because you look at these people and you're like, really? You? Like, I don't, you know, like I have questions. I think there's a couple things that I would point to, although I don't think that any of these are probably fully going

to explain it. I think there's been a collapse of workplace protections in the United States. There's been a collapse of social securities. There's been a collapse of a social safety net such that hustle culture and this sort of individual culture of the individual has really taken hold of our imaginations because it sort of feels like this lovely fairy tale of a way out of a system that we all sort of know is not working, right? You can no longer just like get a job, have health care, you know, have hobbies and like home and just like sort of have a normal-ish life where you go to work and like your boss isn't exploiting you and you're not being surveilled all the time and you're not worried that if you get hurt, you'll lose your house. You know, like we just like are all living in this like state of

complete anxiety all the time because most people are one step away from losing everything. I mean, there's a survey that gets cited a lot that in the United States, I think it's something like most people don't have something like $500. If there was an emergency and they needed $500, a lot of people in the US would not be able to do that. Here in the US, we have a huge influx of people who are unhoused for the first time over 50 because, like, they just, like to any of these people, but is a myth that they love to repeat that we hear all the time, is really alluring because maybe there's a way out. Maybe there's a thing you could invent or a way you could slot into this economy in another sense. And I think that that's really compelling to people because it offers kind of maybe another way of being another way of financing themselves.

There is this sort of idea of this, again, like mythical person who goes from nothing, has, you know, $100 and delivers pizzas and becomes, you know, Elon Musk or becomes Bill Gates or becomes whoever. And I think that's partially why it's so appealing, because if we all had jobs that paid well enough and whatever, maybe we wouldn't all desire to have that trajectory. And so I think that's one reason that they are so appealing culturally. I think there's also been a real uptick in the cultural power of science fiction and of superheroes and of kind of like Tony Stark-esque characters in the media. Sci-fi went from being kind of like not so big blockbuster-y to being like many of the big blockbuster movies are about science fiction and about sort of these like lone genius characters. I think that contributes to it. And I think also, you know, because so much of our life is mediated by

technology, it makes sense now that like the people who own and operate that technology will have an outsized sort of cultural impact on our lives. Whereas before, when we weren't on our phones literally all the time, And of course, the person who creates the little beeps and boops that make my box light up and gives me serotonin or the opposite are going to be people who I think about as like characters in my life more so than maybe 20 years ago when the person that impacted the day to day of my life was my neighbor or my mayor or my, you know, my senator or whoever it was. So I think those are a couple of things, but I don't know. what do you think? I don't feel like that's a sufficient explanation. No, I think that those are great, like contributing factors to like a larger reason why this is all happening. And I just wanted to add like, on the point about how, you know, none of these people are really just founding these things in their garage and going on. One of the like greatest stories of that for me is Jeff Bezos, who obviously starts Amazon after being like at a hedge fund or something like that, gets a $250,000 loan from his parents, along with other people he knows like putting money into it, and specifically, like buys or rents a house in Washington State that has

a garage so he can kind of spin the tale that Amazon was started in a garage because this is such a key part of like these kind of tech backstories. Totally. They all it's all made up. I mean, this is like the thing that, you know, as a tech reporter was like every tech company is going to give you their origin story pitch. And you know that like eighty five percent of that story is wrong. Like there might be a thing that happened, but that they've like built. And they train them to do this, right? Like, you know, if you're going to go in and pitch VCs,

you got to have your origin story. And like, it's well known within the industry that we all know they're fake. Like everyone knows these are fake. Like it's just like a thing you do. It's this fiction that you create, like a tail to spin to kind of get where you need to go. But the public

doesn't know they're fake, right? The public thinks like he found Amazon out of his garage. Yeah, no, it's so fascinating. And I'm happy you gave the broader context there. But I think what I would add to your kind of explanations for this, there's like the loss of kind of the collective life that people used to have, whether you were engaging with a union and the role that they played in the community. And obviously, I think that was a bit stronger in Europe than in North America, but that was still there, right? There were more kind of community spaces where people came together before communities became more atomized and separated and things like that. I also think that neoliberalism plays a big part in it, right? The state used to do things for

people, right? And then we entered this period where the state was not supposed to do anything for anybody and leave it to the market. And then that leaves it to people like these tech leaders, quote unquote, to come in and say how they are going to transform the future and make the future better because the state has really abdicated that role of being able to do that, right? And then I think the other piece of it is how technology and changes in business models have affected the media as well, right? The media has less resources to really dig into these companies, the things that they're

