This Machine Kills

We're back next week with fresh episodes! Until then, here's part 2 of our in-depth discussion on Aadhaar. We pick up with part two of our deep dive into Aadhaar, looking at the social issues, political implications, and street-level implementation. Building on the work of Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson, we first lay out an analysis of what it means to “see like an infrastructure.” Then we dwell on the problems, errors, and glitches involved in making Aadhaar actually work. And what that means for different people who are classified as “high-resolution” or “low-resolution” data subjects. Some stuff we discuss: ••• Seeing Like an Infrastructure: Low-resolution Citizens and the Aadhaar Identification Project | Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SLAI_RSSJ.pdf ••• A New AI Lexicon: Resolution | Ranjit Singh https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-resolution-8f3430654ee4 ••• From Margins to Seams: Imbrication, Inclusion, and Torque in the Aadhaar Identification Project | Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/From_Margins_to_Seams_RSSJ.pdf ••• Biometric Marginality: UID and the Shaping of Homeless Identities in the City | Ursula Rao https://www.jstor.org/stable/23391467 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We're taking a break from recording for the holidays. Enjoy this unlocked Patreon episode. As the Federal Trade Commission files suit to block the merger between Nvidia and Arm, we take the opportunity to revisit the excellent and necessary work of the FTC’s Chair, Lina Khan. We discuss a recent profile of Khan in the New Yorker. Then dig deeper into a very long, very important paper by Khan making the legal case for reviving the antitrust doctrine of structural separation and applying it to break up platform giants like Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook. Some stuff we reference ••• The Separation of Platforms and Commerce | Lina Khan https://columbialawreview.org/content/the-separation-of-platforms-and-commerce/ ••• Lina Khan’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech | Sheelah Kolhatkar https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-battle-to-rein-in-big-tech ••• Lina Khan Cashes in Her Chips | David Dayen https://prospect.org/economy/lina-khan-cashes-in-her-chips/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

In part two of our discussion with hosts of Left Reckoning, Matt Lech and David Griscom, we pick right back up where we left off. We get into the environmental racism of where Amazon builds its warehouses and the ways that Black, Hispanic, and/or low-income communities are treated as sacrifice zones for the unending expansion of capitalism and technology. We then talk about the predatory model of buy now, pay later companies—one of the most obviously socially harmful “innovations” to pop off during the pandemic. Follow Matt Lech: https://twitter.com/MattLech Follow David Griscom: https://twitter.com/DavidGriscom Follow Left Reckoning: https://twitter.com/LeftReckonig Some stuff we reference: ••• When Amazon Expands, These Communities Pay the Price | https://www.consumerreports.org/corporate-accountability/when-amazon-expands-these-communities-pay-the-price-a2554249208/ ••• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Opens Inquiry into “Buy Now, Pay Later” Credit | https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-opens-inquiry-into-buy-now-pay-later-credit/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Opening song: Venceremos – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11MlvWKfL7s We’re very excited to be joined by the hosts of Left Reckoning, Matt Lech and David Griscom, for an action packed double header of episodes to keep you busy during the holiday season! We have a very energetic discussion about the project of leftism before getting into a critical political economy analysis of the sudden rise of 15-minute delivery apps and the pushback by workers against anonymous automated management. Part two of our long discussion with Matt and David will be posted on the TMK Patreon. Follow Matt Lech: https://twitter.com/MattLech Follow David Griscom: https://twitter.com/DavidGriscom Follow Left Reckoning: https://twitter.com/LeftReckoning Some stuff we reference: ••• The Dark Side of 15-Minute Grocery Delivery | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-07/what-instant-delivery-services-could-do-to-cities ••• Workers demand gig economy companies explain their algorithms | https://www.ft.com/content/95e7f150-b0f9-4602-8e5d-76a138b59851 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We wrap up with the last chapter of Wendy H.K. Chun’s book, Control and Freedom. We discuss: the book’s value as a lens for analyzing current developments and discourses about “web3” — conceptions of the internet as both a public and private space — the general cultural affect of paranoia and its relation to techno-power — a self-crit session on the utility of “emerging technologies” as a term — Chun’s case studies of facial recognition and webcams. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We do a close reading of a new article in Foreign Policy by futurist Parag Khanna and venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan, which stands as a monument to how “web3” is like a brain worm that destroys people’s ability to think. The articles’ ten theses are a testament to the poverty of thought pervasive in the upper echelons of wealth, influence, and technology. Outro: https://soundcloud.com/braunestahl/future-history-of-luddism Some stuff we discuss: ••• Great Protocol Politics | Parag Khanna, Balaji S. Srinivasan https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/11/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-web3-great-protocol-politics/ ••• The Naked and the Ted | Evgeny Morozov https://newrepublic.com/article/105703/the-naked-and-the-ted-khanna Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

