Why The Luddites Were Right (w/ Brian Merchant)

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor and chief of Current Affairs magazine. I am the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs
0:23.4	Magazine. I am joined today by Brian Merchant. He is the technology columnist for the Los Angeles
0:32.1	Times. He is also the author of the book's The One Device, the Secret History of the iPhone,
0:39.2	and most recently the book we are here to speak with him today about the vividly titled
0:45.0	Blood in the Machine, the Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech.
0:51.0	Brian Murchin, thank you so much for joining us on Current Affairs today.
0:54.1	Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for that introduction. Blood in the machine. That's great. big tech, Brian Marchand, thank you so much for joining us on current affairs today.
0:56.3	Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for that introduction.
0:59.2	Blood in the machine. That's great. I love that.
1:04.7	Yeah, I like it, too. I like it too. Oh, that stays with you. Okay. Well, your book is very much about the present and also about the past. Your book is a history of the Luddite movement,
1:10.6	which people may think they know, but they don't necessarily
1:13.2	know. But your book, as I said, is the origins. About the origins of the struggle against
1:18.6	big tech, so it is in very many ways about issues that we face today. You say in the book,
1:25.9	the history of the Luddites, the real ones, not the pejorative
1:30.0	figment of the entrepreneurial imagination, gives us a framework to evaluate the utility of
1:36.3	technologies and their social impacts. We're going to get to that framework, but first, let's have
1:41.7	you take us back in time to the moment that the Luddite movement emerges,
1:47.2	because it emerges a very, very particular moment. And I'd like you to maybe tell us a little bit
1:51.5	about that moment of what's going on. So in 1811 is the year that the Luddites finally take up
1:58.5	their hammers. But before we get there, we should briefly talk about the last 100 years or so,
2:05.8	because this is sort of the early days of the Industrial Revolution,
2:10.2	in which sort of historians like to talk about the machinery being developed
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Current Affairs, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Current Affairs and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.