selling us, the claims that they're making. And, you know, especially in tech media, but increasingly in mainstream media as well. It's just how can we repeat these things? People get excited by it. Why would we dig into it too much? And then as you say, there are periods where there's not very much critical stuff or the critical stuff doesn't get the attention that it deserves. And then maybe we enter a period where the critical stuff gets a bit more attention because there's been a broader kind of turning against these companies, a period that we're sort of in right now. But there's still a lot of that kind of

very positive kind of reporting as well, or whatever you want to call it kind of stuff. Yeah, so I think those are some of the things I would add to your reasons. The journalism piece is such a good one. And I think, you know, having been a tech reporter at a couple of different publications, not a very good one, frankly. I mean, partially because I do find sometimes engaging with these tech companies to be just like totally exhausting. And particularly the large tech companies, they have extremely savvy and extremely competent PR teams that are very good at killing stories and very good at just like nickel and diming journalists to the end of the earth and frankly, intimidating reporters into not covering

things in a certain way. They also give access to certain people and not other people, right? Like it's an access game. I remember when I was a reporter and I was working as the tech editor at The Atlantic, a person who worked at The Atlantic, who I will not name because I don't know that I have permission to share this exactly, was uninvited from the Apple big events because they were told that they had not covered Apple well, which of course means that they had said negative things about Apple. And as a tech reporter, particularly when you're first starting out, not being able to go to those big events is actually damaging to your career, right? Because you're expected to go and report on what's going on. There's a reporter at MIT Tech Review named Karen Howe who did a series on, I believe it was Facebook, and then

wrote, I can't remember if it was a thread or an actual article, about the ways in which the PR team then like sent her a million emails with like every single, just a ton of just like tiny little things, most of which were not actually corrections or inaccurate, but just an attempt to like bury her in like sort of this like endless campaign of like you're wrong, like sort of then trying to frame the story as being inaccurate. You know, like there's all these ways and they're very good at it. They're very savvy. And so I think that it does mean it's hard if you, especially if you're a freelancer, if you're a person who like is really not looking to get sued by Facebook because you're a freelance and you have signed a contract with these media companies that says that you have to take all legal costs if you get sued, right?

I'm really glad you pointed out like the ways in which journalism, the way it's funded, the way it's run, the way that sort of the industry works right now makes it really hard to do in-depth investigative reporting about technology because there's just so little infrastructure for those reporters. There are some amazing people who are doing it, Karen being one of them. depth investigative reporting about technology because there's just so little infrastructure for those reporters. There are some amazing people who are doing it, Karen being one of them, but like it is really hard, especially if you are a freelancer and you're not attached to a media publication who's going to go to bat for you in court. Like I can't do those stories because I would prefer to not have to fund my own lawsuit against Amazon. You know, like that's not a thing

that I could do. I will lose that, you know, even though there's a lot more tech criticism than there was 10 years ago, it's still really hard to do in a way that is deep and investigative and sort of like actually changes people's minds or gets into like the nitty gritty details of what's going on. Yeah, no, I think very well said. And so we've talked about how, you know, these tech billionaires, these tech leaders are very effective in shaping the way that we think about the future, the way that we think about their products and how essential their products are to the realization of those futures, right? Do you think that their ability to do that is being challenged now, that they are less effective at carrying that out than they used to be in the past? And if so, why? Why do you think that's shifted? I think there has been a shift. I think there has been a shift because I mentioned earlier that like, oh, it's easy. You get to like make stuff up. And then if you don't deliver, right, like whatever. I think that that is true to an extent. But I also think that a lot of people are sort of looking

around and being like, all right, I was promised all this stuff. I was promised. I mean, the joke is like, where's my flying car? But like, truly, I think people are like, well, wait a minute. I was promised this like cool technology future where like, you know, I get to like live an awesome life and like I don't have to clean because there's a cleaning robot, like all the like actual things that would make my life easier and better have not arrived. Right. They have not arrived on the backs of these like robotic dogs or whatever we have. Instead, I have a Facebook that is contributing to genocide. And I have, you know, these like Twitter where like people are screaming obscenities. I have all of this stuff. I have all this technology, but like,

I don't feel like my life is actually that much better. Right. And like, you know, technology has made people's lives better in many ways. Right. Like I would not ever sit here and be like technology has never done anything good. Right. Like I love technology. There's many things that are good about it. Right? Like many of the things that, you know, we do day to day are better and safer because of technology. But a lot of the stuff that we were promised, a lot of these really cool things or these worlds that we want have kind of like failed to deliver. And I think that people are kind of slowly starting to ask questions about like, okay, what's going on here? Like, why is my life not actually so full of this cool stuff that you

promised me 10 years ago? It's always fun to go back and look at like Wired covers or Popular Science covers to like see all this stuff that even just 10 years ago, like you don't have to go back to like the like 1800s of Popsci, which has really cool archives. I do recommend looking at them, but like you don't have to go that far to like see all this stuff that we were promised that we never really got. And I think that that's part of it. I think that's part of why. I also think that just like in general, people don't have as much money to spend and they don't want to spend their money on these gadgets that like are getting a little better. Like, OK, my phone's camera is a little nicer now.

