Gail Dines

Podcast #30: Gail Dines on Porn Culture

Activist, author, and sociologist Gail Dines discusses the impact of pornography—particularly in its virulent and violent Internet form—on culture.

The AT&T-Time Warner Suit: Is Antitrust Back?

After years of seeming government indifference to ever-larger monopolistic firms, the DOJ has filed suit against the proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner. Does this signal a much-needed resurgence of antitrust action? Or is it a one-off?

Amazon Return to Sender

America Should Send Amazon Packing

Amazon has destroyed businesses, mistreated employees, lowered wages, manipulated markets, and virtually censored books. Now they want a giant handout.

When it Comes to Working People, Amazon Isn’t Innovative at All

Despite what they’d like you to believe, Amazon’s practices have resulted in net job losses, according to a study done by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. And the jobs they have created aren’t particularly good, either.

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.

Convenience, Control, and Contempt: Uber (part two)

It long ago became an agreed upon standard of liberal capitalist democracy that a monopoly was a bad thing. This [...]