🚨281. The Smoking Gun of Techno-Capitalism (ft. Meredith Whittaker)🚨
Our friend
@mer__edith
joins us for a giant discussion that bridges her historical analysis of plantation logics and industrial computation with the political economy of "open" AI.
62. Amazon, Vanguard of Class War (ft. Alex N. Press)
@alexnpress
joins us for a banger of an episode on the Amazon union vote, the militancy of capital, the organizing conditions of labor today, and the battle for building worker power.
🚨192. Why the Trains Don’t Run on Time (ft. Justin Roczniak)🚨
The labor actions in freight rail are the boiling point of 30 years of exploitative management under the guise of efficiency.
@who_shot_jgr
joins us to discuss Precision Scheduled Railroading
🚨134. Morozov Watch! (ft. Evgeny Morozov)🚨
We're joined by the great
@evgenymorozov
for a long discussion about many things, including: the origins of
@syllabus_tweets
/ Evgeny's intellectual evolution / web3 and leftism / techno-feudalism vs capitalism
🚨*Unlocked* – 144. Buy Now, Pay Later, Screw You🚨
Here's our full episode on the political economy of Buy Now, Pay Later – a booming industry of multi-billion dollar companies that have greatly benefited from debt fuelled spending during the pandemic.
🚨209. NOFTX🚨
We dig into the details of FTX’s collapse. FTX is not an isolated event. FTX is not a bad apple. FTX is not uniquely mismanaged. FTX is not a stunning surprise. FTX is a systemic problem representative of the sector.
🚨DOMINATION ECOSYSTEM🚨
Amazon is systematically building a network of surveillance and control. We give you a run down of the new offerings available from the Everything Store.
*This episode is brought to you by the Softbank Group*
🚨96. Taking Control of the Data Pipeline (ft. Meredith Whittaker, Salomé Viljoen)🚨
We're joined by two of the sharpest minds on the politics of AI / data governance:
@mer__edith
and
@salome_viljoen_
. We cover a lot of ground in this rousing episode!
🚨101. Inequality: The Last 40,000 Years🚨
We hop in the time machine of historical materialism and discuss the excellent work of David Graeber & David Wengrow on the history of inequality and the lessons gleaned from the development of human societies.
🚨76. Smart City Colonialism, Brought to You By McKinsey🚨
We discuss how the failed promises of smart city megaprojects around the world – and Africa in particular – perfectly encapsulate the brand of colonialism propagated by consultants like McKinsey.
Excited to announce the This Machine Kills redesign! We could not be more hyped about our new mecha-luddite illustration! The kanji say THE DEATH MACHINE
Thanks everybody for listening and supporting TMK. Huge props to the amazingly talented artist Zidek:
🚨92. Fully Automated Luxury Surveillance (ft.
@hypervisible
)🚨
We had
@hypervisible
on to talk about his incisive analysis of luxury vs. imposed surveillance, plus weird conceptions of privacy, racism in tech design/marketing, and much more!
🚨186. Refusing the Everyday Fascism of Artificial Intelligence (ft. Dan McQuillan)🚨
@danmcquillan
joins to discuss his new book, Resisting AI. We talk about how AI is a technology perfectly suited to fascist politics—and how it should be otherwise.
🚨30. Death of the Entrepreneur (ft. Veena Dubal)🚨
We’re joined by the great
@veenadubal
for a fantastic discussion about the legal/political ways gig platforms have weaponized ideas of flexibility and entrepreneurship—and how we must build worker power.
🚨139. – Infinite Crisis (ft. Phil Neel)🚨
We dig deep into economic theories of crisis in capitalism, particularly those promoted by the bourgeois science of mainstream economics. Phil Neel, economic geographer, gives us a masterclass on crisis.
🚨243. GPT-4 and the Politics of OpaqueAI (ft. Abeba Birhane)🚨
@Abebab
joins us for a critical discussion about the release of GPT-4 and OpenAI, plus her work mapping the values encoded into – and the surveillance pipeline for – AI/ML research.
