441 - Mary Harrington - Technology, AI, and Cultural Memory
The Symbolic World
Jonathan Pageau
4.8 • 933 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2026
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mary reflects on her path as a writer, the evolution of online culture, and the growing difficulty of discerning truth in the digital environment. We also touch on memory, embodiment, cancel culture, and politics.
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/eeBZuA0S1ZE
Mary will be speaking at the Symbolic World Summit. The theme of the conference is Retelling the Cosmic Epic, and Mary’s talk will be titled: 'Rebuild the Monasteries'
Description:
In an age of AI "slop" and flattened culture, how do we understand, and cultivate, what makes us distinctly human? Mary Harrington will argue that there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Premodern practices of memory and prayer, once cultivated in Europe's monasteries, can refresh our imaginations and salvage our human cultures in the digital age.
Come join us at Woodside Event Center | Broadview Heights, Ohio | May 14-16, 2026
Early Bird Pricing – Ends March 26th: Save $50 on both General Admission and VIP tickets
Buy tickets now: https://symbolicworldsummit.com/
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Jonathan and Mary's discussion on Socrates in the City: https://youtu.be/nrsjZKPH4WA?si=kaM5zE2Qj-4XCD1K
Timestamps:
00:00 - Coming up
01:07 - Intro music
01:32 - Introduction
02:14 - Mary's journey
09:00 - The meaning of meaning
10:46 - The singularity already happened
12:53 - Being connected
17:28 - The printing press industrial template
20:52 - AI
22:21 - Using AI
25:47 - Internet platforms and politics
32:10 - Being anonymous
35:37 - Politics
37:44 - The end of the printing press
39:47 - The end of the industrial era
42:46 - Cancel culture
46:56 - Treasure houses
🔓 Become a patron to support us and unlock exclusive monthly symbolism content: https://thesymbolicworld.com/subscribe 💻 Website and blog: http://www.thesymbolicworld.com 🔗 Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jonathanpageau Our website designers: https://www.resonancehq.io/ My intro was arranged and recorded by Matthew Wilkinson: https://matthewwilkinson.net/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | slightly jokingly, but not entirely jokingly. |
| 0:02.7 | My theory is that the singularity actually already happened over the period that |
| 0:06.8 | Britney Spears was locked up, roughly speaking. |
| 0:10.2 | I don't know that it's connected directly to Britney Spears, but approximately the point |
| 0:13.9 | where they locked Britney up was also the point when the first iPhone dropped. |
| 0:17.6 | And the point where they let her out was also the point where the lockdown ended. |
| 0:22.0 | And between the launch of the, the propagation of smartphones and the effect of lockdowns |
| 0:28.4 | enforcing the rump, the sort of residual, resistant rump of the culture onto the internet, |
| 0:34.3 | we're now decisively a digital first culture, certainly across the |
| 0:39.1 | English-speaking world, and I would say probably across most of the so-called developed |
| 0:43.4 | world and beyond it as well. So that's where we are now. And I think it was, I mean, |
| 0:47.8 | that we were in the middle of that great upheaval in the 2010s when my life became less crazy. |
| 0:55.3 | And also, it wasn't a coincidence that the world also began going crazy over the course of the singularity. |
| 1:00.1 | Some really important things started to dissolve very quickly in terms of how we organise information and knowledge and what we think the world is. |
| 1:06.9 | Music This is Jonathan Pejow, welcome to the symbolic world. Hello, everyone. |
| 1:32.9 | I'm here with the very recognizable Mary Harrington. |
| 1:37.8 | You know, we just had a conversation up not that long ago, |
| 1:40.9 | and Mary is going to be one of the speakers at the symbolic world summit in |
| 1:44.9 | May, so May 14th to the 16th in Ohio. We'll have obviously links to that down below. And so I thought |
| 1:52.2 | that, you know, because the theme of our conference is retelling the cosmic epic, you know, there's a way in |
| 1:58.8 | which we are part of this great story that's |
| 2:01.6 | happening. And so I thought, for me, at least, it'd be an opportunity to find out a little bit |
... |
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