As the Federal Trade Commission files suit to block the merger between Nvidia and Arm, we take the opportunity to revisit the excellent and necessary work of the FTC’s Chair, Lina Khan. We discuss a recent profile of Khan in the New Yorker. Then dig deeper into a very long, very important paper by Khan making the legal case for reviving the antitrust doctrine of structural separation and applying it to break up platform giants like Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook. Some stuff we reference ••• The Separation of Platforms and Commerce | Lina Khan https://columbialawreview.org/content/the-separation-of-platforms-and-commerce/ ••• Lina Khan’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech | Sheelah Kolhatkar https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/lina-khans-battle-to-rein-in-big-tech ••• Lina Khan Cashes in Her Chips | David Dayen https://prospect.org/economy/lina-khan-cashes-in-her-chips/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We kept ignoring DAOs and web3 hoping it would go away, but sadly it hasn’t. So we pick apart each part of the acronym—decentralized, autonomous, organization—and discuss the techno-politics of their promise and practice. We get into blockchain, smart contracts, and corporate governance. Some stuff we reference: ••• Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law | Karen E.C. Levy https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/107 ••• DAOs are interesting, likely, and terrifying | Jason Prado: https://venturecommune.substack.com/p/daos-are-interesting-likely-and-terrifying ••• Zealots of the Blockchain | David Golumbia: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/zealots-of-the-blockchain-golumbia ••• Mapping the NFT revolution: market trends, trade networks, and visual features | Matthieu Nadini et al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00053-8 ••• Digital extraction: Blockchain traceability in mineral supply chains | Filipe Calvão, Matthew Archer https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096262982100041X Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Continuing sci-fi week at TMK, we dig into Chapter 4, “Orienting the Future,” of Wendy H.K. Chun’s book. Grounded in Chun’s in-depth analysis of cyberpunk via two paradigmatic examples—the novel Neuromancer and the anime Ghost in the Shell—we lay out a critical take on the cyberpunk genre. We then discuss Chun’s incisive arguments about “high-tech Orientalism” and the colonial politics encoded into cyberpunk and the culture that has flowed from it. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We get into a great discussion about the Butlerian Jihad — or the war against all computation that catalyzed the events of the Dune series — and the reactionary politics that inform so much science fiction, the trap of treating feudalism as fate, the need for stories informed by the lessons of Luddism, and much more. Cold open: Alex Jones explains Evangelion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X9RUOEOoNQ&t=1s Some stuff we reference: ••• Science Fiction Is a Luddite Literature | Cory Doctorow: https://onezero.medium.com/science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature-56ed9cfc5470 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We pick up with part two of our deep dive into Aadhaar, looking at the social issues, political implications, and street-level implementation. Building on the work of Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson, we first lay out an analysis of what it means to “see like an infrastructure.” Then we dwell on the problems, errors, and glitches involved in making Aadhaar actually work. And what that means for different people who are classified as “high-resolution” or “low-resolution” data subjects. Some stuff we discuss: ••• Seeing Like an Infrastructure: Low-resolution Citizens and the Aadhaar Identification Project | Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SLAI_RSSJ.pdf ••• A New AI Lexicon: Resolution | Ranjit Singh https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-resolution-8f3430654ee4 ••• From Margins to Seams: Imbrication, Inclusion, and Torque in the Aadhaar Identification Project | Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/From_Margins_to_Seams_RSSJ.pdf ••• Biometric Marginality: UID and the Shaping of Homeless Identities in the City | Ursula Rao https://www.jstor.org/stable/23391467 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We start the show looking back at a Wired cover story from 1997 predicting the next 25 years would be The Long Boom. But oops! Turns out all the bad future spoilers came true instead. We dive deep into Aadhaar, the Indian government’s massive biometric identity database that has enrolled the information of more than a billion people. We talk about the technological architecture of the system and how it operates as an identity-as-a-service platform for public and private services. This is part 1 of a much broader discussion laying the foundations for analysing Aadhaar. Part two, looking at the social issues and political implications of Aadhaar, will be released on the TMK Patreon feed. Some stuff we discuss: ••• The Long Boom | Wired (1997) https://archive.org/details/eu_Wired-1997-07_OCR/page/n123/mode/2up ••• All Those 23andMe Spit Tests Were Part of a Bigger Plan | Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-04/23andme-to-use-dna-tests-to-make-cancer-drugs ••• Give Me a Database and I Will Raise the Nation-State | Ranjit Singh https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Give_Me_a_Database_RS.pdf ••• Seeing Like an Infrastructure: Low-resolution Citizens and the Aadhaar Identification Project | Ranjit Singh and Steven Jackson https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.22/163.112.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/SLAI_RSSJ.pdf ••• A New AI Lexicon: Resolution | Ranjit Singh https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-resolution-8f3430654ee4 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Cold open: MCI “Anthem” commercial (1997): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioVMoeCbrig We dig into Chapter 3, “Scenes of Empowerment, of Wendy H.K. Chun’s book and talk about the pervasive ideology of the internet as an emancipatory world of virtual equality where things like race, gender, age, and ability cease to exist. And discuss how, despite the obvious naivety (at best) of this belief, it still persists today in various unchanged ways. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We’re very pleased to be joined by Britt Young, a PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley, who works on the intersection of technology and disability. We dive into the militarized R&D for prosthetics, Britt’s experiences using an advanced “cyborg” arm, the vast inequality in access to workable prosthetics, and question if our society’s approach to assistive tech is consistent with disability justice or represents a vexing politics of ableism. Follow Britt: twitter.com/bhyrights Read Britt’s work: britthyoung.com Some stuff we reference: ••• The Politics of Ableism | Gregor Wolbring: https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1057/dev.2008.17 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Why don’t people like crypto? Obviously because they’re old fuddy duddies who don’t want to wrap their mind around new technology! We talk about Ed’s reporting trip to Puerto Rico and why the island has become a haven for crypto enclaves. We then end with a nice palate cleanser as Ed tells us about a recent panel he attended with David Wengrow about his and Graeber’s new book. Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab fresh new TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We’re joined by Nick Chavez, a mechanical engineer working in R&D, to discuss his incisive essay exploring the capitalist origins and purpose of engineering, the class position and labor process of engineers, and the role of engineers before, during, and after communist revolution. Read Nick’s essay: The Present and Future of Engineers | Brooklyn Rail https://brooklynrail.org/2021/10/field-notes/THINKING-ABOUT-COMMUNISM Music in this episode is from Nick’s glitch group: https://glitchdotcool.bandcamp.com/album/glitch-with-friends-compilation-vol-2 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Metastasis is the process of cancer cells spreading to other parts of the body. Facebook is in its full on metastatic phase. We talk about the big news of Facebook rebranding as Meta – its impotent propaganda campaign, the extractive economy underpinning this vision of society, why the metaverse as its pitched is bullshit, and how the actual metaverse is more likely to be an infinite virtual office we’re all forced to used. Some stuff we reference: ••• Facebook Has No Clue How to Solve Its Image Problem, Leaked Doc Shows | Shoshana Wodinksy https://gizmodo.com/facebook-has-no-clue-how-to-solve-its-image-problem-le-1847945657 ••• The Real Reason Facebook Changed Its Name | Brian Merchant https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/facebook-metaverse-mark-zuckerberg/620538/ ••• Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company | Jason Koebler https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjb485/zuckerberg-facebook-new-name-meta-metaverse-presentation ••• Why Facebook has become Meta | Hannah Murphy, Madhumita Murgia https://www.ft.com/content/29762a96-419f-41b2-9e96-fa7423abb125 ••• Founder’s Letter, 2021 | Mark Zuckerberg https://about.fb.com/news/2021/10/founders-letter/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We discuss Chapter 2, “Screening Pornography” of Wendy H.K. Chun’s book. Diving into the cultural panic around cyberporn in the 90s, we talk about how porn online was used as an early battleground for policy debates about commerce, regulation, and censorship on the internet. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

••• Jathan is doing an intensive residency program so we're unlocking an older patreon episode that many comrades in the TMK Discord said was one of their favorites. Enjoy! ••• Rather than our usual doompilled analysis, we take a big dose of dumbpill as we spend the whole episode on a reading series of the stupidest article we have come across in a long time. Malcolm Gladwell – a man whose career is built on being an insanely incurious idiot – got to ride in a Waymo autonomous vehicle. He then wrote about it for Facebook’s newsletter Bulletin. Sorry in advance. Have we misunderstood the future of the automobile? | Malcolm Gladwell | Facebook Bulletin: https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/489595605629557 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s a good old TMK where we get mad talking about two stories. First, the increasingly influential “state-as-a-platform” model of governance that France is leaning super hard into, which goes beyond neoliberalism by taking seriously the premise: “What if instead of a government, we had AWS.” Second, schools in the UK are rolling-out facial recognition in secondary school cafeterias. Teaching kids that access to anything in life, even just lunch, must be mediated by intrusive systems of surveillance and control – oh, I mean, speed and convenience. Some stuff we reference: ••• France finds growth prescription with health app Doctolib https://www.ft.com/content/ca41f61e-2513-41d2-9adf-d94b5af302a1 ••• Facial recognition cameras arrive in UK school canteens https://www.ft.com/content/af08fe55-39f3-4894-9b2f-4115732395b9 ••• Marc Benioff: We Need a New Capitalism https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/opinion/benioff-salesforce-capitalism.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Outro: Eva B - Mukhtasir Baatein https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1T--NV__iJA We’re joined by two excellent scholars — Noopur Raval, research fellow in the AI Now Institute at NYU, and Rida Qadri, PhD candidate in Urban Information Systems at MIT — to talk about their important research on platform workers and economies in the Global South. We discuss practices of agency and social support amongst workers in places like Jakarta and Bangalore; the North-South divide in how these platforms are understood; contextualizing these systems as an antidote against universalizing them; the trope of “finding” invisible tech workers in exotic lands; the need for a “decolonial cosmopolitan ethic,” and much more. Find Noopur here: noopur.xyz /// twitter.com/tetisheri Find Rida here: ridaqadri.net /// twitter.com/qadrida Their work we discuss: • Mutual Aid Stations | Rida Qadri, Noopur Raval: https://logicmag.io/distribution/mutual-aid-stations/ • Delivery Drivers Are Using Grey Market Apps to Make Their Jobs Suck Less | Rida Qadri: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvpng/delivery-drivers-are-using-grey-market-apps-to-make-their-jobs-suck-less • Platform Workers as Infrastructures of Global Technologies | Rida Qadri: https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/july-august-2021/platform-workers-as-infrastructures-of-global-technologies • Interrupting Invisibility in a Global World | Noopur Raval: https://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/july-august-2021/interrupting-invisibility-in-a-global-world • An Agenda for Decolonizing Data Science | Noopur Raval: https://mediarep.org/bitstream/handle/doc/14422/spheres_5_0202_Raval_Agenda-for-Decolonizing-Data-Science.pdf?sequence=1 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We discuss Chapter 1, “Why Cyberspace?” of Wendy H.K. Chun’s book and dive into the origins, politics, and ideology behind this weird metaphor for the Internet. In the process we trace an evolution of different phases in the Internet's political economy, from the Web 1.0 endless electronic frontier of freedom to the Web 2.0 archipelago of platforms and rentiers, and circling back to many ideological desires born anew in the Web 3.0 vision of a decentralized metaverse. All this and more as we talk through Chun’s richly detailed cultural / material analysis of the Internet. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We are very pleased to be joined by returning guest Danielle Carr, anthropologist and historian of science who is finishing her PhD at Columbia, to chat about her excellent new essay on the (anti-)political epistemology of the pop sci style as represented by the work of the genre’s golden boy, Carl Zimmer. We discuss science as both an institution and ideology that, like other such things with authority and power in society, must be subjected to ruthless critical analysis. And yet, nearly all critique of science has been forfeited to the most extreme right-wing denialism. No longer! It’s time to reclaim ground for a leftist, materialist examination of science. Follow Danielle: twitter.com/_danielle_carr Read her article: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/carl-zimmer-virus/ Some other stuff we reference • Against Method | Paul Feyerabend: https://www.versobooks.com/books/442-against-method • How to Defend Society Against Science | Paul Feyerabend: https://www.radicalphilosophyarchive.com/issue-files/rp11_article1_defendsocietyagainstscience_feyerabend.pdf •The Eighteenth Brumaire of Bruno Latour | Simon Schaffer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11622708/ • Neoliberalism for Polite Company: Bruno Latour’s Pseudo-Materialist Coup | R.H. Lossin: https://salvage.zone/articles/neoliberalism-for-polite-company-bruno-latours-pseudo-materialist-coup/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Outro: And We Thought That Nation-States Were a Bad Idea by Propagandhi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNWZ6THAUPo We give you our raw reactions to a mind-numbing Bloomberg Opinion piece that “argues” for granting mega-corporations like Facebook and Amazon statehood and giving them a seat at the United Nations. Never have we seen somebody survey an issue as wildly important as “corporate sovereignty” and reach the dumbest, worst conclusions at every turn—all while thinking they are actually making a very smart, nuanced, complex analysis. Some stuff we reference: • Give Amazon and Facebook a Seat at the United Nations | Ben Shcott: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-10-03/give-amazon-and-facebook-a-seat-at-the-united-nations • Beyond Public and Private: Toward a Political Theory of the Corporation | David Cieply https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2484826 • Corporate sovereignty: Negotiating permissive power for profit in Southern Africa | Tessa Diphoorn, Nikkie Wiegink: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14634996211037124 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr.

For this week's free episode, we are unlocking the first episode of our new TMK Book Club Patreon series, which will be running biweekly for the next few months. If you want to hear more – and check out our large back catalogue of premium episodes – please subscribe on Patreon! We dive into our next instalment of the TMK Book Club – “Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics” by Wendy H.K. Chun. This is a foundational piece of critical theory and new media studies, and a necessary addition in the TMK pantheon. Published in the heady days of 2005, we provide some context about the state of the Internet, culture and politics at the time. Then we discuss the Preface and Introduction. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We dive into our next instalment of the TMK Book Club – “Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics” by Wendy H.K. Chun. This is a foundational piece of critical theory and new media studies, and a necessary addition in the TMK pantheon. Published in the heady days of 2005, we provide some context about the state of the Internet, culture and politics at the time. Then we discuss the Preface and Introduction. You can grab a pdf of Chun’s book here: https://au1lib.org/book/2074091/cc12a3 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We take a hard look at Netradyne, the latest piece of shitty surveillance tech already forced on Amazon delivery drivers—and perhaps coming soon to your car. First we look at Lauren Kaori Gurley’s reporting on how these AI cameras are extremely error prone—but weirdly never in ways that benefit, rather than punish, workers—and then take a deeper dive into how Netradyne is pitching its product to insurance companies. Some stuff we reference: • Amazon Delivery Drivers Forced to Sign ‘Biometric Consent’ Form or Lose Job | Lauren Kaori Gurley https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy8n3j/amazon-delivery-drivers-forced-to-sign-biometric-consent-form-or-lose-job • Amazon’s AI Cameras Are Punishing Drivers for Mistakes They Didn’t Make | Lauren Kaori Gurley https://www.vice.com/en/article/88npjv/amazons-ai-cameras-are-punishing-drivers-for-mistakes-they-didnt-make • How Insurers Are Adopting Transportation Safety Technology | Netradyne https://www.netradyne.com/how-insurers-are-adopting-transportation-safety-technology/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