🚨128. – The Year of Magical Thinking (ft. Wendy Liu)🚨
We're joined by
@dellsystem
to look back on the very dumb things the tech sector forced us take seriously in 2021. Here's hoping 2022 is a year defined by one slogan: the luddites were right.
🚨220. The Landlords Who Own the Internet (ft. Dan Greene)🚨
@Greene_DM
joins us to go deeper down the stack than most people dare to go and explain how the actual owners of the internet's plumbing are Real Estate Investment Trusts, not big tech giants.
🚨110. Decolonial Ethic for Tech and Labor (ft. Noopur Raval, Rida Qadri)🚨
@tetisheri
and
@qadrida
join us for a fantastic, in-depth discussion of their important research on platform economies and (de)colonial politics in the Global South.
🚨*Unlocked* – 259. The Forever Polymers in Our Blood🚨
Due to illness, we are unlocking an episode on the political ecology of PFAS forever chemicals—which has become more relevant as the news coverage and regulatory response to PFAS keeps growing.
🚨183. The Nightmare of Ambient Computing (an Amazon Company)🚨
We sketch out how Amazon's acquisition of iRobot, One Medical, and more all plug into their broader strategy for “ambient computing.” It's one of those 'worse case but realistic' scenarios.
🚨262. – How Israel Battle Tests Occupation for the World (ft. Antony Loewenstein)🚨
We are joined by
@antloewenstein
—author of The Palestine Laboratory—to discuss Israel's lucrative global export market for the politics and technologies of apartheid.
🚨58. Suez Canal /// Imperialist Infrastructure (ft. Laleh Khalili)🚨
@LalehKhalili
comes on to tell us how the big boat blocking a "ditch in the desert" is part of a larger story about how colonialism is built into the Infrastructure of global shipping.
🚨108. I Fucking Love Science (ft.
@_danielle_carr
)🚨
We discuss Danielle's excellent new essay on the anti-politics of the pop sci style — and get deep into why we need a critical materialist analysis of Science, as an institution and ideology.
🚨247. Automated Welfare – the Simple Violence of Complex Machines🚨
We discuss an in-depth investigation into an automated welfare fraud system, showing how these systems are ridiculously complex/targeted and simplistic/arbitrary at the same time
🚨188. Using AI to Say the Word🚨
We talk Sanas, which uses "AI accent translation” to make "non-white" call center workers sound like white Americans. We then show how this tech contributes to worker exploitation and corporate empowerment. Shocking!
🚨114. – Engineering Capitalism /// Communist Engineers (ft. Nick Chavez)🚨
We're joined by Nick Chavez, mechanical engineer, to discuss the capitalist purpose of engineering and the position of engineers before, during, and after communist revolution.
66. Down and Out in the Neoliberal Code Academy (ft. Daniel Greene)
@Greene_DM
joins us to discuss his new book. We're talking punitive neoliberal tech/welfare policy, noxious slogans like “learn to code," the radical politics of libraries, and much more!
🚨168. Blockchain Imperialism and the Pacific Ideology (ft. Olivier Jutel)🚨
With
@OJutel
, we dig into partnerships between blockchain projects and the US State Dept in the Pacific as techno-solutionism is put in the service of imperial soft power.
🚨84. Killing Us Infrastructurally🚨
We look at a few tech news items before getting deeper into the massive ecological impacts of “hyperscale” data centers. On top of being largely socially useless, this infrastructure is (not so) slowly killing us.
🚨311. Selling Pickaxes for the AI Gold Rush🚨
We take a deeper look at Nvidia, their meteoric rise, myth-making in the media, and monopolistic control over both hardware and software for AI development. And finally we end with one word: Gooniverse.
