[rock music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am Francis Zehr. I'm Daisy Aliotta.
And today we are talking with Mike Pepe. Mike is a writer interested in art, culture, and technology.
His work has appeared in Artforum, Spike, The Brooklyn Rail, Rhizome, Dis Magazine, Art in America, and many others, probably at least three times that.
Um, earlier this month, though, the reason we're talking to him, he published Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia.
So we'll be talking through some of the ideas he explores in the book, which I'm preemptively going to recommend you purchase. I think it's a pretty essential read for kind of understanding,
I don't know, the, the, the sh- the shadow of Silicon Valley culture that we live in. I read, um, Malcolm Harris' Palo Alto, uh, like a little over a year ago, and I found that really educational about, like,
the, the, the, the, like, I don't know if post-tech is the word, but the, the tech-enabled platform world we live in, and this was like the best thing I've read for making me feel like more aware of how I move through this world, um, since that.
Anyways, long intro. Mike, thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited. Yeah. So I think we should start by, um, defining platform.
So I, I know that, like, there's no one definition, uh, but going through the book, I was, like, looking for different definitions.
And before I let you [chuckles] speak, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk at length one more time and read some of these quotes, um, some of these places where you both explicitly and implicitly define what a platform is. So
these are all just quotes from across the book. "Platforms are defined less by their cultural characteristics and more by what they enable." "Platforms, the capitalist remnants of failed digital utopias."
"Private, for-profit platforms where labor is content, citizens are users swathed in data, and difference, nuance, and focus is something that instant and constant connectivity must blast away."
Uh, also, "Web 2.0 in the parlance relative to Web 3" networked, globalized, and constantly surveilled data exchanges.
Uh, they also d- use, um, Harvard Business Review's two primary definitions of platforms, which are innovation platforms like Google, Android, Apple iPhone or AWS, and transaction platforms like Amazon, Uber, Meta, Twitter, um, the common thread being owning nothing while taking a hosting fee from constituent buyers and sellers.
And I have a couple more, but that's probably enough. So, [clears throat] um, and as much as I didn't already define it there, what is-- what are platforms in the sense that this book writes against them? Yeah.
So I think platforms are this kind of organizational form of the day. I think we got here from essentially, um, a few different kind of developments in the past twenty years.
I think we all know the common platforms, right?
It's most commonly used as sort of a social media platform, uh, that has kind of come in and eaten up media, eaten up journalism, uh, eaten up various forms of the way we kind of interact online and socialize.
Um, then there are sort of like real-world pr- platforms or like real tech platforms which have kind of tried to disrupt any kind of like synchronous institution or any kind of like synchronous marketplace.
Um, and then, yeah, of course there are like these sort of meta platforms where it's basically, if you think of something like iOS or Apple or Amazon, it's these places just kind of wanna own the server- Mm-hmm...
infrastructure, and then their sort of investment thesis is the lowest risk possible thing we can do is just have a community of people build businesses on top of them while, while we sort of, kind of take some sort of fee or in some way kind of control the means of, of transaction.
Um, so part of the interesting thing about, you know, this book and this topic in general is the platform does kind of evade any one simple, I'd say, easy pocket definition.
Um, but it's sort of like, you know, Wendell Potter, I think said, you, you know it when you see it, uh [chuckles] about pornography, right? It's sort of like i- it's, it's this, um, it's this mutating kind of, uh, form.
I, I am working on a bit better of, I think, like a ongoing definition of what I think a platform really is. But for me, it's like, I think we all are pretty familiar with this kind of the impact it's had on, on society.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
One, one more of the definitions that I didn't read that I think is a helpful, like, addendum to what you just said there is, "The primary feature of the platform is that it enables users to enact or p- or participate in some activity without authorities."
So like, it becomes the new authority- Exactly...
um, ostensibly outside of maybe government or the state, uh, which I think the next, [chuckles] the next thing I want you to define before we maybe have more of an open discussion is techno-utopianism.
Um, this is something that's core to like how platforms come to be, uh, and I, I hadn't, I didn't have a definition of, of the term before. So what is techno-utopianism? Yeah.
So I think we're all pretty much techno-utopians in some very deep sense, right? I think it's pretty much embedded into, at least as far as I can speak to, um, the kind of Western history of technology.
Um, we all kind of have this little seed inside us that says that, you know, tools make things easier. Um, technology largely is a progressive force that improves our lives.
Um, but I think what I kind of trace the last like thirty or so years and sort of our current manifestation of it is that today, sort of digital utopia is this overwhelming, kind of overarching, I would say, political philosophy that kinda I think is like seeping into a lot of the things we do.
So it's, it's this idea that technology and technology alone will be a force for good. It will improve society.
Uh, it will fix our problems, um, and in general, we should sort of stand back and sort of let technologyTake its course.
Um, and so I think that's kind of the, I would argue, one of the largest kind of ideologies we have today that, you know, seeps in and out of sort of more named political ideologies.
But that's kind of, you know, how I see, uh, techno-utopianism today. That's good. The other, the other thing, um, I think a crucial difference is you write like utopians versus ideologues.
You were using both, you know, utopia and ideology, both words there.
But like you say how utopians are less dangerous than ideologues because utopians call attention to themselves, um, and, and you know, it's very clear what they're doing. Whereas like the ideologue doesn't really.
It's more of like a, a, like a symptomless disease, right? It's not showing unless you like look a little closer and read between the lines. Um,
we had your collaborator and mentioned in the book person, uh, Josh, Josh Citarella on- Oh, yes... a few weeks ago. Uh, I did get a laugh out of, I think it's the last chapter.
The first line is like, "I could tell that Joshua Citarella had finally broken." [laughs] Um, but the reason I bring him up is- That's a good thing, by the way. [laughs] It, it's a good thing that he'd broken? Yeah.
When he, when he snaps, it usually means something very brilliant is about to come, so. He made a breakthrough. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.
Um, well, okay, I wanted to bring that up though 'cause we talked a little bit, um, with him about like new institutions. Um, but I didn't really have the context of what that...
I, I wanted to ask him about that, but I didn't really know what it meant until I, I read your book.
Um, so tell us about like why the, why institutions are important to your work and like what it means in the context of platforms. Um, uh, the, so the final, the final chapter is titled Platforms Are Not Institutions.
Um, and then in the, in the, in the intro, you have this list of like all the chapter titles, which are these like really short statements, each one dispelling a techno-utopian myth.
And so you say, "Platforms are not institutions. Do not confuse them." Um, which was kind of, I, I had not thought of that before either. So institutions, what are, what's the meaning? Yeah.
[coughs] Josh and I have been kind of, I would say loosely collaborating on, on these ideas for around 10 years, so he felt like a natural person to include in the book.
