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Tech Won't Save Us

How Urban Tech Increases Corporate Control w/ David Banks

Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx

Silicon Valley, Books, Technology, Arts, Future, Tech Criticism, Socialism, Paris Marx, News, Criticism, Tech News, Politics

4.8626 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2020

⏱️ 54 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paris Marx is joined by David Banks to discuss how tech solutions to increase corporate control in cities will be sold to us as fun and convenient, and what that will actually means for access and equity in urban life. David Banks is a visiting assistant professor at the University at Albany. He’s the editor-at-large at Real Life, and has written for The Baffler, e-flux architecture, and Current Affairs. Follow David on Twitter as @DA_Banks. Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective ...

Transcript

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0:00.0

It's important to kind of keep an eye on all the fun, glitzy things that are eventually going to

0:05.0

turn into control. That's a big part of this is that often convenience will turn into control.

0:25.9

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

0:29.0

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is David Banks.

0:34.8

David is a visiting assistant professor in the Geography and Planning Department at the University at Albany.

0:39.0

He's also an editor at large at Real Life and is written for the Baffler, EFlux architecture, current affairs, and a number of others. He's also currently

0:44.3

writing a book about how cities act like reality TV stars for the University of California Press.

0:50.6

And I'm sure we'll get more information about that as it gets closer to finishing it.

0:54.4

We have a really interesting conversation today about the intersection between technology and

0:59.2

cities and how the integration of more technologies into urban life will be really cool and

1:05.5

exciting for some people, but will also serve to close off access to parts of the city for urban residents who don't have

1:13.1

those privileges and how we need to be paying attention to these potential downsides to all

1:19.2

this new technology before it's fully implemented and we just accept the corporate control that

1:24.1

comes with it. I'm really excited for you to hear this conversation, but before we get

1:28.8

into it, I just want to make a quick note about the schedule for the next few weeks. I was planning to

1:34.4

take a week off at the end of the year, but I was thinking about it, and I know a lot of people are

1:39.5

still in lockdown and won't be able to visit their families or will visit their families and

1:44.9

we'll still want to get away for a little bit and maybe want something to listen to or just

1:48.8

don't celebrate these holidays at all and so it's completely irrelevant to them. So I decided I'm

1:53.5

going to keep making episodes, releasing episodes through the holidays. The only difference is

1:58.4

that next week's episode and the episode after that will be released on Wednesdays instead of Thursdays, just because I figured those days were too close to Christmas and New Year's.

2:08.2

So next week's episode, instead of being on December 24th, will be on December 23rd, and the week after that, instead of December 31st, it'll be December 30th.

...

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