Polarization and the Digital Age

Paris Marx is joined by Becca Lewis to discuss the right-wing project to shape the internet in the 1990s and how we’re still living with the legacies of those actions today.

Becca Lewis is a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• Paris wrote about Marc Andreessen mentioning the Italian Futurists in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto.
• Ruth Eveleth wrote about the Italian Futurists in the context of Silicon Valley.
• In 1995, Wired published a story on how “America’s futurist politicians” Al Gore and Newt Gingrich were in an epic struggle to shape the internet.
• Becca mentioned the work of Nicole Hemmer and Patricia Aufderheide.

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