DOGE and the fallacies of techno-utopianism

25:51And that over time, you see that it's sort of degrading the experiences or livelihoods of musicians rather than supporting them. If it was really dedicated to the health of music and the music industry, an institution that was dedicated to that hopefully wouldn't be producing that kind of results. I mean, another aspect of the platform and the institution is sort of the platform is its only goal is to scale and grow. And what it does or what it does for you is secondary. Its main idea is that we want to grow this connectivity or this essentially digitized thing. institutions i think don't get enough credit for how they really do center the thing itself to to actually the they almost have a disinterest in growth and a disinterest in scale and so i think we should start to think about like you know why that's important and what the trade-offs are it doesn't it's not to say that institutions can't be really good businesses or you know can't be quite large and clearly are like hegemonic in their own way but i just think that you know when we start to think about way in which spotify ai slop and all these other things are dominating are present, going back to this idea of the institution is kind of the key figure for me, especially our way of kind of transcending and getting out of platforms, right?

27:04I don't think we just need a better platform. I don't think we need like a good Spotify. I think like the whole idea of a platform is kind of dead on arrival. Yeah, I feel like they're both, one is about evolution and one is about growth, you know, and I think they're kind of like philosophically antithetical you know like an institution is about preservation and a platform is just about like endless expansion right or the sign that something is a platform and not an institution is that the platform is willing to just completely overhaul its entire mission for the sake of growth yeah which we've seen there's no mission to a platform well there can be but it's like by definition it's it's a it's a device right exactly although maybe spotify would say oh we want to put all the world's music at, you know, the fingertips of everybody as their initial mission statement.

27:56But then over time, it would be all the world's audio because they work in podcasting and then it becomes something else. But what's also confusing or where this gets kind of twisted up with the distinction between these two things is that you, as I said, like you could kind of critique certain institutions that do get like overtaken by this ethos for doing the same thing. Like you could say like X publication is not what it used to be because they're just chasing clicks now. Exactly. Yeah. And I think, well, going back to your other earlier question about sort of where was the turn? How did we get there?

28:30I think of exactly that point. I think the big piece of it is that platforms are so deeply informed by the method of funding. The idea that venture capital must grow and grow quickly and actually is zero sum, right? So there can't really be like 15 Spotify's out there. You might remember that period where there were actually a bunch of digital players and MP3. I used to use RDO, which people make fun of me for. There used to be all these competing things, right? The point you made about Spotify now being audio, and then later, maybe it's everything. Maybe it's books later. I mean, that's what happened to Amazon, right?

29:07The platform has to constantly grow and mutate. And your question before as to why and where does this happen, it's because of the funding structure, right? So, you know, maybe another way to think about the institution. And again, when I say institution, I don't think of like a museum or any kind of like a university. I just think of like the small eye sense of it. Right. I think the funding structure is a huge part of where it holds on to its mission and its sort of attitude to scale and growth. And so, yeah, the way you put that was exactly it. It's going to mutate to grow. And we don't often talk about the sort of tradeoffs there or the external externalities.

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30:28That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. So, Mike, in your book, you confront this notion that digital technologies are these, quote, neutral tools here to serve us. And you argue that in reality, they're very much imbued with, as you put it, assumptions and collateral consequences. Ideology, in other words. Talk about what you mean by this and how does this happen? Yeah, I think the part of the book is to say, what are the hidden assumptions that kind of led us to the point where, you know, we are always looking for a platform to solve our problem, or we sort of have this implicit bias that there is a sort of like progressive march of technology.

31:10And so the book is basically like 10 counterclaims against that. As I was going through, I said, like, can I reduce these down to examples where people say, oh, wow, you know, that is correct. I hadn't quite thought of that. So I think the platform world that we're in now does produce a kind of view of the world. It's not anyone's spot on the political spectrum. As we can tell, it sort of just kind of matters who's in the White House or who seems to be in power any one year. It's really more about the idea of computation for computation's sake. So the idea that a technical solution can kind of come in and actually transcend politics and go beyond politics.

