The Impact of the Internet on Climate Change

7min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

In 2016 I wrote a very dark medium piece about how the world was going to go down as american voxie falls. In it, I thought there would probably be a nuclear war but no bombs were fired and that VR will lead people to tune out the world around them. But in reality we're headed for authoritarianism becauseVR is so good right? We've had pandemic like they threw everything at VR games - this is kind of what happened with Ebola. The one sort of minor thing that we have for us is all these architectures are going into those virtual worlds. It's easy to forget the workers who are behind the technologies and the automations.

Paris Marx is joined by Dave Karpf to discuss Meta’s misguided attempt to turn Facebook into a metaverse company, how Wired Magazine has evolved, and why the tech billionaires are destroying the world.

Dave Karpf is an Associate Professor of Media and Public Affairs, George Washington University. He’s also the author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy and Analytic Activism: Digital Listening and the New Political Strategy. Follow Dave on Twitter at @davekarpf.

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. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham and part of the Harbinger Media Network.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Dave wrote about the history of WIRED Magazine’s future predictions and why VR never dies.
People Make Games made a video looking at what’s going on in VRChat.
Meta’s legs demo wasn’t real.
Douglas Rushkoff’s new book Survival of the Richest looks at how the rich are trying to protect themselves from the crises they’re making worse.
Science fiction books mentioned: Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, and William Gibson’s The Peripheral.