To quote the headline for Ed’s article, “Ok, what the fuck is Evergrande and is it going to blow up the global economy?” First question: Evergrande is the second largest real estate developer in China. Its business model is premised on infinite growth, it’s massively indebted to everybody, and it is finally collapsing. Second question: Maybe! We lay out the dynamics leading up to, and unfolding now during, Evergrande’s collapse and discuss the potential consequences of yet another “too big to fail” financial institution doing what they do best: failing. Some stuff we reference: • OK, WTF Is Evergrande and Is It Going to Blow Up the Global Economy? | https://www.vice.com/en/article/wx5mqm/ok-wtf-is-evergrande-and-is-it-going-to-blow-up-the-global-economy • Citron Research / Andrew Left 2012 short seller report on Evergrande | https://www.slideshare.net/dingli8888/citron-research • Evergrande Gave Workers a Choice: Loan Us Cash or Lose Your Bonus | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/business/china-evergrande-debt-protests.html • Evergrande used retail financial investments to plug funding gaps | https://www.ft.com/content/0b03d4de-1662-4d30-bcfd-c9bae24fa9cc • China’s Nightmare Evergrande Scenario Is an Uncontrolled Crash | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/china-s-nightmare-evergrande-scenario-is-an-uncontrolled-crash • The Asset Economy: Property Ownership and the New Logic of Inequality | Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings https://au1lib.org/book/14728397/9acae0 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

outro: https://youtu.be/JanZSDIWpmg We start with a quick moratorium on self-deprecating apologia for doompill. Confronting, with sober senses and ruthless analysis, the material conditions of the world is not always a joyful thing. But, importantly, it is not one that calls for nihilism, fatalism, or doom. We then discuss a long excerpt from an upcoming biography of Peter Thiel and finally give this (self-admittedly) evil man the attention he deserves. Not only is Thiel driven by venal desires of power and wealth, he is also consumed with paranoia that one day the taxman will make him pay his fair share. Thiel is a ludicrous caricature of the Randian superhero. Some stuff we discuss • Peter Thiel Gamed Silicon Valley, Donald Trump, and Democracy to Make Billions, Tax-Free | Max Chafkin: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-15/peter-thiel-gamed-silicon-valley-tech-trump-taxes-and-politics • Lord of the Roths | Justin Elliott, Patricia Callahan, James Bandler: https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Intro: https://youtu.be/7YynqVvgZYI We spend the first half finishing our discussion of David Graeber and David Wengrow’s essay. Then, in the second half, we switch gears and talk about the video of a Tesla trying to mow down pedestrians, the cultural logics of speed, worlds built for objects over people, and the relations between automation, authority and anarchy. Some stuff we discuss: • How to change the course of human history | David Graeber and David Wengrow https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/# • Error | Endnotes 5 https://libcom.org/files/Endnotes%205.pdf Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We go back in time—with the help of groundbreaking work by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow—to examine what the history of social inequality can teach us about the political developments of today and the course we can plot for tomorrow. Along the way, with the help of the two Davids, we deploy the sharpest tools of historical materialism to debunk, dismiss, and dunk on the big idea bozos like Jared Diamond and Francis Fukuyama who make sweeping—and sweepingly wrong—proclamations about the essence of human nature and the naturalization of capitalist society. Essay we discuss: How to change the course of human history | David Graeber and David Wengrow https://www.eurozine.com/change-course-human-history/# Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s part two of the Never Forget Extravaganza! We’re joined again by military tech journalist Kelsey D. Atherton to explore the deep and decades long entanglement between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon—from the early days of the semiconductors industry being born in the cradle of military contracts to the contemporary period of, as one Pentagon startup calls it, “the new Manhattan Project” of artificial intelligence. We wrap up by considering what the next phase of the forever war machine will bring. Follow Kelsey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD Subscribe to Kelsey on Substack: https://athertonkd.substack.com/ Some stuff we reference: • Silicon Valley Giants—Not Start-Ups—Dominate DoD Tech $$ | Kelsey D. Atheron: https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/silicon-valley-giants-not-start-ups-dominate-dod-tech/ • Reports of a Silicon Valley/Military Divide Have Been Greatly Exaggerated | Jack Poulson: https://techinquiry.org/SiliconValley-Military/ • Silicon Valley Takes the Battlespace | Jonathan Guyer: https://prospect.org/power/silicon-valley-takes-battlespace-eric-schmidt-rebellion/ • Project Maven: Amazon And Microsoft Scored $50 Million In Pentagon Surveillance Contracts After Google Quit | Thomas Brewster: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/09/08/project-maven-amazon-and-microsoft-get-50-million-in-pentagon-drone-surveillance-contracts-after-google/?sh=40ebfa5e6f1e • Silicon Valley Mystery House | Langdon Winner: https://bibliodarq.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/sorkin-m-ed-variations-on-a-theme-park.pdf • Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley | Thomas Heinrich: https://faculty.fiu.edu/~revellk/pad2011/heinrich.pdf Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s the Never Forget Extravaganza! We’re joined by military tech journalist Kelsey D. Atherton to breach the memory hole of forever war and consider the invasions and occupations, technologies and tactics, abroad and at home, that have defined the post-9/11 era. This is part one of our conversation with Kelsey. Part two – and TMK’s 100th episode – will drop on the Patreon feed on 9/11. We set the scene by casting our minds back to the beginning of the Global War on Terror – then provide something like a bestiary of vehicles, weapons, and surveillance systems – then explore the deep and decades long entanglement between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, along with all the demonic initials like the CIA, FBI, NSA, DHS, ICE – then wrap it up with a broader analysis of the forever war machine: how we got here, why it was overdetermined, and what comes next. Follow Kelsey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD Subscribe to Kelsey on Substack: https://athertonkd.substack.com/ Some stuff we reference: • These machines were supposed to help win the war in Afghanistan. What happened? | Kelsey D. Atherton: popsci.com/technology/timeline-us-airborne-tools-of-war-afghanistan/ • This is the real story of the Afghan biometric databases abandoned to the Taliban | Eileen Guo and Hikmat Noori: technologyreview.com/2021/08/30/1033941/afghanistan-biometric-databases-us-military-40-data-points/ • The Global Garage | Will Meyer: thebaffler.com/latest/the-global-garage-meyer • The MRAP Story: Learning from History | Stephen W. Miller: asianmilitaryreview.com/2018/10/the-mrap-story-learning-from-history/ • Algorithmic War: Everyday Geographies of the War on Terror | Louise Amoore: sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00655.x Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