31:50But for me, that in itself is a political claim, right? It is a kind of almost fear of political solution. It's almost a sort of anti-human view of the world, not to get sort of dark, right? It's part from literally from, I think, the kind of metonym of Silicon Valley. It's part of that libertarian strain. But I also think it's kind of morphing into its own ideology of the present, where you look at institutions and we really kind of think like, oh, well, you know, why isn't that a digital platform? Or why isn't this easier? Or why isn't this faster? But then we aren't thinking about all the other hidden things are kind of like leading us to that conclusion or leading us to ask that question.

32:29The same thing could be true of like data. I know you talk about this in the book, Like this assumption that data is always neutral or like following the numbers is always ideologically neutral. Yeah, exactly. That's like a real basic one. And this has been a topic in, I think, STS for a long time. And I just think that it's not talked about enough in terms of just how pervasive this is, right? Like this idea that you can appeal to data as a third party objective source is really baked in to our current kind of culture. but you really have to unthink that because I think if you really talk to people who work with data as I have or have worked with data myself, like there is a very slippery kind of ontology to data and you could kind of really make it say whatever you want.

33:11So, you know, the first sin, I think, or like an elemental sin of this entire ideology is this misplaced faith in the objectivity of information because, you know, information is always essentially created and captured by us, It's a political act to even say what you want to measure and how you want to measure, not to mention of the political act of interpreting that data. Right. Like everything ultimately goes through the vector of a human being. Well, for now. Yes. We say that because something is based on data, it gets this sort of veneer of, we associate it, I think, as a culture with this idea of scientific objectivity and absolute truth.

33:49Right. And why do the folks who work with computers say that? because they are the ones that are the database administrators, right? Like it's essentially this kind of inversion of a thing that's happened for years, right? This is not only a thing that's only happened after the computer and after Silicon Valley. It's just a very old retelling of a story of those who essentially master the information or master the data want to then parlay that into a kind of purchase on right and wrong, right? It's just that now everyone is willingly datafying themselves every single second. And there's a huge opportunity there for us to kind of portray data as this like objective truth.

34:26I think the most obvious like everyday example is when you have one of these like AI kind of freaks basically saying like, I asked ChatGPT this and it said this. And it's almost like childish how they don't realize that that should not be thought of as like the truth. But sure enough, that's part of kind of like the religion of AI. It's based in this idea of, you know, there's no such thing as sort of raw data. Even though if you ask people who are actually training the models, it's like a lot of work goes into measuring their bias and stuff like that. They're not just automatically omniscient and objective.

35:00Yeah, there's precious few people who work with AI who will talk to you about this and admit this because they're better off benefiting from the kind of mystique of it. But yeah, you have to do a ton of work to this stuff. It doesn't happen automatically, right? So after writing this book, were you surprised to see the MAGA and tech alliance come together quite as much as it has? Does it feel like a marriage of convenience? Or are we in the middle of witnessing like maybe a techno libertarian coup? Yeah, so there's two ways I think about that. I mean, in the course of dealing with this subject matter, you definitely do see the sort of right wing pro capitalists and even I'd say libertarian streams of Silicon Valley.

35:38And, you know, those books are out there. And that's definitely a present element. I haven't actually kind of publicly talked about this yet. But I really think it goes back to the tech lash being interpreted as kind of like a left wing or a liberal thing, which in many ways it was right. I mean, I was working in tech when the tech lash was unleashed, right? It was during when Uber was tripping over itself. The New York Times was ripping Uber apart. It was during the Theranos thing. It was during various other... Of course, I was essentially using these tools when Cambridge Analytica came out and people in our line of work weren't really surprised about the Cambridge Analytica revelations.

36:15It was sort of like, what did you guys think this was all for? So during that time, the tech clash was interpreted as... We were painted as being sort of like anti-capitalist or anti-growth or literally just like a hater. And I guess there is some way in which that got aligned to not necessarily Biden, but just like people's distrust and dissatisfaction with the status quo was kind of lumped in with an anti-tech stance. And again, they reared up the old engine of cyber utopianism or the idea that Silicon Valley will fix this. And I guess it was just a marriage in terms of Elon Musk clearly wanted to cozy up to whatever power was going to arise.