But like, is that worth another nine thousand dollars? Like their phones are so expensive. And like, you know, I just feel like there's things like that. I also think that there is an increased awareness. And I think that's partially because of journalism, partially because of the youths, like learning things that like there is an environmental impact to a lot of these things. I think when I talk to teenagers now, it's actually really interesting. I always try to ask them like how they feel about surveillance, how they feel about like TikTok and like, you know, these like questions and they

don't care about surveillance. They care about climate change, like across the board. Every single teenager is just like, my parents fucked that up for us. We had no say in it. Like that ship has sailed, but like climate change, like they're all very invested in climate change. And I think that's really interesting. I also am like, please care about surveillance, please. But I do think that like the awareness of younger generations about some of the impacts of these technologies, some of the ways in which not only the environmental impact, but the emotional impact of some of these technologies and the awareness of like what Instagram does to them and their fellow teenagers, like they all know, they all know that really, really well and like are skeptical of it. They're also geniuses

at like getting around certain things. Like they have all these workarounds I don't even understand about like how to sort of avoid certain like things with Instagram and things like that. So I do think that there is like a bit of a question mark around we didn't get what we were promised from you guys. And so like, why is it that now we're still supposed to care? I think the metaverse rollout is a great example of what people being like, what? You know, like I've so many relatives, I'm sure you are like the tech question person, probably for like family and friends. Yeah, you know, I am. I got so many text messages being like, what is the metaverse? And me having to be like, it's not, don't worry about it. It's really

not anything. Right. And then you have the crypto, right? People were promised this like whole new economy, this whole new way of making money. And like that rug's being pulled out from them too. So I think like over and over, we're seeing people kind of stop and be like, well, wait, none of this delivered on the promises that you made. And at some point, that does come back around to bite you, which I know I'm slightly contradicting myself from earlier. I'm like, you can make up whatever. It doesn't matter. But I do think that at some point, there is a moment in which the public gets to be like, hey, none of these things happened. What are you guys doing? I completely agree with you. Like, I really think that those promises, you know,

for a long time, they did get away with it. And, you know, I guess my bias would be in part that was because there was cheap money, right? It was just easy to get financing. So say whatever the hell you want, and some venture capitalist is going to throw a bunch of money at you. And now we're entering into a period where that's not the case. And so you can't just make stuff up and expect to get it funded or get things to happen, especially after, you know, the past decade or so of seeing how these things have not come to pass in the way that they were promised. Two points on what you were saying.

First of all, on the youths, you know, I'm 31 now, I'm past that, right? But there was a story in the New York Times recently about like Luddite teens. I can't remember where in the States they were, but like, you know, how they were like giving up their phones and like really critical of the technologies. I can't remember where in the States they were, but like, you know, how they were like giving up their phones and like really critical of the technologies.

I was like, yeah, this is cool. Like, this is good. You know, they're thinking the right things. Yeah, the teens are good. Exactly, exactly. And then the other piece of that as well is like, you know, obviously we were talking about how these people were putting out these futures

that were very, very grand, right? How they were going to achieve all these things. And it was going to be so fantastic for us as a society that we were allowing them to do this. One of the ones I get a laugh at is when people take the screenshot of like, I think it's a TED interview or something that Elon Musk did like 12 years ago saying that he was going to land a rocket on Mars in 10 years. And it's like, where's the rocket, Elon? Like when he landed on Mars, it hasn't happened as so many of the things that he promised. And it does feel like we're in a moment where there is a reckoning on those kind of big promises that these people made, the futures that they had us believing in for a long time. And then I feel like there's also a recognition that a lot

of those futures that they were trying to sell us, right, a lot of these ideas that they were putting out into the world really did serve to distract us from real tangible problems that exist in society. And as we were talking about earlier, how we do actually have ways that we can address these problems today. And we don't need to wait for some technology to arrive in order to do it. And I feel like after us believing and waiting for these tech people to deliver the futures that they were promising for so long, as you're saying, I think that there's a reversal on that. And people saying, you didn't deliver. Our lives are shit. And, you know, we need to do something.

