This Machine Kills

We are joined once again by Nick Chavez, a Marxist mechanical engineer, to discuss the political economy of automation – providing the groundwork for a better understanding of how automation actually operates in the market, the workplace, the interests of capital, and the lives of labor. What happens when the living are dominated by the dead? What happens when you work too much or not work enough?...

We talk more about (digital) sabotage, the different scales and intensities these actions can take, and the risks of inconvenience or worse, which sabotage as a form of self-sacrifice might require. We then get into the politics of the “slow computing” movement, the failings of “humane technology” philosophies, and why the tech press is a sucker for a redemption story. Some stuff we reference: •••...

We dig into the different visions that tech billionaires have for space – whether it’s Elon Musk’s ambitions for lording over Mars colonies or Jeff Bezos’s schemes to monopolize logistics for orbital settlements. At the end of the day, we can see the same imperialist imperative inherent to capitalism expressing itself through the search for a new frontier, the final frontier to conquer: space. The...

We discuss recent work Andreas Malm – Marxist historian, ecologists, and radical climate activist – as analysed through a large synthetic review essay by Adam Tooze. We get into capitalism’s climate catastrophe, the politics and praxis of direct action, the ahistorical positions and principles of large liberal climate change activism movements, and the urgent need for moral arguments backed up by...

Kicking off the new year, we are joined by returning champion Wendy Liu – author of Abolish Silicon Valley – to look back on all the very dumb things the tech sector has forced us take seriously in 2021. We talk about how free flowing capital has both created and accelerated a world built on sand. Where all the vaporware, bullshit, and grifts of things like NFTs, DAOs, and web3 seemingly come from...

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...

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 makin...

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...

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...

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 — C...

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/braune...

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...

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 Work...

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 int...

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=5X9RUOE...

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 dif...

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 h...

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 st...

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 jus...

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 mo...

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/T...

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 offic...

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 commentar...

••• 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...

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...