🚨279. The Power of Wellness Capitalism (ft. Tamara Nopper, Eve Zelickson)🚨
@tamaranopper
,
@zel_eve
join us to talk about the rise of corporate wellness and how capitalism uses "welfare" systems to control, degrade, corrupt essential services in society
🚨334. Israel’s AI Kill List: “That’s the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.”🚨
We dig into the latest reporting on more AI systems that Israel is using to generate kill lists and intensify / justify its genocide in Gaza:
🚨269. The Mythology of Cybersyn (ft. Evgeny Morozov)🚨
@evgenymorozov
joins us for a long chat about his new narrative podcast series, The Santiago Boys, and the amazing story of Cybersyn—the context of it creation, the legacy of its creators.
*Unlocked* – 185. In the Long Term We Are All Dead
We are unlocking our instant classic about Effective Altruism and Longtermism — simple-minded fairytales promoted by an influential network of zealots and idiots, and elevated to a rationalist religion.
We Live in a Society (of Control) (ft.
@Liv_Agar
)
So great to have Liv Agar join us for a much needed theory chat about the hyper-prescient work of Deleuze on societies of control and it's relevance for techno-political analysis of smart shit.
🚨94. Stripping the Content Mines (ft. Taylor Lorenz)🚨
What an absolute treat to have
@TaylorLorenz
on TMK to discuss the rapid growth of the creator economy, and the stark asymmetries between labor and capital in the content mines.
🚨170. Seasons in the Crypto Abyss (ft. David Gerard)🚨
We are joined by
@davidgerard
– longtime critic of blockchain, even before it was cool – to discuss the experience of staring into the crypto abyss and having it stare back into you.
🚨120. The Butlerian Jihad – Why Sci-Fi Needs Luddism🚨
We chat about the Butlerian Jihad—or a total war against all computation and thinking machines in the Dune series—and the need for science fiction informed by the techno-politics of Luddism.
🚨70. Solidarity is Contagious (ft. Astra Taylor)🚨
Extremely excited to have
@astradisastra
on TMK this week, for a wide-ranging discussion about big important things like democracy and debt, politics and praxis, tech and labor, and much more.
🚨*Unlocked* – 303. Israel’s AI-Powered “Mass Assassination Factory”🚨
We dive into a stunning report on Israel's strategy of destroying "power targets" which is powered by an AI system ("the Gospel") that generates a constant list of targets for bombing.
🚨238. Ventures in Capitalist Innovation, Part 1: History and Mechanics🚨
How did venture capitalism—an investment model guided by idiosyncratic imperatives and structural constraints—come to be a key gatekeeper in our global innovation system?
🚨86. Khaaaaan!🚨
We do a deep dive into the extensive and impressive work of Lina Khan, the new FTC Chair. We discuss her analysis of the platform economy and her vision of antitrust with teeth, plus what Khan's new regulatory power could portend.
🚨124. The Assassination of Thinking by the Coward Web3🚨
We do a close reading of a new article in Foreign Policy, which stands as a monument to how “web3” is like a brain worm that destroys people’s ability to think.
🚨90. All Data is a Social Construct🚨
We're back from break and back on our bullshit*
*Riffing on the political economy of data. We first discuss the recent investigation into ShotSpotter, then provide an intro to data grabbing in precision agriculture
🚨44. How to Think About Data (ft. Salomé Viljoen)🚨
We're joined by
@salome_viljoen_
to discuss her brilliant work on the limitations of existing approaches – and democratic alternatives – to data governance in informational capitalism.
🚨74. Let’s Talk About Sex Work (ft. Liara Roux)🚨
We’re happy to be joined by
@LiaraRoux
—sex worker, activist, author—to talk about her experiences working in Silicon Valley. She shares some great stories and we discuss the politics / platforms of sex.
🚨122. Going DAO the Rabbit Hole🚨
We kept ignoring DAOs and web3 hoping it would go away, but sadly it hasn’t. So we pick apart each part of the acronym—decentralized, autonomous, organization—and discuss the techno-politics of their promise and practice
🚨28. The Hammer of Ludd🚨
At long last, the TMK Luddism episode has dropped! Wield it like a hammer against the machinery of capital. Strike down the techno-utopians sycophants. Luddism is a source of strength for working class power.