I feel like his, his arc as an artist and a intellectual kind of is archetypical of, of this kind of predicament we have. Um,
the kind of chapter titles that I sort of adapted from, um, a, a sort of list that I had made probably five or six years ago, um, was kind of trying to summarize all of the different deeply embedded myths that go into kind of our present Silicon Valley ideology, and it was drawing on a lot of different thinkers and a lot of different folks that I kind of talk about in the book as well.
But when I was writing the book, I realized that people know this already. Everyone's heard this already. What is the true problem for the future?
Like, what is the most damning kind of outcome of Silicon Valley digi-digital utopia? And for me, it's something that I think we all feel like, not, not just our generation, but especially our, our generation,
is we kind of feel sort of like shuffled between platforms. Like we kind of
all were kind of forced to drink the Kool-Aid around platforms improving various aspects of our lives, and we kind of started to wake up to that reality.
And so what we've done, and what I think Josh did like very plainly, is, you know, move from platform to platform trying to figure out which one worked, which one was the best.
I mean, quite literally, he's on, I think, four or five or six platforms. I've followed him while he's been kind of moving through that, and this is typical.
I've seen other artists and creators and, and journalists do this as well. [coughs] The reason why I ended the book with this kind of larger overarching statement, um, was because I felt like all of the...
it was a component of the confusion for so much of, you know, present day digital utopia, is that we keep wanting certain things from platforms. Um, we keep wanting these virtues, these qualities, these structures.
Uh, and I just think that despite institution being an incredibly bad word- [laughs]... uh, and an incredibly fraught word, I, I just wanted to offer that potentially that's what we're looking for.
And so we're sort of- You get into this too, where you're like- Yeah... by the end, I mean, kind of throughout the whole book, you're talking about how, you're talking about how, you know, institutions are...
not that institutions are the answer, but like that these tech platforms are trying to solve like political problems without political means, and the answer is actually very simple, to solve political problems with, with political means, which just may be, you know, easier, easier said than done.
But at the end, you do kind of cede like it's not that our current institutions are perfect- Mm-hmm... um, but it's like that's the model that's more humanist and like has people, the body politic as- Exactly...
as the end, as the end priority. As like that's what the incentive structure is there, not like venture capital investors. Right. Yeah, I mean, this-- Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
Well, there was a part where you said Silicon Valley triumphed in part by convincing public citizens of a state that they were better off being private users on a network.
Um, network obviously made up of platforms where, um, you know, a key aspect of an institution is some sort of oversight.
Um, and the institutions that most people understand, public institutions have oversight that citizens can participate in, but there's no oversight mechanism for a platform that a citizen can participate in. Mm-hmm.
And when I was reading that section, it brought to mind Praxis and, um, some of the other sort of like network state projects- Mm...
that have come about, um, where like the key philosophy behind it is making a separation between what a network is and what a state is. And I feel like a lot of the, uh,
a lot of the things that you're debunking through this book, um, in some show that you really just can't make that distinction- Yeah...
or if you can, it's not a meaningful distinction when you look at like the actual material reality of the internet as, uh, a network of physical objects. Yeah. No, exactly.
I think that's, I think the, the end logic of the platform, I feel like takes us in two different roads. I think one isUh, to your point first is it does kind of create this logical conclusion of a network state, right?
Um, it's this idea that if you don't like one platform, you can simply just port up and move and go, and, and of course there's a ton of sociopolitical and physical problems with that that interact with kind of how we actually live in society.
But I think that is the logic. It's this idea that if, if something isn't perf- perfectly optimized, we can use software, uh, to essentially, um, model how we wanna govern o- o- our lives.
And I think obviously reality is a lot, a lot messier than that. The other place that I think the logic of the platform brings us with respect to media and how creators and consumers interact is a sort of AI slop, right?
I think we're sort of seeing how, um, uh, Daisy, your point about there not being these sort of guardrails, it's like AI slop would be like the first test for does this thing that you're using, let's call it thing right now, care about what's being uploaded?
Is there any kind of like consideration into, um, what the fabric of this thing is?
And I think the fact that sort of AI slop and even the invention of AI, which is driven by everyone kind of like constantly uploading all this data, uh, is one of the kind of like final bosses of, of this kind of like platform ideology.
One thing, um, reading, uh, when you write about like platforms endless hunger for growth and growth for growth's sake, growth at any cost.
I've thought about this before, like idea of like growth eq- or platform equilibrium, maybe we could call it, where like, is there a world where like a,
any of these platforms, any of these companies in like the venture funded, um, incentive structure where there's like an equilibrium where, you know, the, the birth rate and the death rate of, of the user base say is like, is equal and it's at a place like, you know, Facebook, Meta gets to a point where they have four billion users and,
you know, the churn, the acquisition rates are equal, and it just stays at four billion. Like that's death, right?
I mean, I think I was thinking of equilibrium and utopia as kind of both of these things are, are fake, non-real, you know, they're, they're ideas that like kind of you can't...
You can work towards, but you'll never get there. Um, I don't know.
I wanted to hear what you thought about if, if that's like a, if that-- if there's such a thing as platform equilibrium or if that's just like so antithetical to the whole thing.
So someone who, I don't know their real name, but someone in Josh's Discord actually made a great point, uh, in response to the book, which was, there are certain platforms that do a really good job of using software to create this equilibrium, right?
Like, um, he-- I think they use the example of Reddit. I don't know if I quite believe that, but, um, there is something to that point, right?
There is a sort of virtue to it that software can, um, mediate some of these things, which does create a, a, a, a nice community. I mean, I think we can all think of like a
peak time in all of the platforms [laughs] that we, that we remember fondly, right? Yeah. But here's my problem with that though.
Like, yes, software can enable that, but the problem with the platform structure is that, you know, as far as I know, almost all of them have some sort of bottom line or they're sort of beholden to this kind of venture capital growth at all costs, uh, costs, um, um, uh, you know- Incentive...mantra.
Yeah, incentive, right? So, so, so I'm not completely pessimistic in the sense that there is a way... And, and again, all of these things e- exist on a spectrum, right?
I don't mean to be like, "You're in this bucket, you're in this bucket."
Um, but part of that spectrum is understanding that, yes, to your point there, I think there are ways which we can potentially take the equilibrium or take the even the algorithmic, um, governance of, of software, but the key thing is that it has to have this like institutional foundation below it.
Mm. And that's where, you know, you start to have to deal with that, the dirty word of the institution and trying to figure out how to- And that's where we get to state book. Yes.
[laughs] Which we had Josh, uh, uh, tell us about. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, I mean,
y- you know, you say at one point, you talk about how a lot of techno optimists, or at least the more libertarian faction are Jeffersonian, and I took that to mean like there's sort of like this state's rights perspective around platforms that you can really see in the sort of current, um,
odd sort of coalitions forming around the second Trump administration and technology leaders.
