What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Naomi Klein on Disaster Capitalism in Puerto Rico.
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 6 June 2018
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week’s If Then, Will Oremus and April Glaser talk about how Microsoft is buying GitHub, Google is ending its Pentagon contract, and all the news from Apple’s developer conference on Monday—including the company’s effort to engineer a less addictive iPhone.
April is joined by journalist, author, and activist Naomi Klein to discuss her new book The Battle for Paradise about how corporations and politicians are trying to cash in on the chance to rebuild Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria’s destructive sweep through the island last fall. Some of the people descending on the island: blockchain enthusiasts hoping to build a “Crypto Island” of their own.
On ‘Tabs’ this week, the hosts discuss Silicon Valley’s relative silence on local elections and some listener mail about politicians who won’t stop texting us.
Don’t Close My Tabs
New York Times: Tech Was Supposed to Get Political. It’s Hanging Back in This Election.
Listener mail!
Podcast production by Max Jacobs.
If Then plugs:
You can get updates about what’s coming up next by following us on Twitter @ifthenpod. You can follow Will @WillOremus and April @Aprilaser. If you have a question or comment, you can email us at ifthen@slate.com.
If Then is presented by Slate and Future Tense, a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. Future Tense explores the ways emerging technologies affect society, policy, and culture. To read more, follow us on Twitter and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to If Then, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future. |
| 0:10.0 | I'm Will Oremus. |
| 0:11.5 | And I'm April Glazer. |
| 0:30.0 | Hey everyone, welcome to If Then. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense, a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America. |
| 0:46.8 | We're recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 5th. On today's show, we'll talk about how Microsoft is buying GitHub, how Google is pulling out of its Pentagon contracts, and all the news from Apple's developer conference on Monday, including the company's effort to engineer a less addictive iPhone. |
| 0:55.0 | Then we'll be joined by journalist, author, and activist Naomi Klein, who just released a new book today, The Battle for Paradise, about how corporations and politicians are trying to potentially cash in on the chance to rebuild Puerto Rico in the U.S. |
| 1:00.0 | Virgin Islands following the historic and deadly Hurricane Maria that swept through the islands |
| 1:04.8 | last fall. Some of the folks trying to cash in are cryptocurrency enthusiasts, who are eager |
| 1:09.5 | to take advantage of the lack of |
| 1:10.8 | regulation while locals continue to try to piece their lives back together after the storm. |
| 1:15.4 | And we'll end with Don't Close My Tabs. Some of the best things we saw online this week. |
| 1:20.1 | Let's just jump right to it. I'm actually in New York today, not in California. Will, you're still in California, right? |
| 1:26.4 | I am in Santa Barbara as usual. And April, I think you wanted to talk this week about |
| 1:30.6 | the news with Microsoft acquiring GitHub, right? |
| 1:34.0 | I want to breeze through it. I mean, you know, we did learn that Microsoft is acquiring |
| 1:39.9 | GitHub or that they would like to for over $7 billion that was actually broken on |
| 1:45.4 | Sunday night by Bloomberg, and then it was confirmed Monday morning by Microsoft and GitHub. |
| 1:52.2 | And it's an interesting combination because, you know, GitHub is, for those who don't know, a very large, in fact, the largest place in the world for coders to come and collaborate, |
| 2:02.9 | to submit different versions of software they're working on, to communicate, to store their work |
| 2:07.6 | and to track their work. And a lot of that work is open source. In fact, if you're doing an |
| 2:12.2 | open source project on GitHub, meaning that the code is available for people to look at and use, |
| 2:17.2 | or the project is open for people to look at and use, or the project is open for |
... |
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