36:52And obviously Trump stormed back. So yeah, I think it's a marriage of convenience. Like I think that I always do the counterfactual of this probably would have happened with, you know, what we call the liberal left in this country anyway. So yeah, I think there's a bunch of different like elements that are, that are working in this development. Yesterday on Discord though, you did say that you, if you don't mind me disclosing, we can cut this. No, no. You did say that you thought there was like an 85 % chance this is a techno libertarian too. Yeah. Yeah. No. So I've always been someone that this is also a topic of hot debate these days.

37:25Like I kind of looked on with some cringe when people would say that Trump is a kind of dictator or that, you know, he's like the second coming of Hitler, mainly because I didn't like the way that that was the Democrats only kind of, you know, play. Like they didn't really talk about how life was going to be better. They just kind of scared you into submission to voting for their person. And that's kind of how two party politics works, I guess. But yeah, no, I mean, from the look of things right now, I'm pretty worried about that. And I think, you know, we can probably get into it later, but I think the stuff that's going on with Doge is probably where I'd locate most of the purchase on like the techno libertarian coup.

38:00I think, I think we should unpack that like briefly, right? Like, what do we mean when we say that? I think we really mean that Doge and the people who are working for Elon Musk and the general sentiment around Doge is it's government efficiency, which everyone kind of likes, right? Even I'm like, yeah, some of this stuff could be a little more efficient, but I don't think it's actually efficiency. I think it's basically a fundamental diametrically oppositional view of that institution that these institutions should not exist. Like they aren't trying to make it more efficient. They're trying to get rid of it.

38:31They're trying to break these institutions down. And what they do is they use the cover of Silicon Valley efficiency or AI. And, you know, we want this to work like a private company. That's that old kind of right wing idea, which has been a thing forever. So, you know, some of the stuff now with with just the the speed at which this is proceeding in a kind of like pretty clearly undemocratic way, I do think should give people pause. But I think it's all back to like this idea that I think that Elon Musk and the ideology he represents doesn't really not think that any of these government institutions should exist.

39:05And Trump maybe doesn't either. I don't know if this whole stance fits with Trump's psychic personal experience of being screwed over by the libs and wanting to get revenge on all of the deep state stuff. Yeah, I mean, he's like non-ideological. He basically just likes strength, right? He just goes where the strength is. So, you know, you could say that his use of tariffs is almost like weirdly state-centric and pro-state or even pro-isolationist, which has people scratching their heads. Yeah, I've been thinking that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, no, no. I was just going to say, I mean, I think like the whole political compass just gets shaken up with him, right?

39:44It's just he wants power. And I think so does Elon Musk. And Elon Musk says, yeah, you know, we may talk about libertarianism, but at the end of the day, the federal government is a huge consumer and a huge client. And you do have power to help, you know, to help me and my cronies. And then on the other side, Trump looks at Elon and says, you know, we can basically take this general distrust of government and essentially eliminate some of these things, or at least just to kind of like show that they're powerful enough to do it. That's what's so crazy to me is that we have, you know, this whole conversation is about the sort of ideological underpinnings that can't be cleaved from tech that infiltrates so much of our world and lives in every aspect.

40:23But like the gravitational force at the center is a non-ideology right now or a man who lacks ideology and yet that's the locus for all of this. Yeah. And this is why, I mean, I also think this is why he's been somewhat successful in electoral politics is he is kind of like an etch-a-sketch with respect to ideology. He'll just kind of change his view or change his tone. And the only thing he really answers to is like the perception of power or the perception of domination. And I guess people identify with that. Totally. And so with Doge, is it kind of like, you know, a lot of really the story of the last several decades is like techno utopianism kind of helping to erode away at institutions or at least capitalizing on the erosion of institutions.

41:06And is Doge just like the final when it when it's like actually infiltrating the government and we're talking about like dissolving the Department of Education, that that's like the final boss or something? Yes, but I think it's a very specific way how it's getting done. Right. There's all this talk about these four or five young Zoomers who are brilliant engineers who are kind of helping Elon Musk do this work. And I think about that. I think about, I guess, Aristotle kids, whatever you want to call them. Those young men are kind of like almost the ideal reader for this book. I wrote this book for that type of person.

41:40It's like someone who is an engineer or works in tech. And what I'm trying to say to both them and people who read the book is they're not the issue. It's not their fault. Don't demonize them. Demonize their boss or realize why they are being set this task and question that, right? I think we actually have an optimistic strain going for us here, which is that if we can just focus on convincing this group of people who sort of outnumber the Elon Musks of the world or the sort of people who have an ideological commitment to platforms from a business sense, we can kind of transcend this, right? So the reason why these four young men are being sent to do this like sort of coup like moment of get to the data, get to the payment data, pull the payment data out, analyze it.