But, um, I think one of the things that that brought to mind for me was like the philosophical debates that became a part of the era that Jefferson actually lived through, which is like the Founding Fathers.
Like so much of it focused around whether democracy is natural or innate, whether statehood is natural or innate, and all of these debates were had in public. Mm. Um, but there's almost like a settled debate that
in the way that people use the internet and the invisibility of the physical things that make it possible, where like you have to say cyberspace is not an act of nature.
Most people who have progressive ideology would say like, "Yes, of course," but if you look at the way they use the internet and the way they expect things on the internet to be free,
they do sort of relate to it in the same way that you would relate to a naturally occurring good or resource. Mm-hmm.
And I think the real danger of this idea that cyberspace is just like naturally occurring, um, and then you say at one other point, like there's no such thing as data in nature, like a data point, um, can only be post-factual.
It can't be pre-factual. Mm. Mm. Um, that like
now there's a sense that there could be some sort of artificial intelligence that we have to treat as almost like a natural occurring intelligence if it crosses a certain threshold of seeming human.
Um, and so all these things for me are like connected, but I, I really like the data thing where it's like, okay, da- the data started out as like a mapping of things that you could observe, a post-factual, there's five cows in this corner of the stable.
Um-To becoming something that's like totally pre-factual where like the way that we interact with data now is like this is where we think there's gonna be a cow. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And that's basically all an LLM can do.
Minority Report stuff. Yeah. Yeah, no, you... I mean, you weaved that together perfectly. Um, I think that's why- I'm standing on the shoulder of giants, which is the- No, no. Well-...
PDF of your book that I read this morning. [laughs] No. A- and, and, and, and, and likewise, so is the book. I mean, that's what the... that's what I tried to do here.
Like, so the way you put that made me think of another thrust of the book, right? It's like when we think of tech criticism, there's literally thousands of books. Um, I've...
You know, we've all read probably most of them.
Where, where I think, where I think, uh, the way you put it stands out and also the way, the way I tried to capture in this book stands out is, you know, when we criticize like Amazon or we criticize Palantir or cr- we criticize surveillance capitalism, you know, we think of those as like the appendages of this like larger thing, right?
And those have been great. We've pretty much tried to cut all of those off, right? But it's like, what I think we need to do for the next phase is kind of go to the head, right?
Go to the ideology, go to like the deeper things that are kind of harder to like point at and look at. So, you know, I think the book kind of sits on top of this existing layer of technology criticism.
But the question is, okay, we don't need another book on why Facebook is, is, is bad, although we should keep writing those, but I'm just saying. [laughs] Mm-hmm.
Um, what we're trying to look at is like the harder stuff, like the, the more difficult, the more difficult to pin down ideology, um- Well, this is, this is where your, your term, I don't know if you coined this, but I, I feel like you do in the book, proximate cause political amnesia, where it's like a tech platform comes in to solve a problem that- Yeah...
a previous tech platform started, but that's like the proximate cause. You need to be looking at the tertiary cause, right? Or maybe I'm getting it reversed, whatever.
Uh, but like you ha- you have to go behind and like what's the actual root of the problem- Mm-hmm... not the symptom, not the symptom of the symptom, right? Yeah. That's what you're saying.
Yeah, no, the cr- the, the, the critique of the techno fix is, is, is definitely has a lot of literature out there, um, and I encourage people to check that out as well.
I think I was trying to s- bring that together and say, "Yeah, I think this is the problem." Like I, I think of blockchain as fascinating tool. It... You know, interesting from a technical perspective.
Um, but I think the problem is for me, it suffers from this original sin of the techno fix, right?
So we hear all these great arguments coming out of now Silicon Valley about blockchain, uh, and the reality is that they're sort of just trying to fix something that I think platforms created, trying to solve this problem that platforms created, but they're not doing it at the, the under...
They're sort of not looking at the political layer- Mm-hmm... or at least they're not using politics to adjudicate this problem. They're thinking they're looking to blockchain to fix it. Mm-hmm.
Why did you write the book now? Like, um, I mean, you've been doing this work for well over a decade. Like, why was now the time that you wanted to synthesi- synthesize all this into a book?
Yeah, I think, I think, I think it's been definitely a long time coming in terms of this, this critique of platforms.
Um, I'd say why now is I think we're finally reaching a breaking point where, um, not only are we in the mainst... The, the tech lash is beyond mainstream, right?
I'd almost say there's even like a backlash to the tech lash. Uh- Mm-hmm... if I'm sure, you know, you've both been following this pretty well. So I thought that there's still an open debate on what comes next.
Um, and so it was to try to provide, um... I'd say it's also to try to like bring in the next generation of folks kind of learning about this for the first time, um- Mm-hmm...
and trying to maybe change the tone a little bit and say, uh, there is probably another horizon which we can build new institutions and try to talk through that. Yeah. Um, I wanna get...
talk a little bit about like your position as a critic here. You kind of outlined that, like in the beginning, you're not a Luddite. That's not your, that's not your stance.
You know, you don't think technology for technology's sake is bad.
Um, and then in the chapter, the technology isn't given its made chapter, you mark the similarities and differences between, you know, effective accelerationists like Marc Andreessen or Y Combinator's Gary Tan,
um, the similarities and differences between them and tech critics. Um, so to quote you here, you say, "Nor are critics here to deny the benefits of technology as a pursuit.
Their intent in the criticism of technology focuses on those who wield it," which is, is what we've been talking about it, where it's like it's the political, the ideology that you're looking at, um, not like the technology itself, because the technology is just a tool created by people.
Well, actually, you also say it's not just a tool, because a tool is something that, like you, it's, is, is... [laughs] I have this wrench here.
A tool is this discrete wrench that's just like in the world and can wield no power over me, knows nothing about me, right? Like, it's almost like you say it's almost wrong to call a tech platform a tool. Yeah.
So the tool problem is, is another like long-running problem, and I guess what you'd call the critique of technology as a sort of like, uh, discipline.
Um, I would say that I think that tech criticism makes somewhat of an unforced error when they focus too much on the technology itself- Yeah... um, when they sort of fetishize, uh, software.
Um, and I'm very careful in the book to say I kind of do toe this line between software generally having this kind of inherent logic that will, [sighs]
almost like produce a set of relations that can sometimes be potentially, uh, advantageous to your political goals, depending on what they are, or, you know, somewhat challenging to them.
Um, but at the same time, I think when, when technology criticism fetishizes or overemphasizes the tool itself, it forgets about the things that we actually sort of can change, or that the actors in this whole, um, orchestra who, or in this whole production that, that have agency, right?
Mm-hmm. Um, so I think that's a little bit also what the book is trying to talk about when we talk about ideology. It's saying, um, you know, I work in tech. I've worked in tech.
It's, it's filled with a bunch of really smart developers who are, um, you know, very much good at, uh, making software do things, making hardware do things.