TMK Book Club unite! Starting with next week's premium episode, we are going to be reading and discussing our way through Langdon Winner's foundational text on techno-politics – Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought
🚨201. We Are All Surplus (ft. Beatrice Adler-Bolton, Artie Vierkant)🚨
@realLandsEnd
and
@avierkant
join us to discuss their fantastic new book HEALTH COMMUNISM. Under capitalism we are all human waste. The biofuel powering—and exploding—the system.
🚨264. Every Dealership a Fiefdom, Every Middleman a Lord (ft. Alex Sammon)🚨
@alex_sammon
joins us to explain how car dealerships have become an important center of class power for capital in American politics—and why they must be uprooted.
🚨80. Tech Work and its Discontents (ft. Wendy Liu and Jason Prado)🚨
To officially kick off our occasional series profiling the stories, experiences, and pathways of radical tech workers, we are delighted to be joined by
@dellsystem
and
@jasonpjason
!
🚨38. Production for the People!🚨
We take a deep dive into a massively important, but largely forgotten, real utopian project that provided detailed plans for how to actually do radical techno-politics: The Lucas Plan for socially useful production.
64. Platform Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics
We dig deeper into our explorations of techno and financial capitalism in China, by first discussing the invaluable work of
@chuangcn
, then diving into a harrowing report on platform labor conditions.
🚨36. Theory of the Thought Leader (ft.
@raaleh
)🚨
Driven mad by Internet induced techno-optimism, brains smoothly polished by the infinite growth of a zero interest rates world—the modern Thought Leader is the charlatan in the court of tech capital.
🚨302. God is the Machine🚨
We talk about the history of AI by drawing out the strange brew of Eschatological Evangelism and Technological Theology that undergirds so much of AI and its development over the last 70 years.
🚨286. No King But Ludd (ft. Brian Merchant)🚨
With
@bcmerchant
—author of Blood in the Machine, a masterwork on the history and legacy of Luddism—we go beyond the Luddites as mere totems and get into the real story of their militancy against capital.
🚨218. Ecosystems-as-a-Service (ft. Mél Hogan)🚨
We take a hard look at the critical ecologies of the cloud with
@mel_hogan
and unpack the ongoing domination of nature by machine and market logics:
🚨68. Fight for Your Right (to Repair)🚨
We give y'all a primer on the "right to repair" policy debates and discuss its connections to rentier capitalism, digital enclosure, and the dual crises of overproduction and underconsumption.
🚨150. The Cynics of Web3 (ft. Molly White)🚨
The great
@molly0xFFF
, creator of
@web3isgreat
, joins us for a rousing discussion about the convoluted bullshit, internal contradictions, and ideological cynicism at the heart of Web3.
🚨330. The Silicon Empire in Eastern Europe (ft. Erin McElroy)🚨
We're joined by
@erin_mc_elroy
to discuss their new book – Silicon Valley Imperialism – which analyzes how techno-capitalism has set up imperial outposts in postsocialist Eastern Europe
🚨118. Building Aadhaar, The World’s Largest Biometric Database🚨
We dive deep into Aadhaar, the Indian government’s massive biometric identity database that has enrolled more than a billion people. Here we discuss the purpose and design of Aadhaar.
🚨*Unlocked* – Euthanasia of Silicon Valley Bank (ft. Brian Merchant)🚨
We unlocked our discussion with
@bcmerchant
breaking down the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank—its cause, effects, aftermath—and the innovation realism of venture capital.
🚨274. Uber’s Politics of Low Expectations (ft. Katie Wells, Kafui Attoh)🚨
@KatieJWells
,
@AttohKafui
join us to discuss their new book, which offers a rich analysis of Uber and Washington DC as a case study in the political economy of urban crisis.
