Podcast #36: Jerry Mander
Author and activist Jerry Mander reflects on a long life of technoskepticism and how it relates to the current global moment.
Book Review: Darkness By Design
Walter Mattli reveals the opaque world of high-speed trading, and its danger to finance and the regulatory power of governments.
Print Preview: Issue #3 | Summer 2019
Our third print issue is about to ship nationally.
Undoing Dystopia: a Review of Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human
A review of tech and social critic Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, Team Human.
Podcast #29: Jim Keenan on Environmentalism, Justice, and Faith
Father Jim Keenan of Boston College discusses Pope Francis’s views on environmentalism and social justice, and how those resonate across belief systems.
The Informed Preference for Permanence (Principles of Technoskepticism, Part Three)
Our technological mindset leads to an “enforced impermanence” as the new is always prioritized over the old. The resultant rootlessness and churn contributes to a sense of disequilibrium while keeping us apart from the steadying forces of tradition and wisdom.
Speeding Towards a Potential AI Jobocalypse, Government is on Autopilot
A White House paper on AI betrays a stunning naivte about potential economic fallout, but few in government are interested in even acknowledging the issue.
Podcast #9: Danielle Allen on Education and Civics
Danielle Allen is a University Professor and the director of the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, a regular columnist for The Washington Post, and author of five books, including most recently Education and Equality. She spoke with us about the current emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math), the challenges of technology in education, and what it takes to raise an engaged and self-actualized citizenry.
Podcast #8: Tim Wu On Attention and Communications Networks
Tim Wu is a renowned scholar on our communications networks, having coined the phrase “net neutrality” and written extensively on the subject both inside and outside of government and academia, including the White House and Columbia University. His latest book, The Attention Merchants, is a history of advertising, and it’s not pretty. He spoke with us about our declining private spheres, the current state of the Internet, and the effects of what he calls The Cycle, as new communications technologies inevitably move from open to closed.
Podcast #7: Bob McChesney on Capitalism and Technology
Are we in capitalism’s end days? University of Illinois Professor Robert McChesney thinks we might be, or at least we might need to be, if technology continues to displace workers and concentrate wealth. He is a long-time observer of the interplay between media, policy, economics, and society; he sat down with The Technoskeptic to discuss the ramifications of technological automation on our economic system and our democracy. Professor McChesney has written more than 20 books including Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. His latest, co-written with John Nichols, is People Get Ready: The Fight Against a Jobless Economy and a Citizenless Democracy.