The Real Issue Is Distraction

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Sally Kohn: What do we lose when silicon valley circles its wagons around one of these a shitty transit ideas and keeps beating on with it? She says the real issue there is distraction. We've been sold this for well over a decade now that the tech industry is delivering progress, she says. But they don't actually solve the real transportation problems that affect most people, right? Kohn: It distracts people from the real solutions that can fix these transportation problems by making people think that new technologies are going to deliver things that they don't deliver.

In a special episode to celebrate the release of host Paris Marx’s new book Road to Nowhere, Brian Merchant takes over as guest host to interview Paris about the book, the tech industry’s visions for transportation, and why they don’t solve our mobility challenges.

Paris is the host of Tech Won’t Save Us and the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation. Brian Merchant is a tech journalist, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone, and co-editor of Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn. Follow Brian on Twitter at @bcmerchant.

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.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Road to Nowhere is available anywhere you buy books, but Verso has it discounted until July 8 as part of its Summer Reads sale.
An excerpt of Road to Nowhere about the dystopian future the tech industry is creating was recently published in Wired.
Paris recently spoke to StreetsBlog USA about the problem with Apple CarPlay.

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