🚨194 – Cultural Capture by Chokepoint Capitalism (ft. Rebecca Giblin, Cory Doctorow)🚨
@doctorow
and
@rgibli
join us to discuss their new book about how creative labor markets are tightly squeezed on all sides by massive monopolies / monopsonies.
🚨 Preview – 187. The Mass Upgrading of Landlords🚨
We talk about the booming market for – and community organizing against – landlord technologies that use invasive surveillance to terrorize tenants and automate evictions.
This is the start of TMK Sweeps Month! We have killer episodes with huge guests planned all month long:
• Next week is
@hypervisible
on luxury surveillance.
• Then
@TaylorLorenz
on the creator economy.
• Then
@salome_viljoen_
and
@mer__edith
on collectivizing data.
Stay tuned!
🚨260. Organizing Tech Labor (ft. Alphabet Workers Union)🚨
Two members of the
@AlphabetWorkers
join us to talk about the nuts and bolts of organizing at a major tech company, what it means to be a tech worker today, labor conditions broadly, and more!
🚨328. The Universal Science of Advertisement (ft. Lee McGuigan)🚨
With
@LJamesMcGuigan
, we get deep into the origins of adtech, dreams of optimization, and the ad industry's entanglement with management science and information technology since the 1940s.
🚨141. – The DAOs of War🚨
We round up the most craven people in crypto who saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a problem in need of web3 solutions. Brace yourself for the most harebrained schemes and opportunistic scams.
🚨52. Pharma Profiteers, Vaccine Apartheid🚨
It’s time for a TMK fact check: coronavirus vaccine edition. Will Big Pharma profit from covid? Will the Global South receive equitable access? Will IP rights solve healthcare? Tune in to find out!
🚨*Unlocked* – Potemkin AI🚨
We're taking a week off recording, so we've unlocked one of our favorite episodes from the Patreon feed. We discuss the phenomena of systems that claim to be AI, but are actually powered by (hidden) humans acting like robots.
🚨249/250. We Built This City on Authenticity (ft. David A. Banks)🚨
@DA_Banks
joins us for a supersized chat about his new book, The City Authentic, about the dynamics of cultural capital and attention economy that now drive the urban growth machine.
🚨113. Metastatic🚨
The metaverse is bullshit. If it ever exist—still an open question!—the metaverse won't be a fantasy dreamland, but rather an infinite virtual office and classroom we’re all forced to used.
Apologies for the current delays in episode release. A critical chokepoint in our content engineering and distribution process (Producer Jereme) has been sabotaged (Pneumonia) and we are currently repairing the damage (Resting / Recovering). We will be back online soon.
🚨Patreon Preview - 115. Crypto Colonialism🚨
We talk about how Puerto Rico has become a haven for crypto weirdos, disaster capitalism, and ultra exclusive enclaves filled with the worst people. Subscribe for the whole episode:
🚨48. Who Uses the Users? (ft. Cory Doctorow)🚨
Excited to have the one and only
@doctorow
join us for a great discussion about how "adversarial interoperability" is crucial for knocking down the walled gardens that keep us all captive.
🚨288. A Hive of Fraud and Dishonesty🚨
We take a deeper dive into the intellectual chicanery, moral corruption, and sociopathic tendencies at the heart of behavioral economics and its most famous “experts.”
🚨Preview – 241. Euthanasia of Silicon Valley Bank🚨
@bcmerchant
joins us to perform a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank and hold Ed to account for his violence against venture capitalists.
🚨251. The Triforce of Corporate Power in AI (ft. Sarah Myers West)🚨
@sarahbmyers
joins us to dig into the
@AINowInstitute
's new report – Confronting Tech Power – and how the dominance of Big Tech is built on advantages of data, compute, and geopolitics.
🚨225. How AI Makes Living Labor Undead🚨
We analyze the production and application of AI within capitalism. The dead labor of AI acts as an agent of capital to discipline and dominate living labor, making it more machine-like, thus turning it undead.
