Silicon Valley needs a new idea because it needs you to not spend too much time realizing how many of its old ones have crashed and burned.

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

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is friend of the show, Brian Merchant.

Yes, he's back again for the third time, because after Facebook's announcement of the Metaverse last week, I just had to talk to him to see what his thoughts were, to see what his opinions were.

And so we could dig into kind of every aspect of what Facebook imagines the future of

the internet to be and to illustrate why it's a terrible idea.

It's a long episode, so I'm going to keep this introduction brief, but we get into so many aspects of the metaverse, from the presentation itself and what Facebook seems to be trying to present it as, to the science fiction origins of the metaverse concept, the growing group of companies and venture capitalists and influencers who are trying

to get in on this concept early on. And we even talk about Dune at the very end to see if maybe

this could finally get people to turn against the increasing encroachment of digital

technologies on our lives. So I was so happy to welcome Brian back onto the show again.

I always love chatting with him, and I think you're really going to like this episode.

Brian is the author of the One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone,

and we talked about that back in September on episode 78,

and he's also the author of the forthcoming book,

Blood in the Machine, that comes out next year. Before we get into it, just a quick note that if you do

want a Tech Won't Save Us t-shirt before the new year, like for the holidays or anything like that,

you can place orders now and they need to be in by November 14th.

And so no pressure, but just want to let listeners know that if you want one before the holidays,

you just need to order by then.

So you'll receive it in time and you can find a link to do that in the show notes.

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

and you can find out more about that at Harbinger Media Network.com. If you like the show, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple podcasts, and make sure to share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues

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