Uh, those folks' ideologies have a ton more to do with, um, you know, w- the world we live in than- Mm-hmm...
any kind of, you know-Piece of software or, you know, skill set or outcome How a content owner views the world. Right. And how the founder views the world, and how their VC views the world. Right. Right.
So, so I, I fully understand the lament of the tech- the criticism of technology today to say that, you know, algorithms or, um, digital media or, uh, maybe, you know, social media is, is changing how we think and how we live.
But I'm trying to say potentially if we look at the underlying ideology there, we try to convert those folks.
We can, um, we can, we can, we can use those tools, or at least we can think about those tools in a different way. I think the problem though is
there is a tech criticism that also says, sometimes called sort of like the tech left, um, that says, uh, we should be using these tools to sort of create our own, you know, leftist utopia.
And I think there's also a problem with that too, right? Mm-hmm. I think, I think the problem with that is that, um, it also suffers from this sort of idea of the techno fix.
Um, just because it's a leftist techno fix doesn't mean it's a good techno fix, basically. Yeah. Well, and it's the... I mean, the problem is also there in that word utopia, which like- Right...
is, you, you outlined early on, is like always impossible and the wrong thing to think about. The thing to think about is what's in front of you, not what's like an impossible ideal you'll never have. Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that's the thing. I think it's, it's... Look, it's hard, right? I think, um,
we, we're in a, we're in a time and a generation that has just been exhausted by institutions failing over and over and over again. Um, it's been a, a long, pretty disastrous road.
Uh, if you think about some of the things that, you know, other countries have for, that we take for granted, um, or just at least the sort of like closing of the overture window about how we can solve big problems.
Uh, you know, sometimes the problems aren't that complex. It just requires [laughs] just require- Well, wait, actually it, I wanna butt in for a second and, um- Yeah...
highlight another couple things you say in the book.
So like when the prob- the problem's not being so complex, there's this great example, kind of two examples that happen in different parts of the book, where one, it's I think like 20 some years ago in Berkeley, there was this project Kitchen Democracy, which basically is like, okay, it's, it's hard to go to a city hall meeting and like have your opinion voiced and affect change in your, in your local government.
Um, so what if we made, like, I'm gonna butcher some of the details here, but what if we made like a message board and you can like, just like cast your votes on there, and then you don't have to like, have the inconvenience of going to the, the meeting, whatever.
And like, this kind of fails because obviously there's so many levels of bias where it's like the people who are likely to have internet access, the people who are likely to have heard about this, this website, like you don't have like...
The, the friction is what makes- Right... government work, right? And like the being in the same place together.
Um, and then a few chapters later you talk about, I think it's like, I, I forget, like the Star Tribune, the Spectator Tribune, something in Ohio somewhere. Mm-hmm.
Um, this, this newspaper that started just sending journalists, observers to these meetings and like reporting on them in a really factual way, and then distributing that and how that was like, kind of solved the problem that Kitchen Democracy had been seeking to solve, but in like- Right...
a very clear, practical, sensible way. Like, oh, instead of a techno fix, what if we just sent people there? Right. Reported on it, and it's like, how could it be so simple? Exactly.
I think that's, that's, uh, the exact, I think, example that I would bring up to, to make this point.
And, um, right, I think the, you know, the Cleveland Documenters program looked at the institution and said, "Let's not use software, uh, to, um, you know, put the actual work of the institution in, in the background.
Let's essentially..." Mm-hmm. By the way, they do use software. They put everything online and- Yeah... right? So it's like they, they are using- It's a distribution mechanism- Exactly... not the voting mechanism.
Exactly, right. So they're not really like fiddling with the stuff of, of, of governance, of the institution of governance.
And I think what that does is sort of, um, still allows the, there to be some sort of pedestal that we put these electoral bodies and these electoral, uh, groups on.
I think with Kitchen Democracy you had, uh, a sort of like maybe not fully thought through expansion of the surface area of potentially, uh, a pla- a... It kind of was a, a proto platform in a way. Yeah.
Um, [clears throat] you, you have that, and I think that was an early cautionary tale, um, for what I think we'd see, you know, today much later.
Um, and just in terms of this idea that when you try to take software and come in and make something, speed something up or make something easier, it does have these unintended consequences, um, with respect to the kind of underlying institution it's trying to augment or, or assist with.
Mm-hmm. I like where you say that the internet is a publisher, because I think that's something that we forget and, you know, essentially like all visible parts of the internet are visible because they've been published.
Um, and so when Elon Musk says stuff like, "You're the media now," it honestly seems like
it's so artificial because, um, you know, how can you have a citizenry media operating on a publisher that's controlled by institutions they don't have input into? Right.
Um, and it's, I mean, that's a very clever reframing of the conversation and who has control. Um, but ultimately
I think the risk of AI, and I would love to know what you think about this, is like, you know, there's a people who are AI optimists or maximalists, um, you know, basically saying like, you don't...
It's going to decrease the need for institutions in the short term and require fewer and fewer points of human input in the development of, you know, platforms and what's published on them. Ab- yeah, absolutely.
I think that [clears throat] a key aspect of, of AI, and I have a lot of like ridiculous AI maximalist tweets bookmarked that I, you know, would rather never look at again, but I probably will.
[laughs] I probably will use them for, uh, you know, some sort of citation later, but-But yeah, I think I'm seeing this all the time.
Um, there, there is this underlying logic to AI, which I think goes back to the earliest days of AI, um, where they say that institutions are messy, crooked, difficult to, to figure out.
Um, and we'd like to take out the uncertain human element of them.
Um, and so I think with, uh, with, with most of AI, you do see in 2025 part of the underlying argument, some people say explicitly, other people kind of like dog whistle it, um, is that, you know, we won't need journalism as an institution because Grok is gonna give you the headlines.
And, you know, Grok is gonna summarize, uh, summarize what's, what's going on now. So, you know, it's, it's not so much we are the media now, um, in, in Elon's rallying cry, it's almost like
the AI that we kind of tune and own [laughs] actually- Mm-hmm... uh, is, is, is the media now. And the reason why you're the media is because you're providing the data. Um- Mm...
but I mean, in what world is even the most powerful single Twitter account going to be, uh, a larger, more substantive voice than sort of what Grok spits out and puts on the front page, right?
So there's still media, right? It's, it's this idea that we're decentralizing media. I don't really think that's what's happening. I think it's kind of m- really, really the opposite. Yeah.
Well, when I read that tweet too, I mean, I was thinking about how like, I mean, Elon's the media, right?
Like, shortly after that, I read the in 404 Media, they would report it on like h- um, Elon trying to block something about the sale of Infowars to The Onion, um, specifically blocking the, the transfer of, of Infowars' uh, X Twitter accounts, uh, because those are the sole property of X, right?
