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PODCAST

This Machine Kills

This Machine Kills

A podcast about technology and political economy /// Agitprop against innovation and capital /// Hosted by Jathan Sadowski and Edward Ongweso Jr., Produced by Jereme Brown /// Hello friends and enemies Listen anywhere that fine podcasts are distributed. Subscribe at patreon.com/thismachinekills to get premium episodes every week.

technology

All Episodes

00:08:00

Patreon Preview – 241. Euthanasia of Silicon Valley...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/18

Been a long time since we’ve seen a good old fashioned bank run lead to the collapse of a venerable financial institution, but leave it to Silicon Valley to rediscover something old and call it new again. We are joined by Brian Merchant—LA Times tech columnist and author of Blood in the Machine—for a post-mortem on Silicon Valley Bank, breakdown its events and effects, and hold Ed to account for his incitements to violence against the most marginalized and traumatized people of them all: venture

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01:27:21

240. Anthropology of Algorithms, Ethnography of...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/17

We are joined by Nick Sever – author of the new book Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation – to discuss his excellent ethnographic research on the creation of algorithmic recommendation systems. Nick spent a long time getting to really know the people who make these systems and his book offers so much original, granular detail about the various practices, theories, and relationships that influence the engineers behind these algorithms. Nick’s book also contains extremely

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00:08:20

Patreon Preview – 239. Ventures in Capitalist...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/14

Disclaimer: this episode was recorded before Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. We will do a post-mortem on that debacle in the next premium episode. In part 2 of our discussion on venture capitalism, we dig further into an excellent (and very long) new law article that is crucial for understanding VC. How did this very particular model of investment, which is guided by its own idiosyncratic interests and structural imperatives, come to hold the reins of our global innovation system? And what does that

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01:24:46

238. Ventures in Capitalist Innovation, Part 1:...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/09

In this week’s episodes, we dig into an excellent (and very long) new law article, which is crucial for understanding the history, mechanics, constraints, and consequences of venture capitalism. How did this very particular model of investment, which is guided by its own idiosyncratic interests and structural imperatives, come to hold the reins of our global innovation system? And what does that mean for how key decisions are made about technological development? Article we discuss: ••• Enhancing

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00:08:08

Patreon Preview – 237. Kissinger Has Seen the True...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/06

Now we know why Henry Kissinger looks the way he does. He peered into the true face of the New God // New Technology. He is paying the price for this forbidden glance – cursed to live for eternity in a shriveled flesh husk, damned to preach about its power, along with Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher. Their reverence is tempered by vague warnings of risk and responsibility. Their hysterical register is offset by the hushed tones of sober reflection. Stuff we reference: ••• ChatGPT Heralds an

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01:17:50

236. Butterflies on History’s Collage (ft. Malcolm...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/03/02

We are joined by Malcolm Harris—author of Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World—to discuss his magisterial book on how a hellmouth in Northern California has, for the last two hundred years, been a vortex of power for capital. We discuss some of the lesser known people and products of Palo Alto—like Herbet Hoover and William Shockley—that have had very important impacts (for worse and worse) on the direction of modern society, but have largely been looked back on in very

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00:05:50

Patreon Preview – 235. Fired By an Al-guy-rithm Named...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/25

We look at the latest way bosses are outsourcing the dirty work of owning capital and managing workers to techno-consultants. Then see why venture capitalists are loudly crying about a light touch rule that will require them to prove they actually did due diligence before spending billions of other people’s dollars. And we wrap things up by checking in on the plight of Amazon under its new CEO Andy Jassy – and wonder if the company’s troubles will lead to a second imperium of Bezos? Stuff we

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01:15:05

234. Supermarket Data Sweep!

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/22

We discuss the supermarkets for data – giant grocery chains like Kroger have created powerful capacities for data extraction and monetization. This forces us to expand our analysis of data surveillance beyond the usual suspects in big tech and reckon with the fact that data capital is not a thing that can be excised from the political economic system, but is now an essential component of that whole system’s operations. Stuff we reference: ••• Forget Milk and Eggs: Supermarkets Are Having a Fire

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00:06:32

Patreon Preview – 233. Floating Objects, Vinyl...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/18

In this installment of What the Fuck is Happening in America: floating “objects” keep getting shot down; a train carrying the toxic gas vinyl chloride has turned Ohio into a sacrifice zone; the Biden administration ramps up its investments in industrial policy, but in such a way that apparently the entire purpose of the economy is to try incentivizing private companies, with tax credits and subsidiaries, into directly competing with China. Sorry folks, the economy can’t do anything else for any

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01:13:36

232. 400 Hundred Years of Capitalism Led Directly to...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/15

Jumping off an FT op-ed on venture capital and tech hype – which aligns great with TMK thought – we discuss the value and risk models of venture capitalism, then get into the emerging market structures and dynamics for generative AI. It’s not just a web3 redux. We end with Ted Chiang’s fantastic article on lossy compression as an analogy for large-language models. Some stuff we reference: ••• The new Current Thing for VCs mourning the implosion of Web3

