"We have come to this cultural agreement that convenience is so important that it trumps everything else, forgetting that anything that matters in life is inconvenient [...] I think we should re-value difficulty, overcoming difficulty, and take pleasure in gaining mastery, because it is a form of empowerment"

#SpeakingOutOfPlace welcomes #CarissaVéliz, author of #Prophecy

https://speakingoutofplace.buzzsprout.com/2084729/episodes/18709720-bullshit-and-infinity-why-ai-cannot-predict-anything-a-conversation-with-carissa-veliz

#AI #tech #artificialIntelligence #techCriticism #techFutures #BigTech #books @bookstodon

Doug Henwood welcomes #QuinnSlobodian and #BenTarnoff, authors of #Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, to discuss "Elon’s world and what he wants to do to ours."

https://kpfa.org/episode/behind-the-news-april-23-2026/
#Musk #ElonMusk #AI #tech #BigTech #SiliconValleyRight #techOligarchs #techFutures #Tesla #Neuralink #books @bookstodon

"Acclaimed journalist and '#EmpireOfAI' author #KarenHao sat down with award-winning writer #NaomiKlein for a conversation on the precarious #AI moment we find ourselves in."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1B__Efqacc

#artificialIntelligence #AGI #SamAltman #tech #BigTech #OpenAI #SiliconValley #surveillance #techFutures #technosolutionism #techWorkers #labour #books @bookstodon

"#Tech companies are racing to build thousands of huge #dataCenters to power the #artificialIntelligence revolution. To find the land they need, they are barreling into rural communities across the United States with the promise of good jobs. But not everyone is buying that pitch.

"Karen Weise, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, tells the story of one county pushing back against #BigTech."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4rcpcX06kc
#AI #techFutures #SiliconValley #dataCentres

Two firefighters suffered chemical burns in a #BoringCo. tunnel. Then the #Nevada Governor’s office got involved, and the penalties disappeared

https://fortune.com/2025/11/12/elon-musk-boring-company-tunnels-injuries-osha-citations-fines-rescinded-nevada-governor-office-documents-altered/
https://archive.ph/JUevh
#BoringCompany #tech #Musk #USpol #USpolitics #OSHA #cronyism #copinage #techfutures #techBros #techOligarchs #corruption

"Our cognitive disaster is unfolding as if it’s the way of the world, like sun-up over the horizon and the light that blankets the land — inevitable, irreversible, the nature of things. This may be so, given that bowing before the #tech god is inherent in industrial civilization, an expression of the fanatical worship of innovation that goes unquestioned in our society."

The internet made us stupid. #AI promises to make it worse

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-09-21/ai-artificial-intelligence-internet-e-bike-brain
#artificialIntelligence #techfutures

DAIR's First Anniversary - Dylan Baker, Nobody Owns Our Technological Future

https://peertube.dair-institute.org/w/iRTqFhJHvcf5JXFTPGsNs5

#LARB Radio Hour | The Shit Show

"[H]ow #BigTech dreams – from iPhones to #socialMedia to #AI – have become nightmares.

"How did these decade-defining innovations end up making modern life feel sadder, lonelier, and scarier?"

#books discussed
⦁ @pluralistic's #Enshittification
⦁ Paul Kingsnorth’s #AgainstTheMachine

https://lareviewofbooks.org/av/the-shit-show/

#tech #technology #techFutures @bookstodon

"Because conservative Christianity is so tightly woven into the state’s political culture, #Musk and his fellow California exiles find themselves confronting a new ideological fusion, a blend of neoliberal economic policies and Christian-nationalist cultural ambition, rooted in the state’s long history of resource extraction and at ease with racism and misogyny."

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-texan-ideology-turner
#tech #BigTech #USpol #SiliconValleyRight #Texas #techMigration #techFutures

"A willingness to be conned as long as the illusion flatters our sense of self and our image of the future is a defining characteristic of our time. [...] In a country run by scam artists, all that’s left is the illusion of autonomy and control. Why wouldn’t people gravitate toward a car that similarly promises, however falsely, to make them powerful and free?"

Maya Vinokour's acerbic account of meeting the #Cybertruck

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cybertruck-elon-musk-fail/
#cars #EVs #Tesla #Musk #tech #techFutures