Right. Like, you know, I don't want to like go to work in the metaverse. Like that is not a thing that I'm in. On the other hand, I do worry sometimes because I do see I think I agree. I see the people sort of asking these questions. But I also sort of feel like because we are in that moment where, as you say, like my life is shit. I have a phone that costs nine thousand dollars and like I have no health insurance. Like I can't there's no public transportation, you know, all of these things that I think that there is a risk of it being so easy to satisfy us now. Right. Like we're in this moment where like if you just literally gave me one thing that made my life better, I would be like, yep, I love technology. You know what I mean? I feel like we're in this moment where like actually because like they have put the bar in

literal hell, like it is so easy to clear it that I worry a little bit that like any tiny thing can be this like great redemptive arc for technologists and the sort of like powers that be. And like that is a thing I think about a lot. And I worry about because like, it would be so easy in some ways to like become the next Elon Musk right now, because all you have to do is give me literally one thing that like works and makes my life better. And like, that cannot be that hard. You know what I mean? Like, there's just so many problems that you could be solving. And so, I mean, I think about this a little bit with like, the fusion announcement semi recently, where it's cool. And there's like a little bit of progress on this thing that has been almost happening for so long.

And I'm not here to say that it wasn't a cool thing, but like people got so excited about it because I think it is just like we just want like grasping at like anything that would make the world better. And like I do worry a little bit that we're in this moment where we've lowered our expectations sort of unknowingly. So like over the years, because they just keep kind of not delivering that any amount of improvement in people's lives gets to be this great technology savior thing, even when like maybe it's not really doing much to make better futures.

And so that's the thing I actually have been thinking about a lot recently is like, what is going to be the thing that is like, not really a world changing technology, but is going to like, get people back on the side of of tech? I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm just like a paranoid person. That's definitely true. But I think about that a lot. I think that is worrying, really. And on the other, like the flip side of that is like the government could step in and like do some things to really improve people's lives and they could step into that void. Right. It's so easy. I know it is like I mean, I feel like you probably feel this way all the time, but like you look at something and you're like, it's right. It's literally right. Just do like one thing just one thing and you could you could be everyone's

favorite person like it just feels i know i'm like not a politician for many reasons but it just sometimes i'm just like i don't understand how this is like not people aren't just doing like this super low-hanging fruit that would be actually relatively easy some of these changes like universal health care like i'm not necessarily, quote unquote, easy to remedy. But like there are other things you could totally do. Like student loan debt forgiveness would have been so easy, so easy. And yet. Right. I mean, that's maybe not the best example, but there are a lot of things like that where it is sort of baffling to me sometimes where I'm just like, man, one thing. Give me one thing. Just to add to what you're saying, they did CBC, which is the public broadcaster up here

in Canada, ran like a, I can't remember the exact title on it, but it was like basically a best Canadian kind of contest like a decade or so ago, right? It was like, you know, who is going to be like the number one best Canadian voted by Canadians across the country. And the person who won was Tommy Douglas, who was the Saskatchewan premier who introduced universal healthcare that became the template for universal healthcare across the country, our public healthcare system. You know, that was in like the 60s or 70s. And he is still remembered as this like Canadian that everyone says, like, you know, made this huge difference in our lives all these decades on.

And who else is there to really kind of stand up to that achievement? So, yeah, you know, I think that there is an opportunity there if we really did want to start improving things for, you know, our governments to really step up, step back into that role that they vacated and actually start making our lives better instead of selling us fantasies of hyper loops and things like that. Yeah, yeah, it is. I live in Berkeley. So we're like adjacent to all the like tech central kind of stuff. And it is interesting to see the ways in which funding for public projects is like largely reliant on tech people to donate large sums of money. And that has sort of been an interesting thing. I come from New York City. I'm originally from New Jersey. And so like being out here, New York City has its own weird financial politics that I will not get into. But it's sort of interesting to see it here in action out on the West Coast.

Yeah. It's like, you know, just tax them, just tax them and spend it to help us. Rose, it's been so fantastic to talk to you, to discuss, you know, the way that we think about the future, the way that tech influences how we think about the future, and what you've learned from that over the almost eight years of doing your podcast as it winds down now. You know, I would certainly recommend everyone go check out the last three episodes, but maybe even dig into the archives and see if there are any fun futures that you want to explore by looking through some of those old episodes. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today.

Thanks for having me. This was so fun. Rose Eveleth is the creator and host of the Flash Forward podcast and the author of Flash Forward, an illustrated guide to possible and not so possible tomorrows. You can follow Rose on Twitter at Rose Eveleth. You can follow me at Parisorrows. You can follow Rose on Twitter at RoseEvilith. You can follow me at Paris Marks. You can follow the show at TechWon'tSaveUs. TechWon'tSaveUs is produced by Eric Wickham and is part of the Harbinger Media Network. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week, you can go to patreon.com slash TechWon'tSaveUs and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.