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01:21:26

231. Paris Syndrome

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/10

We get some Parisian updates and stories from Ed. Then we enter the mind palace of a libertarian who, with all the annoying pretension of a philosophy major, tried to make ChatGPT say the word. We wrap up with a discussion of the “year of efficiency” in Silicon Valley as the biggest four tech companies are rewarded with over $800 billion in market cap for making massive job cuts, massive stock buybacks, and massive investments in AI. Some stuff we reference ••• Big Tech groups disclose $10bn in

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01:21:57

229. Capitalist Manufacturing // Manufacturing...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/05

Part 1 –– We welcome returning champ Nick Chavez – mechanical engineer, marxist political economist – for a long conversation about his new essay examining the real nitty-gritty aspects of production and labor, knowledge and management. Time to step down from the ivory tower and onto the shop floor. We talk extensively about different modes of manufacturing and the stratification of technical expertise within capitalist production – and what needs to be kept, changed, and abolished in a transition

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00:07:09

Patreon Preview – 228. “Big” “Ideas” in “Tech” for 2023

This Machine Kills ·

2023/02/01

We dip into the a16z omnibus of predictions for the tech industry in 2023. Time to learn what the thought masters of the universe are trying to wishcast into existence because they have a material interest in making them happen. Stuff we reference: ••• Big Ideas in Tech for 2023: An a16z Omnibus https://a16z.com/2022/12/15/big-ideas-in-tech-2023/ Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Grab TMK gear:

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01:18:53

227. Don’t Bootstrap the Eschaton

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/28

Ed takes us on a guided tour of Odin Intelligence, SweepWizard, CloudFactory and other tech bullshit that sounds like embarrassing nonsense while also contributing in their own way to monetizing, mobilizing, and heightening the eschaton. Stuff we reference: ••• Police Contractor That Promised to Track Homeless People Hacked https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyjnq/odin-intelligence-hacked ••• Crime App ‘Citizen’ Fires Overseas $2 an Hour Workers

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00:04:15

Patreon Preview – 226. Changing the World, One Rogue...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/24

It’s been a while since we’ve done a real reading series. So we spend time with a group of rogue entrepreneurs who are taking it upon themselves to save the planet by geoengineering the atmosphere. Stuff we reference ••• A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/24/1066041/a-startup-says-its-begun-releasing-particles-into-the-atmosphere-in-an-effort-to-tweak-the-climate/ ••• Saudi Aramco bets on

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01:19:11

225. How AI Makes Living Labor Undead

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/19

We spend more time talking about the political economy of AI – the production and application of AI within a capitalist system and how it might (and should) differ within a socialist or communist system. We pay particular attention to discussing the growing and specialized industries for producing, supporting, propping up, and stepping in for AI in a variety of applications. Living labor creates the machinery of dead labor, which then acts as an agent of capital to discipline and dominate living

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00:05:49

Patreon Preview – 224. The Bleakness of Low Expectations

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/17

They don’t make things like they used to… No really. They don’t. We discuss how a perfect storm of things like stagnant wages, rising inflation, declining profits, expedited production, among other factors have led to a real drop in the quality of consumer goods along with generally lowered expectations of living conditions and technological innovations. Stuff we reference ••• Your stuff is actually worse now https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23529587/consumer-goods-quality-fast-fashion-technology •••

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01:21:26

223. Money for Nothing? In this Economy?

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/13

We offer some thoughts on where the tech sector is heading right now, how the markets are performing amidst a down turn, and what big trends for tech and capital are looking strong in the new year. Stuff we reference ••• A new era: the end of cheap money https://www.ft.com/content/6d312b6c-9f74-4816-ad7e-7e797c5e0f6b ••• Silicon Valley start-ups race for debt deals in funding crunch https://www.ft.com/content/d12a4baa-53c6-4256-b125-d25622f9555f ••• Silicon Valley staff rush to offload start-up

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00:07:36

Patreon Preview – 222. Weird That All These Canaries...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/08

We do a postmortem on 2022, the year of Web3, talking about the goofs and grifts, speed and scale, crashes and canaries, with our major takeaway and theme being that just as FTX is not anomalous for Web3, nor is Web3 anomalous for Silicon Valley. It is, instead, a product and paragon of the structural conditions and systemic imperatives that define how the political economy of technology operates within capitalism. Stuff we reference ••• In 2022, web3 went just great

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01:09:44

*Unlocked* – The Insurtech Will Continue Until Morale...

This Machine Kills ·

2023/01/05

We give some personal updates, then get distracted talking about a new survey on consumer sentiments and insurance technology. It turns out that actually the vast majority of people *do not* want to use surveillance technology and exchange data for any insurance discounts. Remember this when insurance policies that require using devices and sharing data still proliferate. It's not because consumers want them, but because insurers demand them. Stuff we reference: ••• Most Americans still refuse to

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