I always balk at the idea of terming something a revolution when it's not about power changing hands.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Marr Hicks.

Mar is the co-editor of Your Computer is on Fire, a new collection of essays that digs into the roots of the problems that we're dealing with today in Silicon Valley and the tech industry. They're also the author of Programmed Inequality,

how Britain discarded women technologists and lost its edge in computing, and an associate

professor of the history of technology at Illinois Tech. This is a really fantastic episode

where I talk to Marr about why understanding the history of

technology is so important when we think about the problems that we're facing today

and how many of these issues have occurred in the past and have been dealt with in the past

in good ways and bad and we can learn from those examples. In particular, we look at how

in the UK, when it was originally building its computing industry, it not only pushed women

out of the industry, but tried to use the technologies it was developing to maintain its colonial

hold on the world as it was losing its grasp on its empire.

Those examples hold lessons for what we see happening in the United States today,

where the tech industry is dealing with issues of sexism, racism,

that have been built into it over the course of many decades,

and where the United States has used its technology to increase its

influence in the world by having countries and peoples everywhere adopt it and use it. But now it's

facing a challenge from China and the fact that its technology can be seen as a form of imperialism

is being shown to everybody. I think you're really going to like this conversation.

Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network, a group of left-wing podcasts that are made in Canada.

And if you want to find out more about the other shows in the network, you can go to

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