outro: Funeral Candies – You're Dead https://youtu.be/TjvQPijYEZ8 We start with discussing an investigation into the harrowing—and fatal—working conditions of delivery drivers in South Korea and the human tragedy at the heart of ecommerce. Moving on to lighter fare—by comparison—we talk through a report on the massive tax breaks and anonymous shell companies supporting the spread of data centres across the US. Some stuff we reference: • Dead on Arrival | Carrington Clarke: abc.net.au/news/2021-08-26/south-korea-delivery-drivers-working-theselves-to-death/100380322 • Data In The Dark: How Big Tech Secretly Secured $800 Million In Tax Breaks For Data Centers | David Jeans: forbes.com/sites/davidjeans/2021/08/19/data-in-the-dark-how-big-tech-secretly-secured-800-million-in-tax-breaks-for-data-centers/?sh=1458f2006b43 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We're unlocking a premium episode for the main feed this week. We talk about insurance technology as Jathan gives the lowdown on a big grant he just received to do a multi-year project investigating the political economy of the insurtech sector. We then discuss the FIRE sector more generally and look at recent reporting on how property tech companies are buying up homes. Some stuff we reference: • Draining the Risk Pools | Jathan Sadowski: https://reallifemag.com/draining-the-risk-pool/ • Data machine: the insurers using AI to reshape the industry | Ian Smith: https://www.ft.com/content/d3bd46cb-75d4-40ff-a0cd-6d7f33d58d7f • The personalisation of insurance: Data, behaviour and innovation | Liz McFall, Gert Meyers, Ine Van Hoyweghen: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720973707 • Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes | Maxwell Strachan: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ymxz/zillow-other-tech-firms-are-in-an-arms-race-to-buy-up-american-homes • The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles | Chris Tennant, Jack Stilgoe: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127211038752 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We talk about the geopolitics of microchip manufacturing, the complex factors causing the current global shortage of semiconductors, the centrality of industrial policy and intellectual property to the trade wars between Western and Eastern countries, the competition over securing leadership in strategic technology like artificial intelligence, and the consequences of changing modes of production. In other words, just another day at TMK. Some stuff we reference: • Chips with Everything | Evgeny Morozov: mondediplo.com/2021/08/03morozov • From Automobile Capitalism to Platform Capitalism: Toyotism as a prehistory of digital platforms | Marc Steinberg: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01708406211030681 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Intro: Contra – This Machine Kills (remixed) https://contra805.bandcamp.com/track/this-machine-kills We’re joined by two of the sharpest minds on the politics of AI and data governance—Meredith Whittaker and Salomé Viljoen—to chat about the relationship between corporate gatekeepers and academic research, the construction and infrastructure of data, AI as a universal hammer for all nails, how the state enforces Silicon Valley’s power, and what it would take to seize the data pipeline from private capital for the public good. This discussion expands on a recent article we published in Nature: Everyone should decide how their digital data are used—not just tech companies | Jathan Sadowski, Salomé Viljoen, Meredith Whittaker: nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01812-3 Salomé’s profile: law.columbia.edu/faculty/salome-viljoen And Twitter: twitter.com/salome_viljoen_ Meredith’s profile: ainowinstitute.org/people/meredith-whittaker.html And Twitter: twitter.com/mer__edith Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Outro: Processory - Take Me To Your Leader https://sugars.bandcamp.com/track/take-me-to-your-leader We talk about insurance technology as Jathan gives the lowdown on a big grant he just received to do a multi-year project investigating the political economy of the insurtech sector. We then discuss the FIRE sector more generally and look at recent reporting on how property tech companies are buying up homes. Some stuff we reference: • Draining the Risk Pools | Jathan Sadowski: https://reallifemag.com/draining-the-risk-pool/ • Data machine: the insurers using AI to reshape the industry | Ian Smith: https://www.ft.com/content/d3bd46cb-75d4-40ff-a0cd-6d7f33d58d7f • The personalisation of insurance: Data, behaviour and innovation | Liz McFall, Gert Meyers, Ine Van Hoyweghen: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2053951720973707 • Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes | Maxwell Strachan: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93ymxz/zillow-other-tech-firms-are-in-an-arms-race-to-buy-up-american-homes • The attachments of ‘autonomous’ vehicles | Chris Tennant, Jack Stilgoe: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127211038752 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We’re joined by Taylor Lorenz – business reporter at the New York Times, twitter.com/TaylorLorenz – for an excellent discussion about the evolution and rapid growth of the creator economy, the working conditions of content creators across social media platforms, the predatory system of management, marketing, and investment, and the venture capitalists who only saw this labor as valid once they could exploit it. Some of Taylor’s work we reference: • Hello, Content Creators. Silicon Valley’s Investors Want to Meet You. