Right now, tech companies are trying to sell us all this stuff, you know, the Metaverse, namely, but they're using the mechanism of science fiction to sell it to us, right?

They're like presenting us this idea of a future, which they've basically cribbed from science fiction novels, you know, from the 80s and 90s, which they've like conveniently excised of any political criticism or context and just taken the sort of surface trappings.

Yeah. criticism or context and just take in the sort of surface trappings. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week I have two fantastic guests, Brian Merchant and Claire Evans. They are the co-founders of Terraform at VICE's motherboard and the co-authors of the science fiction anthology that brings a lot of those stories together along with some ones, Terraform, Watch Worlds Burn, which is out now.

I think you'll be familiar with Brian Merchant.

He has been on the show a number of times.

He's a tech journalist and the author of The One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone.

Claire Evans is a writer and musician.

She's the author of broadband, the untold story of the women who made

the internet, and the singer of the Grammy-nominated pop group Yacht. I was so happy to have both

Brian and Claire on the show to talk about their new science fiction anthology, what was behind it,

where the idea from this originally came from back when they started Terraform at Vice back in 2014.

And what we can really learn from these stories of science fiction that challenge the conventional

wisdom that we have around technology and that present these technologies in a really critical

light. You know, is this really illustrating

the way that we think about the future in a different way? Or is this about having us reflect more

on the way that we think about technology in the present, the way that it's implemented so that

maybe we can stop some terrible futures from coming into being? I really enjoyed this conversation. I think you're

going to really enjoy it too. We touch on so many different angles of, you know, science fiction

and the future and these tech billionaires and everything else. It's a great show. Now,

if you like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share it on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think

would learn from it. If you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week,

you can go to patreon.com slash Tech Won't Save Us and become a supporter. Thanks for listening and

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