Stay ConnectedA podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies
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We discuss Chapter 9 – Value, Class, and Competition – and get deeper into the vertical relations between classes, the connection between domination by value and domination by class, and the universalizing power of competition as an ordering and disciplining force that compels everybody to act according to the laws of capital. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We kick off with a critical look at reporting on the peaks and valleys, upswings and downturns in venture capital and start-up exits—and ask the $800 billion question: has all this unfathomable investment and “value creation” by the tech sector resulted in a better world? Did your life in 2023 feel better? Did society seem $800 billion better? Or has it actually just felt worse? If so, then what’s the point of this innovation system and its strategies, metrics, and benchmarks? We then end by chatting about the mass sympathy strikes against Tesla in Scandinavia. ••• US venture capital fundraising hits a 6-year low https://www.ft.com/content/cfb186c8-22f4-4a82-b262-f4380a5d82b8 ••• From Unicorns to Zombies: Tech Start-Ups Run Out of Time and Money https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/technology/tech-startups-collapse.html ••• Musk's woes deepen as Tesla strike spreads across Scandinavia https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20231215-musk-s-woes-deepen-as-tesla-strike-spreads-across-scandinavia Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We get back into the Q&A, picking up where we left off by talking about the profession of academia and working in institutions that are working against you, then get into advice for organizing in tech startups, how to counter the anti-luddite propaganda and deny the doomposting tendency, what our alternative podcasts would be about, and finally our bucket list for TMK guests. The Traditional Catholic Iceberg: https://twitter.com/PapistB/status/1741989796090974217 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We kick off the new year by answering your questions from the TMK Discord! We talk about the video game industry, our writing / composing processes, advice for trying to break into critical tech journalism, plus more. And much more to come in part 2 over in the Patreon feed, where we keep going with the Q&A. Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We discuss Chapter 8 – The Universal Power of Value – and get deeper into the particular social form that value takes in capitalism and the way it becomes treated as an abstract, impersonal, alien source of domination over the lives of everybody, both workers/producers and capitalists/explotiers. ••• Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital – Søren Mau https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2759-mute-compulsion Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
Returning champ Salomé Viljoen joins us once again to discuss her latest work analyzing the relationship between social data and value creation. We get into the conversion problem of turning data into money, which requires us to expand our view of data and break from the bonds of pure exchange value to also think about social data’s “prediction value.” We also talk about why our current legal regimes of data governance are unequipped and ineffective at governing the political economy of social data—and the change that is needed. ••• Follow Salomé: https://twitter.com/salome_viljoen_ ••• Valuing Social Data https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4513235 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
With Cop City as a case study, we draw together two recent articles — one on the historical connection between right-wing racism, environmental groups, and ecoterrorist actions, and one on how the massive expansion of RICO laws to target (and fabricate) conspiracies of all kinds has become a key tool of prosecutorial power — to explore how the actions of right-wing groups precipitate the creation of stronger, tougher laws which then get used to further suppress left-wing movements. ••• The War on Ecoterror https://www.thedriftmag.com/the-war-on-ecoterror/ ••• An Offer You Can’t Refuse https://www.thedriftmag.com/an-offer-you-cant-refuse/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We dive into a new report that details Israel’s military strategy of wiping out “power targets” and “family homes,” which is bolstered and justified by an artificial intelligence system (Habsora, or “the Gospel”) that one Israeli intelligence officer called a “mass assassination factory.” The reporting is so shocking and unreal — and the critical silence about the system, by many people whose whole beat is “AI ethics,” is noticeable. This is what the lethal risk of AI looks like in its real material actuality, not as some imaginary potential possibility. ••• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ ••• Obama's secret kill list – the disposition matrix https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/obama-secret-kill-list-disposition-matrix ••• On the Moral Collapse of AI Ethics https://upfromthecracks.medium.com/on-the-moral-collapse-of-ai-ethics-791cbc7df872 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We dive into a new report that details Israel’s military strategy of wiping out “power targets” and “family homes,” which is bolstered and justified by an artificial intelligence system (Habsora, or “the Gospel”) that one Israeli intelligence officer called a “mass assassination factory.” The reporting is so shocking and unreal — and the critical silence about the system, by many people whose whole beat is “AI ethics,” is noticeable. This is what the lethal risk of AI looks like in its real material actuality, not as some imaginary potential possibility. ••• ‘A mass assassination factory’: Inside Israel’s calculated bombing of Gaza https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/ ••• Obama's secret kill list – the disposition matrix https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/14/obama-secret-kill-list-disposition-matrix ••• On the Moral Collapse of AI Ethics https://upfromthecracks.medium.com/on-the-moral-collapse-of-ai-ethics-791cbc7df872 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
We talk about the history of AI by drawing out the often very explicit millenarianism that undergirds so much of this technology and its culture over the last 70 years. This strange brew of Eschatological Evangelism and Technological Theology has sustained a cultish faith in AI’s ability to bring about a New Age. ••• Making God | Emily Gorcenski https://emilygorcenski.com/post/making-god/ ••• The Taming of Tech Criticism | Evgeny Morozov https://thebaffler.com/salvos/taming-tech-criticism Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (www.twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (www.twitter.com/braunestahl)
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