Mm-hmm. So it's like when Elon says like, "You are the media now," he, he is the media now, and that- Right... he owns Twitter, and he, everything on Twitter is his property, and then also...
I mean, that goes back into the Grok thing, but it's like, you know, like you, you are the media in as much as like you have some content capital on Twitter, but that's not your content capital.
That, that's theirs that you're farming for them. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't claim to have read every end user license agreement that I ever signed, but, uh- I can't claim to have read a single one myself.
[laughs] There was a period where I was like a real, you know, tech activist. Yeah. And I'm like, "I'm gonna read every one." And then I'm like, I got tired of that real quick.
Um, no, but I mean, that's pretty much what, uh, what the, uh, what those EULAs said, you know, in the early aughts- Yeah... when we were signing up for stuff left and right, and no one's really reading it.
Um, but yeah, it's pretty much what they said. [laughs] Yeah. Uh, I wonder if in your bookmarks of cursed AI tweets, [laughs] you came across this tweet that I found really disturbing.
I mean, I think it was like a, a long tweet, so maybe an essay, but- Mm... basically saying that like AI will freeze- An essay... um, basically freeze wealth where it's at.
Um, you know, you have a couple years to make as much as money as possible before upward mobility essentially goes away, and we enter some new e- era of feudalism.
I just find that so dark, and um, I mean, it's, it's a really disturbing thought. It's also disturbing that somebody like thought to say that, um- Right...
because it's, to me, it represents just total, uh, total submission to the logical fallacies that we're talking about here. Um- It's platform logic achieving the end goal of the total devaluation of labor. Yeah. Yeah.
Or like even more so like equating wealth and labor, which is, yeah, like whatever. Yeah, no, I think, I think that's... I, I, I've seen those. I've seen various versions of that. Um, I think there's,
you know, kind of a two-part dance to why those are out there. One is it's trying to kind of scare you into submission in a way.
Um, and to be fair, there are folks in the AI camp and the sort of AI, that are working in AI that realize this is kind of bunk and say- Mm... "Look, this tool's gonna be very powerful. It's going to replace some jobs."
But, uh, and this is actually where I agree with them. I think like any technology that comes in and replaces jobs, like eventually stuff starts to shake out, right? And kind of go back.
Like, um, you know, most of our furniture used to be made by hand, not anymore. Um, those furniture makers did something else.
But the thing that's a little bit different, and you know, every time you write tech criticism, you, you always have to be like, "Okay, well, why, why is this time different?" Mm-hmm.
Um, I do think AI does have a special claim to its cog- its ability to think, and its, its sort of cognitive superla- s- um, superlatives.
Like I, I do think that when we think about even AI art, like it is kind of just saying that we're gonna take out the, what I would argue is the most human special element to really anything, right?
So like it's not just making the furniture maker no longer make the furniture, it's essentially making... it's essentially putting, you know, cold water on even our desire to make furniture- Mm...
or, or the, the imagination that would lead us to make a beautiful piece of any object, right? So yeah, I mean, think, I think, I don't fully believe the,
the AI doomer that wants to lord it over us and sort of like in this kind of like very much like anti-human revenge of the nerds way to kind of seem like a tough guy, like, 'cause that's a lot what a lot, what I see a lot.
Um, there's a lot of like weird, I think, uh, psychological stuff going on with those folks. Um, but yeah, I, I do think that there's gonna be profound change in the next few decades.
Um, and I think that's why we need to start getting our induction order real, real quick in terms of like what we really want. And like instead of being led to this future- Mm...
by folks who are saying those things, let's take back the positive narrative and try to drive it ourselves.
On the, on the, on the fear side there, you have a line, um, about like how a tech company wants you to believe that their product like can a- allow you to achieve these like unimaginable things.
And I'm thinking about at my last job where I was doing content marketing for a tech company, uh, we were looking at-We, you know, in the creative industry, we were looking at this Photoshop ad where we're like, "How do we, how do we do that?"
Where it's like I- I'd just seen it, like, watching YouTube. It was an, [laughs] an ad that's on YouTube, uh, where it's like you're moving through New York City and it's like these...
It's almost like an, like an AR situation where, like, you with Photoshop are, like, changing the world around you and making it, shaping it to your will. Um, and it's like, well, of course, Photoshop can't do that.
You can, like, make an image, but, you know, you're not necessarily shaping the world around you to that sense.
Um, and then that's kind of goes to this making, making you think that AI is this great fearful force and powerful, and we really, really... It's so dangerous.
Not that it isn't, but like, I, like, that is, like, kind of a, a negative marketing tool. It's like not that you can do anything, but that the AI, that you won't be able to do anything because the AI will do everything.
Um, but I- I don't know. I, like, don't, I don't really like the, the term AI too. Yeah. It's, I think it's- Oh... just pure science fiction. Yeah. That's a whole nother podcast. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, to me it's like- Yeah... like, uh, most AI things are like- It could be this one. We have half an hour. [laughs] Yeah. We do have, we do have a half hour still.
Um, most AI is just like, oh, no, this is just a computer that can do things really fast. Like, that's- Right... is that, is that intelligence? No, according to [laughs] a lot of what you say in the book. Yeah.
But, I don't know. It's, it's, like, the, yeah, the term AI itself is that, like, marketing tool to- to- to, like, try to scare you into submission. 1,000%.
I think artificial intelligence, and Silicon Valley's been very good at marketing their stuff over the past, you know, 30 or 40 years. AI's got to, got to take the cake. Uh- Mm-hmm...
I think that when we think about how AI is being inserted into every little corner of every single app right now, it is just, like, sort of product managers gone wild, right?
It's just sort of like we're gonna do something that no one really asked for, doesn't really help you, uh, actually might make things worse. Um, and oh, by the way, it has those little star icons so you think- Mm-hmm...
it's magic, right? Um- Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, this is a larger manifestation of sort of...
I'm just reading, I'm rereading something Doug Rushkoff wrote, um, a while back, and he just basically is like, most technology just kind of boils down to, like, magic that helps you, um, disappear, like unhidden labor or, like, make you think- Mm-hmm...
that suddenly things are better, um, when, like, they're kind of just the same. I think- Mechanical Turk stuff. Yeah, exactly. I think AI is, is, is, is, is that precise thing.
To get nerdy for a bit, yeah, I think, like, AI is really just, like, machine learning. Um, and the fact that now we've had this LLM breakthrough makes it way more of a marketing, uh, opening, right? So- Mm-hmm...
you know, machine learning has been doing fascinating, really powerful, scary stuff, like, up until the LLM explosion, and we just didn't think about it as much.
And the marketing that that was AI didn't really work as, as well.
But once you start to have, like, everyday people write in stuff and it to understand natural language much better, which is what an LLM does, um, then, you know, the marketing gears start turning and we start to basically say, "This is AI."
Um, so yeah, pretty much AI is just like machine learning except, um, sold to you in a much different way that you probably don't want. I had a very interesting experience with ChatGPT. I...
I'm of the mindset that you should, like, try tools if you're gonna be writing about them as a critic and, like- Mm-hmm...
I know some people who won't even touch it because of, um, the environmental impact of data centers, which I'm obviously very sympathetic to.
But, um, you know, I have dipped a toe in it and I've learned some, like, interesting stuff about myself.
So, um, you know, one of the projects I had our intern do near the end of the year is, like, Dirt sends pretty much, like, one newsletter a week where we round up links. Mm-hmm.
We have, like, a master list Google Doc where we pull them through, from. So I wanted to send out a newsletter that was just like, here's... Over the holidays, it sh- was like, here's every link we shared this year.
But, um, in the master doc, usually one of us just drops the URL. They're not nicely formatted. Mm-hmm. Had my intern work on it, but...
And there was about 300 links in there, but every time I checked in on her, she was like, "You know, I'm getting through it, but there's, like, a lot." And I was like, "You know what? This is a perfect task for ChatGPT."
So I go to ChatGPT, I'm like, "Here's 300 links. Like, can you make an Excel sheet of them where you say the source and you hyperlink it?" And
it's like, "Well, you know I can't do that because I can't click out-" Mm-hmm... "to links." And I'm like, "Yeah, I know, but like..."
So I was like, "But could you look at the URL and could you see the source in the URL? And for the ones that you can determine- Right... can you use the headline in the URL and use the source in the URL?
And if you can't determine it, can you just put it in the spreadsheet, but put it in red?" And it's like, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that." And, but as I'm, like, conversing with it, I realize, like,
I, I'm a p- people pleaser. I like to be, like, very nice manager. I realize, like, how much I'm suppressing the impulse when somebody comes to me and says, "I can't do it," to just say to them, like,
"Well, what can you do?" But with ChatGPT, because it's a computer, everyone's like, "Say thank you to it." I'm like, I'm being polite- [laughs]...
but I'm, I literally told it, I was like, "When you can't do something, don't tell me that you can't do it. Tell me the workaround immediately. Don't make me ask." And I would never say that to a human.
I should say that to a human. I've been socialized not to, but I would say it to ChatGPT. So I'm in there, I'm like a bitch.
[laughs] And let me tell you, it took so long because the other thing in, like, Chat- about ChatGPT, which I thought it was just me, I was like, "It doesn't respect me," and then I went to Reddit, is, like, ChatGPT actually has a bias to conserve its processing- Yeah...
data or whatever, so bandwidth. So I would... We got to a point where I was like, "Can you show me that you can do this?" And it's like, "Yes, yes, I can do this." I'm like, "Okay."
It would give me, like, the first five. I'm like, "Okay, now do all of them." It would come back with, like, 10 of the 300, and I'm like, "No, no, all of them." And it'll be like, "Oh, I understand now."
I'm like, "You're gonna do all of them, right?" I'm like, "Yes." I'm like, "Do it now." And it would come back with, like, 30, and I was like, "Are you serious?"So I finally had to like bully it.
What felt like bullying it into doing all three hundred. It's like there's a lot of them. I'm like, "I know there's a lot of them." [laughs] I'm paying twenty dollars a month, and you are not even human.
[laughs] And like, you know, now I've like... You know, whatever. It was awful, and I was like, "Do I have a problem?" [laughs] I'm like, "Do I have an issue?"
[laughs] Like you're at like one of those rage rooms, breaking plates. Yeah. I guess I was just really surprised by like my attitude towards it.
Um, I was like, "Are these really things that I wish I could say to other human beings and I can't?" Yeah.
Um, but I was also like, "I think there's something wrong with this product as well, and I can't be the only one experiencing this," that it's like a liar. [laughs] Yeah. Not a liar about facts.
Like it's a liar about its capabilities, and it will actually resist doing things that take a while, even if I'm like, "I don't...
My intern, it would take her a few days, so I will sit here for 10 minutes while you do it, but you have to do all of them." [laughs] Yeah.
No, I've, I've wondered the same thing about, about, well, that chatbot in general, in, in particular. Um, but I haven't really encountered times where like they will offer up things unasked, right, or, uh- Yeah...
unprompted, right? So I think like the under-discussed thing of a lot of these AI agents is that you kind of have to talk to them first.
And as you're talking about Daisy, like they aren't exactly like proactive or they don't- No... really understand what you want. They won't go the extra mile. Like it's very- It's a mirror. Right. It's a... Right.
So, so yeah. I mean, it's sort of like a pretty shitty employee to have, uh, for that reason. But then yeah. Which is fine, but it's being marketed as an- Yeah... employee replacement. Mm-hmm.
And I'm like, this is like, this is like that employee that has like tenure and like stonewalls you, and it's just like- Yeah. ChatGPT is quiet quitting... "Yeah, I can't do that." And it's like, "What can you do?"
And they're like, "This other thing." I'm like, "Okay, but could you do this?" "Oh yeah, I guess I could do that."
[laughs] The, the, the, the conversation about like, um, I don't know, ChatGPT and the, the science fiction of AI as a term is making me think of something when we talked to this woman, Lauren Minard, who's the founder of this mycelium earplug company, Gob, which I liked- I like the way you pronounced that this time, Francis.
What? Mycelium. Myceli- mycelium, mycelium- [laughs]... whatever. Um, anyways, um, we were talking to her.
I think she got this from William Gibson or something, but this idea of how like nobody's making science fiction about the 22nd century.
Uh, and I, I was thinking about that reading the book too, where it's like, what are... what is the path forward? What does, what does, you know... I mean, really like 5 years from now, rather 10 years from now.
Maybe it's like a, a folly in the same sense as like to think about utopia, to think about like science fiction of the 22nd century. But have you come across any? Or is like, like...
'Cause when I think about like what does the 22nd century look like, it's still kind of the big flat now. Yeah. There's no like... It's just now, but hopefully less shitty. I don't know. Yeah.
No, I think that's, that's right on.
I think AI, AI has been the culmination mostly as a cautionary tale of like most sci-fi, that I feel like all of the nerds finally got there, and they're like, "All right, this is it."
[laughs] Like we, we haven't read any good, uh, any good, uh, novels about anything after this, so this is pretty much the end. Yeah.
And I think that's part of what bleeds into or feeds into a lot of the kind of weird prognostications and the weird cultural dark stuff that we've been talking about too.
Um, I haven't-- I don't actually read sci-fi that much, and I actually wonder if that's potentially why I am the way I am. I never really got into it. Um, [laughs] but I will say this, like you don't really...
Like the, the, the sci-fi that I do, that I have, uh, encountered, it's like almost always like a cautionary tale. Yeah. And I find that like Silicon Valley has somehow got it completely- That's true...
[laughs] completely upside down. Um, but that's a fascinating thought, right?
Like I do think that we do feel somewhat stuck in terms of, of not being able to imagine what future, um, you know, future- Well, 'cause in the, in the 20th century it was so much like, what's the new millennium, right?
Right. And I mean, I wasn't... I'm 30 years old, so I wasn't like in, you know, in 1983 like, what, what, we're gonna have flying cars, right? Yeah.
Like, but like now I'm like I'm, I'm almost not interested in like, in the 22nd century and like new technology.
It's like I, I, I really do kinda feel like we're at like, like, I don't know, the whole, the whole obsession with like space, the billionaire space obsession, the Bryan Johnson- Yeah, that's it... like ending aging.
Like I think... I don't know. I think humans are born and eat and shit and, you know, reproduce and, and that's it, right? Yeah. It's...
[laughs] Like I think that the AI and like the kind of acceleration over the past 10, 20 years is kind of showing that to only be more true. Yeah, I think all of them are kind of like post-human essentially and...
or post-Earth, right? I think- Yeah... I think we should give some credit. I think maybe I would say, as you said, a lot of those visions are about other planets- Mm-hmm... um, kind of leaving Earth behind.
I'd say the other one is about this sort of like pet term of like abundance, which I see so much now, um, which is very interesting to kind of see that from the kind of like EA- EAAC crowd or like the kind of tech- Mm-hmm...
right? Um, but yeah. I think, uh, I think abundance is probably the thing I see a lot.
And then with the Bryan Johnson stuff, yeah, I think that people think that we're gonna be able to live forever, which brings up like profound political problems, [laughs] like ep- Yeah.
Has anyone really thought that through if everyone starts living? [laughs] Like we don't even have the- It looks like the fundamental natural truth is that we die- Right... and that species die- Yeah...
and that like everything dies on ev- from the cellular level all the way up.
Um, another, another line I really like in the book, um, is, "Platform capitalism depends on us forgetting the beauty in pluralism, in competing frameworks for an understanding of historical development."
So I mean, this made me think about like optimization culture- Yeah... that has like kind of sprung out of tech.
Um, and then also what, what you talk about, about institutions and forming new institutions and forming thousands or millions of new institutions that like each are different and like can be small. Um, I don't know.
To me that's like- Yeah... a really profound and, and radical idea, and I mean, humanist to the core, right? That pluralism- Exactly... is what it's all about. [laughs] Yeah. I think that...
I think, I think Silicon Valley types think that someone always has to be right or someone- Yes... always has to win.Uh, that's, that's not how it is, right? It's not as if, um...
I think, like, the, the beauty in, in, in this, like, institutional framework that I think we're thinking of is, um, there's just more of them and different versions of them, and they don't necessarily compete, right?
I think if you, you know... What, what the humanities does kind of teach you in a really nice way is that, you know, it's okay if there's no answer. Um, some things there just isn't really an answer. Mm-hmm.
And, uh, you know, that's not true in, like, the hard sciences for sure. Like, we can factually prove things right or wrong, like, for the most part.
Um, but I think, I think the big problem in the 21st century has been, like, the just, like, unabashed mixing of those two things, and, like, no one, like, refereeing.
Like, wait, wait, wait, that's something that we don't need an exact right answer to. That's something that doesn't need to be perfectly optimized. Um, so yeah. Which, uh- Well, I don't... Sorry. Go ahead.
I was just gonna say the thing about abundance is, like, we do have abundance. We have unequal distribution. Exactly. So whenever you point that out, people get very- 1000... defensive.
And you mentioned the sort of Thomas More's vision of Utopia and then, um, you know, Lewis Mumford, who also wrote about Utopia. And, like, Lewis Mumford's vision of Utopia was, like, kind...
It was, like, the period, like, right after the Ice Age, you know? It was like we were barely out of the Neolithic period.
We had pockets of agrarian societies that, like, were making enough food for everyone to eat, and they were maybe traveling around a little bit, but this is, like, predates modern statehood.
And Francis is gonna hate me for saying this, like, kind of predates the invention of storage, which is, like, the moment where, like, abundance really goes off the rails because now you have a surplus.
And abundance doesn't mean a surplus. Mm. It means does everyone have [laughs] enough? Um, and I think that that sort of gets lost, like, when we talk about utopia because,
you know, the level of degrowth that you would have to go to to achieve what somebody like Mumford is actually talking about.
Like, but my interpretation is he never talks about it in the sense that it's even realistic to return to.
But it's good to keep in mind if you're somebody who is, like, designing or critiquing cities, urban spaces, and the way that statehood kind of gets mapped onto, like, physical space, um, which is sort of, sort of how I see him.
But, um, the other thing I wanted to say is, like, I think the reason we don't... You know, you come out of the world of art cris- criticism a little bit. I come out of the world of literary criticism.
I'm sure you've done literary criticism as well.
Like, you don't see a lot of depictions of the future because literary depictions of the future are typically, like, put in this bucket of, like, genre, and genre is very dirty, mass market paperbacks that you buy at the airport.
And there's very few people, maybe, like, um, you know, Cormac McCarthy gets away with doing a sort of literary treatment of the future, and it's incredibly bleak. I'm thinking of, it's called On the Road, right?
The Road. The Road. It's The Road. Yeah, not On the Road, The Road. Right. So I had to read that in, like, my freshman year of college. And, like, same thing in the art world.
Like, if somebody, like, comes out, like, you know, I'm trying to think of, like, a, a buzzy, like, contemporary artist. I don't know, like Kehinde Wiley.
This wouldn't happen, he's a portraitist, but if he woke up one day and was like, "Guys, I did a painting of the future" Mm-hmm. I don't think there's even, like, a framework for people to be receptive
to it because it would not look like art. It would basically look like kitsch and people and... Um, so there's really not that many incentives for serious writers or artists to try to depict the future. Yeah.
No, I think you're tapping into a real strain there that is kind of, I, I think has dogged kind of our political imagination, right? I think we...
I, I, I will, I will give maybe what I'll broadly call the left some flak for, um, and I know a lot of other people have been a part of this chorus, um, but for not imagining a future and more just kind of, you know, digging at the heels of pow- the powers that be, and sort of being a little bit afraid to, like, take power and be afraid to kind of talk positively about what we want to build.
Um, and I think the arts is, the arts does that too. I mean, the history of modernity is essentially just basically, like, this kind of, like, infinite treadmill of critique and, you know.
I, I, I think that that's potentially why we kind of opened the door for, uh, these kind of, like, accelerationists [laughs] to kind of come in and, you know, start to use AI to create these, like, amazing visions of [laughs]...
I'm thinking of the vision of heaven, but I'm also thinking of the guys on Twitter that do- The leaked photo of heaven. Oh, my God. Yeah. Leaked photo. Well, it's, I mean, I think what you're saying- But the, but-...
is, like, these, like, I mean, the, the culture of Silicon Valley is- The happening. It's like the happening, but for heaven. [laughs] It is, it is envisioning a future of the world- Right...
and selling it to investors and selling it to your employees. That's what- Right... that's the core to the culture. Right.
I wanna, but I wanna disrupt this, like, dichotomy we have of, like, we think about the past, we're obsessed with the past. I mean, I wrote a piece about this.
I know, like, Dean Kissick has written a piece about sort of the art world's obsession with, uh, recent history or, like, history as a f- as a, as a, as a topic.
Um, i- if you walk into any, you know, cultural institution today, you're much more likely to find someone kind of cosplaying something from the '50s or the '60s than you are about something in the future.
And I think this is why a lot of, like, the post-internet movement in art was, like, so exciting for folks because it was kind of, like, looking at something in the near future.
Um, whereas I think Silicon Valley culture, somewhat to their credit, but I largely think it gets it wrong, does kind of fill that vacuum of, like, thinking about the future and, like, and using a kind of hopeful kind of view.
Of course, the reality of what they're implementing is I don't think, you know, needs a lot of work. Mm. Um, I wanted to talk briefly about your, your rail against the notion that content should be free. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That's a good one. Content being, as you kind of define it, information on the internet. Yeah. Um, which I like. I mean, I write about content for a living. I think about this all the time.
Um, I thought it was kind of radical for you to say, like, "No, actually-"JSTOR Yeah I mean, like shouldn't... You, you- Yeah... shouldn't be able to just access everything.
But also you can if you just go to the library. Yeah, yeah. I agree, Mike. I thought that was very brave of you because- Thank you. I was-...
the book, I would say this is a pretty leftist piece of tech criticism, although obviously it doesn't fall into one ideology, and so I mean, Aaron Swartz is sort of the perfect martyr. Like you don't say that. Yeah.
I'm saying it. Like, so I feel like that's like a, like you can't... You're not really allowed to say- Yeah. No, I know. It's-... maybe he was wrong. I've never seen anybody say that. Yeah. Literally never ever.
[laughs] Yeah. I, I said it o- I said it once, and I got some death threats. But, um- Yeah... look, I think, I think, I think it's a t- very difficult situation. Aaron Swartz was, I think, exactly my age. Mm-hmm.
Um, and I think that what he was trying to do was, in the moment, seemed like it had the right political intent, but I just find it a little bit ironic that
there's almost like a dark side to this idea that everything that could be on the internet should be 100% free. Mm-hmm. One of them is, "Hey guys, guess what? That was to train AI," right?
You know, for better or for worse, let's just call, let's call it like it is, right? Um, this sort of opening up of culture was, yes, had this democratic idea, but it also was a way for essentially,
you know, technocrats to say, "Everything's online now, so we're now the new... You know, we're in charge," right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Um, what I also think it does, and I know that you've both thought about this very deeply, is it is one part of the multi-part assault on essentially, like a media ecosystem, right? Um, w- why did we just sort of...
I mean, I'm-- we're all guilty of it. Like, I'm kinda like, "Hmm, the PDF's online, not gonna buy the book." Yeah. That's... I mean, we have to start to deal with that, guys. Like, we really have to start to like...
And, and look, I definitely took one for the team going out there and kind of like broaching this, and I expect to get some flak for it.
But I think we should at least have the conversation because this kind of unchecked idea that just because something can be put online means that it's free, I think had some, hmm, unforeseen effects.
Well, a, a, one of the lines I quoted at the very beginning, one of your definitions of platforms, you say, "Private for-profit platforms where labor is content."
So it's like when content is free, that means labor is free.
That means like, you know, so much of this content too, if we could take it back to the idea of humanities, and humanities being something that's already undervalued, it's like this then supposes that any work in the humanities is worthless, quite literally- Yeah...
because it should be free. Exactly. Why does no one ever talks about the other side of the equation? [laughs] Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No one ever does.
[laughs] Um, I know we're getting up on time here, so one thing I wanted to talk about to end it, um, is your hope for kind of these new institutions.
So y- the way you end the intro is with these three sentences: "This period of rapid digitization that welcomed the twenty-first century will not continue. Instead, a new era of new institutions will follow.
This book is a map of how we might build them." Um, so I'd love some optimism about, [laughs] about- Yeah. [laughs]...
these new institutions, where they're being built, how they're being built, um, how, how we like take... how we leave this book and like, you know, march into the future. Yeah. So, um,
I think this is an important, you know, spot to end on, and I think this is an important part of the whole project, right? I hope that what people will take away from the book is,
you know, not just another critique of platforms, but a lit- a little bit of like an invitation to think about what comes next, right?
Um, I think there are lots of examples today of places that, that use software, um, that I think are more sensitive to these kind of like what we'll just call for now, 'cause we don't have a better word, like institutional concerns, right?
Like I think of places like Arena.
I think of all the different media properties that folks are trying to build, whether they're on the platform or off the platform, or they're at least trying to kind of like bend the platform's will towards this kind of imagined virtuous kind of organization, uh, that we wanna build.
Um, there's obviously some software that we use that is kind of like really trying in an activist way to help us like build the next, uh, build, you know, our cultural future.
Um, but yeah, for me, I would say this, I think we kind of...
For, for what we might lack in examples or plans or specificity about what needs to happen, I think we make up for in a profound exhaustion with the kind of platform merry-go-round that's been happening over the past, let, let's call it twenty years.
Um, so I think that, uh, what I want to encourage folks to do is think about, um, how to get off that merry-go-round, um, and try to kind of create a new paradigm for, for building, uh, in the future.
And it's, and it's ess- ess- essentially the ask is to be tech agnostic about what you want to- Mm-hmm... build and what you want to do. Um, not be a Luddite.
Like, don't smash machines or swear off social media or think about it that way.
It's more of just like, how do we think about this in a way that kind of builds something that we really want, not just that we've kind of been dictated to by Silicon Valley. Mm-hmm.
It's an encouragement to actively think about the motivations behind the platforms you use, the incentive structures.
I-- Speaking of Arena, there was a great newsletter, um, I forget the author, that they published today, which is about like the, the end of the algorithm or whatever, and there's kind of this model of like how to think about your own...
write your own algorithm for how you interact with the world and what your interests are- Yeah... and your, um, I don't know, of, of a kind. Love it. Love it. But yeah. I, I think I really enjoyed reading the book.
I think it's like a, I don't know, uh, gives me, gives c- gives me words to live by, ideas to live with as we, you know, walk through the shadow of the Valley of Silicon- [laughs]... as it were. Oh, wow. I like that.
Well, thank you so much. That really means a lot, and then, uh, this conversation I think has been hitting on all these important points, so... Thank you for coming on. Thanks, Mike. It was a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you.
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