Dystopia Now

To hear the rest of this episode, become one of our Patreon supporters at https://www.patreon.com/DystopiaNow For this bonus episode we were joined by comedian Kenice Mobley to talk about the different space futures Bezos and Musk have in mind. Bezos wants us to live in cylinders, Musk wants us to nuke Mars, but both of them want a future where we're all digital beings maximizing value. Some of the wildest information we've talked about so far.

This week our guest is Jacob Silverman, and independent journalist who has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Slate, The New Yorker & The New Republic. He's the co-author of "Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud." We talked about the growing right wing movement in the tech industry. From the PayPal mafia to President Sh*tcoin today, we dive deep into how a few billionaires are influencing policy from DOGE to how cities treat our unhoused neighbors. Sorry for slight reduction in audio quality this week, we had some issues with our recording software we will fix for next week! This is a fantastic interview you don't want to miss.

This week we welcomed special guest Albert Fox Cahn who is the Executive Director of S.T.O.P. (the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project). We talked about how AI is impacting policing and pricing. We also returned to the subject of Elon's ketamine addiction.  Special thanks to Deon Wolf who has been helping with our short videos on instagram and youtube.     

This week, Kate and Emile dive deeper into Elon Musk's ideology and explore the debate between two Silicon Valley camps, the AI Doomers and the AI Accelerationists. We explore the effective accelerationism or e/acc movement, a guy named Beff Jezos? Marc Andreessen's Techno Optimist Manifesto, and what Google founder Larry Page really believes. We also talked about what motivated Emile to do Ph.D research on human extinction. 

Gil Duran, a journalist known for his work in The New Republic and his blog The Nerd Reich, dives into the intriguing world of 'network states'—libertarian utopias envisioned by tech billionaires. He discusses how these ideas might dismantle traditional governance, from seasteading to ambitious plans for Mars. Duran critiques the rise of parallel institutions prioritizing technology over democracy and examines the dangerous blend of tech, politics, and faith, raising alarms about potential authoritarianism in these new societal structures.

Dive into the mind of Elon Musk and the perplexing ideologies shaping his actions. Explore longtermism and transhumanism, and their implications during the Trump administration. Delve into the moral dilemmas faced by billionaire tech elites while chasing a digital utopia. Discover the unsettling contrast between radical technological ambitions and pressing societal issues. Unpack the exclusive dynamics of Silicon Valley and the ethical questions surrounding post-human aspirations. Can these ideologies genuinely improve our future, or do they trivialize urgent concerns?