Keen On America

Bryan VanDyke’s new dystopian AI novel, In Our Likeness, only came out today, but it has already over 1,400 reviews on Amazon and is currently their bestselling science fiction book. So what does our seemingly infinite appetite for dystopian AI literature tell us about ourself, I asked VanDyke? Is the popularity of this type of dystopian literature because AI is about to replace humans with smart machines thereby making our species redundant? Or might it be a more persistent feature of modernity : our fear over the last couple of hundred years that any revolutionary new technology - railways, electricity, the computer or the Internet - is sabotaging our most “human” qualities?Bryan VanDyke is a digital strategist and a regular contributor at The Millions. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Northwestern. In addition to his debut novel, IN OUR LIKENESS, he is the author of a book-length essay, ONLY THE TRYING, which is a meditation on the nature of illness and recovery. For the last twenty-five years, he has advised and partnered with technologists, startup founders and venture capitalists with a passion for disruption. His debut novel draws on this experience and dramatizes many of the as-yet-unanswered questions about artificial intelligence. What happens with powerful tools when tech leaders seem fonder of disruption than they are of people and truth? Can we hold the line between the artificial and the real — and should we? He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a big fight, perhaps even a war, about to break out between Big Tech and governments around the world. It’s been brewing for several years now, but the news this week from France and Brazil suggests that conventional nation-states are increasingly confident of shutting down popular social networks and jailing their founders. For libertarians like That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare, this isn’t good news. In his editorial this week, Keith is particularly troubled by the French government’s decision to indict Telegram founder Pavel Durov.To make Durov liable for Telegram users is an injustice and an abuse of state power by officials who realise it is impossible to prevent privacy, so they resort to bullying and coercion.But I’m not so sure. If Telegram is, indeed, a dark web in your pocket, then the French government might have the right to not only arrest Durov, but even to make its use in France illegal. The legal implications of this case, as well as Brazil’s banning of X, are of course complex. But taken together with Mark Zuckerberg’s all-too-public attack on the Biden administration this week, it appears that that the long cold war between big tech and nation-states around the world is about to warm up.Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

According to the Californian political sociologist Peter Phillips, American capitalism is facing an existential crisis. In his new book, Titans of Capital, he argues that the concentrated wealth of investment companies like BlackRock and Fidelity not only threatens human rights and democracy, but also the future of planet. Perhaps. But where Phillips really goes out on a limb is to argue that the Chinese state controlled model of capitalism which, he says, has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, is more humane than the free market American model. Seriously?Peter Phillips is a Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University since 1994, former Director of Project Censored 1996 to 2010 and President of Media Freedom Foundation 2003 to 2017. He has been editor or co-editor of fourteen editions of Censored, co-editor with Dennis Loo of Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney (2006), editor of two editions of Progressive Guide to Alternative Media and Activism (1999 & 2004). His most recent book is Giants: The Global Power Elite. He was a co-host of the weekly Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio with Mickey Huff from 2010 to 2017, originating from KPFA in Berkeley and airing on forty stations nationwide. He teaches courses in Political Sociology, Sociology of Power, Sociological of Media, Sociology of Conspiracies and Investigative Sociology. He was winner of the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in 1997 for Best Political Book, PEN Censorship Award 2008, Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications 2009, and the Pillar Human Rights Award from the National Associations of Whistleblowers 2014. He lives in a redwood forest near Bodega, California with his wife Mary Lia.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

The Anglo-Jewish writer Tanya Gold went on holiday to Auschwitz and didn’t much like what she saw. She writes about the experience in “My Auschwitz Vacation: On Holocaust tourism” which ran in this month’s Harper’s. But, as she told me, she would have preferred the piece to have been entitled: “Her Gay Romp Through Jewish Poland” - in honor, of course, of Mel Brooke’s satirical “Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden” from his 1967 movie The Producers. And there is certainly something Brookean about Gold’s predilection for outrage - a healthy thing, I suspect, especially given the soporific quality of much contemporary Holocaust writing. Tanya Gold is a freelance journalist, who has written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the Sunday Times (London), amongst other publications. She was awarded Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards in 2010, also being nominated for Columnist of the Year, and was commended in the Feature Writer of the Year category in 2009.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Last year, we had a great conversation with Branko Milanovic, author of Visions of Inequality, about how classical economists like Smith, Riccardo, Marx and Pareto analyze inequality. Our guest today, David Lay Williams, asks the same question - but from the perspective of political philosophers like Rousseau, JS Rousseau and Hobbes. In his new book, The Greatest of All Plagues, Williams traces how economic inequality has shaped political theory over the last two thousand years. And in our age of increasingly sharp economic inequalities, Williams reminds us, what Plato called “the greatest of all plagues” is anything but an academic problem. David Lay Williams is Professor of Political Science at DePaul University. He earned his PhD in Government from the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Rousseau's Platonic Enlightenment (2007), Rousseau's 'Social Contract': An Introduction (2014), and The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx (2024). He has frequently written on themes in the history of political thought for outlets such as the Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Hill, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Time Magazine, among others.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Something interesting is happening in downtown Austin. Next month, The University of Austin (UATX), a new undergraduate college claiming to “be dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth”, opens its well financed doors. Launched as a supposedly “anti-woke” university, UATX has some heavy hitting advisors including Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Larry Summers, Andrew Young, Jonathan Haidt and Bari Weiss. It’s founding president is the Shakespeare scholar, Pano Kanelos, who is described as “an outspoken advocate for liberal education”. And so, when I sat down with Kanelos on the UATX campus, we talked about the idea of a “liberal education” and why there’s a need in contemporary America for one more liberal arts college. Pano Kanelos is the founding president of the University of Austin. From 2017 to 2021, Dr. Kanelos served as the 24th President of St. John’s College, Annapolis. After earning degrees from Northwestern University (B.A.), Boston University (M.A.), and the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), he taught at Stanford University, the University of San Diego, and Loyola University Chicago. An outspoken advocate for liberal education, he oversaw the Lilly Fellows Program in Humanities and the Arts, comprising a network of more than 100 colleges and universities. Among the earliest participants in the Teach for America program, President Kanelos is as passionate about teaching as he is about writing and scholarship. He founded the Cropper Center for Creative Writing at the University of San Diego and is a noted Shakespeare scholar, having served as the resident Shakespearean in the Old Globe MFA Program and the founding director of the Interdisciplinary Shakespeare Studies Program at Loyola University Chicago.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

