The Future of Transportation and Technology

5min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The computer has, from the beginning, been a fundamentally conservative force. And we have to look at it as infer structure. It's not simply consumer products. We've often seen how disruptive computers can be in a negative way. But he completely disagreed with this idea that there was a computer revolution because it wasn't transforming industries or changing most of the people who were going into them. If anything, they just consolidated power in the hands of those already wealthy and powerful. I couldn't agree more.

Paris Marx is joined by Mar Hicks to discuss why we need to know the history of tech and how the British history of sexism and colonialism in computing has lessons for the present-day US tech industry.

Mar Hicks is the co-editor of “Your Computer Is on Fire,” along with Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, and Kavita Philip. They are also the author of “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” and an Associate Professor of the History of Technology at Illinois Tech. Follow Mar on Twitter as @histoftech.

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:

Mar wrote about the story of COBOL computer systems in the early months of the pandemic and how Britain killed its tech industry.
Google fired top AI ethicists Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell after their research was critical of the company’s practices. Diversity recruiter April Christina Curley was also fired in September 2020.

Support the show