Eric Rosenfield

Literate Machine

Society EN ↓ 28 episodes

Literate Machine explores media through the lens of culture, history, and politics, examining the ways capitalism, power, and ideology shape and are shaped by the stories we love. Written and performed by Eric Rosenfield, Literate Machine is available as blog entries, newsletter, podcast, and YouTube channel. Literate Machine is available on Apple Podcasts and finer podcast apps everywhere.

Author

Eric Rosenfield

Episodes

There is No Alternative: Doctor Who, "Kerblam!", and the Specter of Technological Unemployment 29.03.2020 11:49

In the 2018 Doctor Who episode "Kerblam!", something is killing workers off at a far future Amazon analogue. Is it Capitalism? Or is the system not the problem? In this episode, Doctor Who is used as a lens to understand the history of technological unemployment and what it means for our automated future. Bibliography and Further Reading Who Were the Luddites from History.com : https://www.histo...

A Mind Forever Voyaging into Neoliberalism 01.03.2020 16:21

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection in a landslide and one man responded the only way he knew how: by channeling his horror into a video game. My favorite video game. So let's leap through time as the artificial intelligence Perry Sim and see what A Mind Forever Voyaging tells us about our present moment. Bibliography and Further Reading I could not have written this piece without the website Th...

Vintage Season 25.01.2020 15:15

In the premiere episode of Literate Machine, a look at the so-called "Golden Age" of Science Fiction through the lens of one of its finest practitioners, C. L. Moore. Her story (and the story of her husband, Henry Kuttner) in the science fiction mills of the mid-twentieth century is the story of America in the gig economy.