As the author of the bestselling Master Algorithm, University of Washington professor Pedro Domingos is one of the world’s most respected AI experts. So I was a little surprised that his new book, 2040, is a science-fictional satire of American politics & Silicon Valley. In 2040, Domingos is, however, also using fiction to write a critique of the current Silicon Valley mania for AI. The book is both a warning about the technological limits of AI as well as an investigation of the way that it could truly democratize American politics. And so, by 2040, Domingos promised me, we really might be close to the reality of what he calls “an agora in a Presibot”. Pedro Domingos is a leading AI researcher and the author of the worldwide bestseller "The Master Algorithm", an introduction to machine learning for a general audience. He is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle. He won the SIGKDD Innovation Award and the IJCAI John McCarthy Award, two of the highest honors in data science and AI, and is a Fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Wired, and others, and is a highly sought-after speaker.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

At the DNC last week, the Warriors coach and former Bulls star Steve Kerr spoke of his excitement at his return to Chicago’s United Center, the home of some his greatest basketball triumphs. According to the Columbia University historian Frank Andre Guridy, there’s nothing coincidental about this convergence of American politics and sports. In his intriguing new book, THE STADIUM, Guridy reimagines America through the history of sports stadiums like Candlestick Park & Madison Square Gardens. It’s a story of politics, protest and play in which these sports stadiums act as mirrors and prisms to all the most troubling and hopeful aspects of American history.Frank A. Guridy is Professor of History and African American and African Diaspora Studies and the Executive Director of the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights at Columbia University. He is an award-winning historian whose recent research has focused on sport history, urban history, and the history of American social movements. His latest book, The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (University of Texas Press, 2021) explored how Texas-based sports entrepreneurs and athletes from marginalized backgrounds transformed American sporting culture during the 1960s and 1970s, the highpoint of the Black Freedom and Second-Wave feminist movements. Guridy is also a leading scholar of the Black Freedom Movement in the United States and in other parts of the African Diaspora. His first book, Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (University of North Carolina Press, 2010), won the Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians and the Wesley-Logan Book Prize, conferred by the American Historical Association. He is also the co-editor of Beyond el Barrio: Everyday Life in Latino/a America (NYU Press, 2010), with Gina Pérez and Adrian Burgos, Jr. His articles have appeared in Kalfou, Radical History Review, Caribbean Studies, Social Text, and Cuban Studies. His writing and commentary on sport, society, and politics have been published in Public Books, Columbia News, NBC News.com and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on a wide variety of podcasts, radio, and TV programs, including the Edge of Sports podcast by The Nation, Burn it All Down, End of Sport, Texas Public Radio, the Houston Chronicle’s Sports Nation, Al Jazeera’s “The Listening Post,” WNYC Public Radio, among others. His fellowships and awards include the Scholar in Residence Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Ray A. Billington Professorship in American History at Occidental College and the Huntington Library. He is also an award-winning teacher, receiving the Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, and the Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching at Columbia in 2019. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

As one of the victims of Donald Trump’s notorious 2020 dismissal of Inspector Generals, Glenn A. Fine — a longtime Inspector General of both the departments of Justice & Defense - knows a thing or two about both honest government. In his new book, Watchdogs, Fine presents the Inspectors General as the last line of defense for uncorrupt American institutions. In his words, they are “pillars of democracy” and, as such, we should think of these government officials as “broad shouldered" public servants” rather than “pointy headed bureaucrats”.Glenn A. Fine formerly served as the acting Inspector General of the Department of Defense and as the Inspector General of the Department of Justice. He is a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Law School, and has taught at Stanford Law School.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

“We don’t need no education”, Pink Floyd announced in 1979. “Teachers leave those kids alone”:We don't need no educationWe don’t need no thought controlNo dark sarcasm in the classroomTeachers leave them kids aloneHey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!But today, almost half a century later, That Was The Week newsletter publisher Keith Teare believes that technology might be radically reinventing education and healing the historically fraught relationship between teachers and kids. Today, Keith argues in this week’s newsletter, kids like his 17-year old son are discovering that they love AI as a co-creative tool for educating themselves. And 21st century teachers too, he suggests, can reinvent themselves from annoying pedagogues into helpful guides to new AI technology. In other words:You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the AI wind is blowingAll You Need is OpenAI and Anthropic. Keith Teare is the founder and CEO of SignalRank Corporation. Previously, he was executive chairman at Accelerated Digital Ventures Ltd., a U.K.-based global investment company focused on startups at all stages. Teare studied at the University of Kent and is the author of “The Easy Net Book” and “Under Siege.” He writes regularly for TechCrunch and publishes the “That Was The Week” newsletter.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe