Abby and Patrick welcome back returning guest Adrian Daub. The occasion is Adrian’s latest book, What Tech Calls Governing. A follow-up to his 2020 book What Tech Calls Thinking, an intellectual history of Silicon Valley and critique of tech culture, What Tech Calls Governing unpacks subsequent developments and continuities that go deeper than pundits’ loose talk of a “vibe shift.” Indeed, as Adrian explains, recent years have seen Big Tech abandon the rhetoric of not being “evil” and promises of progressive uplift in favor of a rhetoric of inevitability, brazen collaboration with right-wing actors, and vague appeals to half-baked “longterm” utilitarianism. Adrian, Abby, and Patrick reflect on the distinctively gendered aspects of these developments, from the public antics of high-profile tech titans like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to deeper logics of contempt for vulnerability and the celebration of dominance. Along the way, they explore questions of exhaustion, embarrassment, male homosociality, creepiness, narcissism, the indignities of middle age, generational anxieties, and more.
References include:
Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Governing
Adrian Daub, What Tech Calls Thinking
Pre-order Adrian’s forthcoming book, Project 1933: Fascism Then and Now
Adrian’s podcast, In Bed With The Right
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Novalis, The Novices of Sais
Albert Burneko, “I Don’t Think David Brooks Is Okay, You Guys”
Anna Wiener, Uncanny Valley
Kate Manne, "A Culture Hooked on Generative AI is a Culture that Misses Female Sycophants"
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A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:
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