#1514 Creating a Digital World of our Worst Habits
Best of the Left - Leftist Perspectives on Progressive Politics, News, Culture, Economics and Democracy
Jay Tomlinson
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2022
⏱️ 73 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Air Date 9/17/2022
Today, we take a look at the way terrible patterns of the past like colonialism, racism, propaganda, feudalism, and abuse of corporate monopoly power are recreating and re-entrenching themselves in the digital world
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SHOW NOTES
Ch. 1: Rise Of Digital Oligarchy w/ Jillian York - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-4-22
Emma hosts Jillian York, Director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to discuss her recent book Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism.
Ch. 2: How Social Media Profits Off Your Anger - Wisecrack - Air Date 8-26-22
Does the internet run on rage? If you’ve spent any time online, you know that anger is to the internet as cake is to a birthday party. But why have the interwebs become a place of such division and rage? It’s complicated, but we’ll explain
Ch. 3: Using AI to Say the Word - This Machine Kills - Air Date 9-2-22
We discuss a new startup doing the rounds called Sanas that uses AI “accent translation” to make "non-white" call center workers speak English with a white American accent. This is some real retro throwback tech solutionism
Ch. 4: Addressing the TikTok Threat - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 9-8-22
This week on Your Undivided Attention, we bring you a bonus episode about TikTok. Co-hosts Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin explore the nature of the TikTok threat, and how we might address it.
We conclude our conversation with Vice's Edward Ongweso Jr. by looking at Peter Thiel's role in bankrolling Uber as the 'Tip of the Spear' for rolling back labor laws, workers' rights and Unions.
Ch. 6: Break Up Monopolies: Zephyr Teachout - Future Hindsight - Air Date 8-11-22
Zephyr Teachout is Senior Counsel for Economic Justice for the New York AG and law professor at Fordham University. We revisit our conversation with her about her book, Break 'Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.
MEMBERS-ONLY BONUS CLIP(S)
Ch. 9: The Digital Self, Web3 and reclaiming your online identity - Future Tense - Air Date 7-23-22
How is our sense of identity changing as our online and offline experiences increasingly merge? What grounds a person’s online persona (or personas) to the physical world? And is such a tie important?
We are joined by Dan McQuillan to discuss his great new book Resisting AI. “With analytical and moral clarity, McQuillan makes the case for recognizing the radical politics of AI and meeting its goose step march head-on.”
FINAL COMMENTS
Ch. 12: Final comments on how to fix the internet for yourself
MUSIC (Blue Dot Sessions):
- Opening Theme: Loving Acoustic Instrumental by John Douglas Orr
- Voicemail Music: Low Key Lost Feeling Electro by Alex Stinnent
- Activism Music: This Fickle World by Theo Bard (https://theobard.bandcamp.com/track/this-fickle-world)
- Closing Music: Upbeat Laid Back Indie Rock by Alex Stinnent
Produced by Jay! Tomlinson
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left Podcast in which we shall take |
| 0:07.3 | a look at the way terrible patterns of the past, well, past and present, like colonialism, |
| 0:13.4 | racism, propaganda, feudalism, and abuse of corporate monopoly power are recreating and |
| 0:19.9 | re-entrinching themselves in the digital world. |
| 0:23.5 | Clips today are from the majority report, Wisecrack, This Machine Kills, Your Undivided Attention, |
| 0:30.8 | The Arts of Travel, and Future Hindsight with additional members only clips from Future |
| 0:36.6 | Tents, and This Machine Kills. |
| 0:39.8 | And stay tuned to the end for my list of recommendations for how to use the internet |
| 0:44.9 | without it making you want to kill yourself. |
| 0:53.7 | I think a lot of the early internet thinkers were libertarians self-statedly so. |
| 0:59.8 | But really what I've seen is that a lot of these companies pay a lot of lip service to |
| 1:03.4 | freedom of expression to human rights. |
| 1:05.1 | And we've seen this with Metta, Facebook's latest human rights report, which is pretty |
| 1:09.7 | shallow. |
| 1:10.7 | But ultimately these companies are doing what's best for their bottom line and not what's |
| 1:15.0 | best for their users or for rights. |
| 1:18.4 | Right. |
| 1:19.4 | And you mentioned Metta and Facebook there. |
| 1:21.1 | I think that was a large focus of your book. |
| 1:26.1 | Why would you say that Facebook is kind of the worst offender in terms of the structure |
| 1:30.6 | of that company and what do you find about it to be so problematic? |
| 1:34.5 | Yes. |
... |
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