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/12/technology/content-creators-venture-capital.html • Young Creators Are Burning Out and Breaking Down https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/style/creator-burnout-social-media.html • The App With the Unprintable Name That Wants to Give Power to Creators https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/technology/fypm-creators-app-pay.html Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s the final chapter of Autonomous Technology: “Frankenstein’s Problem.” We talk for a while about the story of Frankenstein as an allegory for responsibility, neglect, and care for our creations. We then get into Winner’s core ideas of “technology as legislation” and “Luddism as epistemology” before providing some general synthesis of the book as a whole. You can find a free pdf of the whole book here: https://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/AutonomousTechnology.pdf Article we reference Revolutionary Readings: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Luddite Uprisings | Edith Gardner: https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1171&context=ijcs Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We’re delighted to be joined by Chris Gilliard (twitter.com/hypervisible) – one of the best experts on privacy and surveillance around – for a fantastic discussion laying out his incisive analysis of “luxury surveillance” and “imposed surveillance.” To quote Chris: “Luxury surveillance is expensive, voluntary, and sleek. Imposed surveillance is involuntary, overt, clunky, and meant to stand out.” It’s not (just) the operations of technology that distinguish these two forms of surveillance, but the socio-political relations they perpetuate and plug into. We end the episode talking about some of Chris’s work on “digital redlining.” Some stuff we reference: • Privacy’s not an abstraction | Chris Gilliard: fastcompany.com/90323529/privacy-is-not-an-abstraction • Caught in the spotlight | Chris Gilliard: urbanomnibus.net/2020/01/caught-in-the-spotlight/ • Luxury surveillance | Chris Gilliard and David Golumbia: reallifemag.com/luxury-surveillance/ • Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness | Simone Browne: dukeupress.edu/dark-matters • Big Tech call center workers face pressure to accept home surveillance | Olivia Solon: nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/big-tech-call-center-workers-face-pressure-accept-home-surveillance-n1276227 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Outro: Mr. Suit by New Bomb Turks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VraBz96VbLA We get deeper into the political economy of precision agriculture and how these “innovating” are iterating on traditional forms of enclosure and dispossession, how they operationalize older corporate management philosophies and strategies, and how they plug into the global system of extraction and accumulation. We end the episode on high note by talking about the new right to repair rules being enforced by the FTC. Stuff we reference: Todd Feathers | Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI | Motherboard Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai Alistair Fraser (2018). Land grab/data grab: precision agriculture and its new horizons. The Journal of Peasant Studies https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1080/03066150.2017.1415887 Alistair Fraser (2019). The digital revolution, data curation, and the new dynamics of food sovereignty construction. The Journal of Peasant Studies https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1080/03066150.2019.1602522 Alistair Fraser (2021). ‘You can't eat data’?: Moving beyond the misconfigured innovations of smart farming. Journal of Rural Studies https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016721001856 Emily Duncan, Alesandros Glaros, Dennis Z. Ross, and Eric Nost (2021). New but for whom? Discourses of innovation in precision agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278188/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Outro: St. Lorelei - https://stlorelei.bandcamp.com/track/outside-the-green We kick things off with an announcement about TMK sweeps month. Then we get into a discussion of data politics based on the recent investigation into how ShotSpotter – the “AI-powered” gunshot detector sensors – is being used by police to fabricate fake data for evidence. We wrap up by providing an intro to the political economy of “data grabbing” and precision agriculture – a topic we’ll dive much deeper into on the premium episode this week. Stuff we reference: Todd Feathers | Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI | Motherboard Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/qj8xbq/police-are-telling-shotspotter-to-alter-evidence-from-gunshot-detecting-ai Alistair Fraser (2018). Land grab/data grab: precision agriculture and its new horizons. The Journal of Peasant Studies https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1080/03066150.2017.1415887 Alistair Fraser (2019). The digital revolution, data curation, and the new dynamics of food sovereignty construction. The Journal of Peasant Studies https://sci-hub.mksa.top/10.1080/03066150.2019.1602522 Alistair Fraser (2021). ‘You can't eat data’?: Moving beyond the misconfigured innovations of smart farming. Journal of Rural Studies https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016721001856 Emily Duncan, Alesandros Glaros, Dennis Z. Ross, and Eric Nost (2021). New but for whom? Discourses of innovation in precision agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8278188/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We discuss Chapter 7 of Autonomous Technology: “Complexity and the Loss of Agency.” Ed couldn’t be here for this episode, so we’re joined again by David Banks, who really stepped up to provide some great insights into understanding our socio-political relationship to complex technical systems designed to keep us in the dark about how and why the things we rely on actually work—and who they work for. We explore the dialectic between increasing complexity and diminishing agency, the poverty to cultural criticism vs. political analysis, and why technologies are not enchanted objects that grant us magical powers. You can find a free pdf of the whole book here: https://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/AutonomousTechnology.pdf • Read David’s article: Engineered Violence: Confronting the Neutrality Problem and Violence in Engineering: https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/IJESJP/article/view/6604 • Follow David: https://twitter.com/DA_Banks • Listen to Iron Weeds: https://twitter.com/ironweedspod • Listen to Reaction: https://twitter.com/reactionpodcast Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We're taking a week off recording so we're unlocking one of our favorite episodes from the Patreon feed for you to enjoy. Cold open: Ghost in the Shell. There is a long list of services that purport to be powered by sophisticated software, but actually rely on humans acting like robots. We discuss a critical concept—whether we call it Potemkin AI, fauxtomation, or ghost work—for understanding how so much so-called artificial intelligence is just a spectacle, a simulation, designed to mystify the labor that really turns the crank of smart systems sold as advanced innovations. They are the humans hidden inside mechanical minds. Some stuff we reference: • Potemkin AI | Jathan Sadowski: https://reallifemag.com/potemkin-ai/ • The Automation Charade | Astra Taylor: https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/ • Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass | Mary L. Gray Siddharth Suri: https://ghostwork.info/ • Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media | Sarah T. Roberts: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300235883/behind-screen • Difference and Dependence among Digital Workers: The Case of Amazon Mechanical Turk | Lilly Irani: https://read.dukeupress.edu/south-atlantic-quarterly/article-abstract/114/1/225/3763/Difference-and-Dependence-among-Digital-Workers Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

After way too long, we finally got our friend and comrade Paris Marx—host of the excellent podcast Tech Won’t Save Us—on TMK for a great conversation ranging from the politics of Bitcoin and Tesla to the current state of tech media/criticism and need for counter-propaganda against Silicon Valley. Paris is always in the interviewer seat on TWSU, so we turn things around on him and also ask how he got into leftist analysis of tech and his forthcoming book on the techno-politics of transportation. Follow Paris on Twitter: twitter.com/parismarx Listen to Tech Won’t Save Us: techwontsave.us/ Read The Hammer newsletter: techwontsave.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=3bfbe60f81172d5eff78e0dbe&id=09015cbec3 Support his wonderful podcast: patreon.com/techwontsaveus Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

For a blockbuster of a book club episode, we’re joined by friend of the show David Banks to discuss Chapter 6 of Autonomous Technology: “Technological Politics.” We get into an analysis of reverse adaptation in large-scale socio-technical systems, the ways in which human ends become subjugated to technological means, and the relationship between the imperatives of the technological order and the state. Plus, what Marxist-Leninism could learn from a theory of technological politics—and vice versa. You can find a free pdf of the whole book here: https://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/AutonomousTechnology.pdf • Read David’s article: Lines of Power: Availability to Networks as a Social Phenomenon https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/6283 • Follow David: https://twitter.com/DA_Banks • Listen to Iron Weeds: https://twitter.com/ironweedspod • Listen to Reaction: https://twitter.com/reactionpodcast Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

We do a deep dive into the ideas of Lina Khan, the newly confirmed chair of the Federal Trade Commission. We discuss her large body of scholarship—digging up some of her lesser known, but arguably more important work—which provides sharp, critical, complex analysis of the political economy of platforms and seeks to revive antitrust regulation as a tool for tackling structural problems of corporate dominance. We also talk about how Khan, in her new position of regulatory authority, could actually make necessary material changes to contemporary capitalism. And, in the process, help create the conditions needed for bigger, better, more radical forms of democratic power. Some stuff we reference: • Market Structure and Political Law: A Taxonomy of Power | Zephyr Teachout and Lina Khan: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1087&context=djclpp • Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox | Lina Khan: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox • Lina Khan’s Power Grab at the FTC | WSJ Editorial Board: https://www.wsj.com/articles/lina-khans-power-grab-at-the-ftc-11625517819 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

Rather than our usual doompilled analysis, we take a big dose of dumbpill as we spend the whole episode on a reading series of the stupidest article we have come across in a long time. Malcolm Gladwell – a man whose career is built on being an insanely incurious idiot – got to ride in a Waymo autonomous vehicle. He then wrote about it for Facebook’s newsletter Bulletin. Sorry in advance. Have we misunderstood the future of the automobile? | Malcolm Gladwell | Facebook Bulletin: https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/489595605629557 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

It’s the tech news roundup, yeehaw! We look at a few recent stories in techno-politics worth discussing. First, businesses are blaming Amazon for draining the labor pool, not being exploitative enough, and making workers think they deserve higher expectations. Second, Didi, the largest ride-hailing app in China, has been banned from mobile app stores just days after it’s massive $4.4 billion IPO after an investigation by Chinese antitrust regulators into dubious data collection and cybersecurity practices by tech companies. Third, we lament the massive ecological consequences of “hyperscale” data centers being built in the Arizona desert and elsewhere. Some stuff we reference: • ‘Amazon effect’ sets the tone for US workers’ remuneration https://www.ft.com/content/9e8b9727-7955-44c4-955a-73375a7a20ef • Drought-stricken communities push back against data centers https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/drought-stricken-communities-push-back-against-data-centers-n1271344 Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)