Ep 383: Why Is Everyone Talking About “Against the Machine”? (w/ Tyler Austin Harper)

Deep Questions with Cal Newport

Cal Newport

Technology, Self-improvement, Education

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this fall, the activist, novelist, and essayist Paul Kingsnorth published an anti-technology polemic called “Against the Machine.” To say it hit a nerve is an understatement. In the months that followed, Kingsnorth has been everywhere; profiled, among places, in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and The Atlantic. In today’s episode, I want to find out why Kingsnorth’s take on technology is resonating so strongly. To help me answer this question, I’m joined by the journalist and scholar Tyler Austin Harper, who wrote a great review of Kingsnorth’s book for The Atlantic. We dive deep into Kingsnorth’s ideas and explore what they teach us about our current moment more generally.

Transcript

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0:00.0	At some point last year, I received an advanced reader copy of a book titled Against the Machine.
0:07.5	It was written by Paul Kingsnorth, a former environmental activist, turned novelist, term poet, turned
0:13.1	essayist.
0:14.1	And the first thing that caught my attention about this was actually the cover.
0:17.3	It's really cool.
0:18.1	It features what looks like a primeval green forest, but as if it's being displayed through an old analog computer monitor that's starting to distort it.
0:26.6	It also had a sort of stranger thing style 1980s font.
0:29.9	So it's a really cool looking cover.
0:31.0	So like, you know what?
0:31.6	I'm going to read this book.
0:34.5	And I did.
0:35.4	And you know what?
0:35.8	I was captivated.
0:36.9	It was about technology, but it was also
0:38.3	about culture and it was also about politics and the environment. Kings North talks about
0:42.3	techno-capitalism and how it's choking civilization and destroying the earth. It's not a
0:47.4	politically careful book. It eschews jargon. It doesn't align with pre-existing tribes. It embraces
0:53.2	its own hypocrisy and lobs its share of rhetorical bombs.
0:57.3	It reminded me less of the sort of hand-ringing anti-technology op-eds that we see today.
1:02.9	And more like those sort of confident, full-throated polemics of past voices like Lewis Mumford or Jacques E Lolle or Neil Postman.
1:10.1	It was, in short short exactly the type of book
1:12.0	that someone like me was going to enjoy. But then earlier this fall, the book actually came out.
	...

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