🚨166. Slumlords of the Internet (ft. Ben Tarnoff)🚨
At long last,
@bentarnoff
joins us to discuss his new book and do some historical materialism of the internet. We trace the development of this network that now rules/ruins our lives.
🚨Patreon Preview – 144. Buy Now, Pay Later, Screw You🚨
We investigate the political economy of Buy Now, Pay Later. What is it, where did it come from, how does it work, why is it booming, and who is winning and losing?
🚨88. Bring Down the Hammer (ft. Paris Marx)🚨
After way too long, it's time for TMK x TWSU. We got our friend and comrade
@parismarx
, host of
@techwontsaveus
, to come talk shop for a long episode covering a lot of ground.
🚨292. On Strikes and Solidarity (ft. Alex Press)🚨
@alexnpress
joins us to talk about the many labor union actions happening across the US, then we discuss the intersections of solidarity between labor movements and support/activism for Palestine.
TMK super producer
@braunestahl
has remastered one of our very early, classic episodes — 4. Zuboff is a PSYOP — where we deconstruct "surveillance capitalism" as a reactionary critique of political economy and big tech. Now it sounds 1000x better!
🚨305. What’s the Value of Data? (ft. Salomé Viljoen)🚨
@salome_viljoen_
joins us for a deep dive into the relationship between social data, value creation, and legal governance. Or, the trillion dollar question: how do you turn data into money?
🚨199. The CIA is a Land of Contrasts🚨
We offer a smart, nuanced, and critical defense of the CIA. You see, it’s not that we are angry, we are just disappointed at the CIA’s continual failure to live up to its own potential for greatness.
🚨132. Automating Service /// Serving Automation (ft. Nick Chavez)🚨
We are joined by Nick Chavez, Marxist mechanical engineer, to go deep into how automation actually operates in the economy, the workplace, the interests of capital and the lives of labor
🚨283. Nerds of the Lowest Order (ft. Quinn Slobodian)🚨
@zeithistoriker
joins us to discuss how the extreme dreams of anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard are now manifesting, even becoming mainstream, in the politics and zones of today.
🚨Preview – 165. Phillip K. Dick Move🚨
AI/ML research is dominated by a few large labs. This ends up producing a world that is far more weird, bizarre and unsettling than anybody intended. Less George Orwell, more Phillip K. Dick
🚨Preview – 254. The Healthcare System Works, It Just Doesn’t Work For You🚨
Private equity ghouls create a system to automate rejecting claims, save health insurers a few dollars, and make people's lives significantly worse.
🚨348. Lost Futures of AI (ft. Evgeny Morozov)🚨
@evgenymorozov
joins us to chat about his latest series, A Sense of Rebellion, which tells the story of a wild bunch of eccentric hippies who had grand ideas about new ways to build humane technology.
🚨164. Untethered, Unleashed (ft. Crypto Critics’ Corner)🚨
We’re joined by the guys at
@CryptoCriticPod
for a deeper dive into stablecoins and how Tether is now systemically important to the workings of the crypto system and the wealth of big players.
🚨253. The Cold War Origins and Future of Today’s AI🚨
We take a deeper look at the geopolitical interests, military neoliberalism, and power players that are driving the AI arms race by discussing
@evgenymorozov
's latest essay:
🚨Preview – 198. The Eye of Sauron is Ethical🚨
We take a hard look at the White House’s new AI Bill of Rights and discover that building the Eye of Sauron is actually totally ethical according to its own principles.
🚨126. A Tech Reckoning (ft. Matt Lech, David Griscom)🚨
We're joined by
@MattLech
and
@DavidGriscom
for a TMK x
@LeftReckoning
crossover! We have an energetic discussion about leftism, platform accelerationism, and the will to power of capitalism:
🚨Patreon Preview – 123. Khan Thought Redux🚨
We discuss the work of Lina Khan, FTC Chair, on the antitrust idea of structural separation that can be used to break up monopolistic conglomerates of capital like Amazon and Alphabet.