42:29Like I've been in situations like that. It's like that's like a typical Silicon Valley thing. It's like go for the most important information, understand the data. If you own the data, then you own the infrastructure. And then we start working out from there. That's a very like platform way to look at this constellation of institutions. Like it's almost like seize the means of the platform. Like basically the payment system that they're working on is essentially like this thing that unites and disperses all of these things. And so for them, they're like, OK, let's go to the data and then let's think about like how the institution basically gets winnowed down after that.

42:58Right. I mean, the way they actually got it to the payment system was by just basically being like, oh, yeah, the bureaucrat that had to rubber stamp this, like you're just gone now. Right. And I think there's like a real reason why there are those kind of checks and balances. There is a real reason why there's like security clearances to get this information. It's because it's it's not a business. right it's not supposed to just like move fast and be broken obviously it's wasteful in some sense but it exists for like a fundamentally different governmental purpose and they just don't understand that why do you think he chose such young kids did he have did he have a comment about that yeah that's a great question my speculation is that it's because they are also like blank slates in a way right like you're not compromised at all i mean and by the way that's actually like a fair critique, right?

43:40It's like, I always love how across the aisle, you have people that spent years in industries going into government. And you're like, well, are you really going to regulate Purdue Pharma? You didn't choose to work there. So maybe it's some of that putting a positive spin on it. But yeah, I just think it's something about like, I do think like the sort of effective acceleration is pro tech kind of zoomer ideology is is kind of winning for that age group. You know, hopefully they read the book and they think again about it. I also came up a wonder if it's like a little bit this is probably not like the intent but a side effect is maybe like it's kind of a pr move i think obviously our current administration has done a great job of speaking directly to and almost to an extent empowering zoomers and even those who are younger like i mean hello like the whole tiktok thing but you know they think it's like having that visibility of there being these young kids all up in the government essentially changing things you know that that's that does send a message whether that was the top line intent or not.

44:38Or this is like the institution is full of such like stupid and incompetent individuals. Even if they have like, you know, decades of service or they have like advanced degrees in their field, they don't like we could fix it with just these young kids. Like that's how bad they are. Right. Like you guys know better. Don't trust anyone with experience, you know? Yeah. That's also the mantra of the disruptive startup. Right. I mean, like the average age of like Y Combinator. I mean, these kids are like in college and, you know, there's all sorts of stories about like older founders and in Silicon Valley, you know, age is a liability 100 percent.

45:15And it's that kind of like bright eyed techno utopian wonder that you have as a libertarian 17 year old that actually makes you the perfect candidate to go do this. Even though you may or may not have voted in an election yet. Yeah, I bet they're having so much fun. Like they feel so powerful. But I also do think, I forget who mentioned this, but I do think there's some PR leaks going on. Like, I think the way that their names came out and the way that there are all these sort of like counter arguments, it all seems a little bit too calculated, right? I think it's all like, it's again, Doge is essentially a propaganda for Silicon Valley in a lot of ways.

45:47And it's going back to that thing. It's like, oh, these are really brilliant kids and they are good with technology. They almost want to lean into that rather than sort of hide it. So I think there's a lot of performativity around the fact that they've been exposed and named. I actually think that was part of the plan. And like, look how we were able to just spin this thing up so quickly with just like a meme coin and a Twitter and a couple of guys. Exactly. And isn't it fun? And aren't we brilliant? Yeah. Autocrats, they're just like us. Yeah. OK, so I'm really excited to ask you this next question, right?

46:18Because it's something I've been thinking about a lot since pretty much the election. Why are all these corporations bending the knee now? And especially the tech corporations, but we're also seeing like even Target, like rescinding DEI and all that. Why are they all bending the knee now when they didn't under past administrations? Like beyond the fact that, you know, the obvious being, you know, Trump isn't just an aberration this time around, which I think is part of why we didn't see that before. But yeah, why is this happening now? To me, it implies like, well, then therefore the government, these institutions still have some power because otherwise, why would they need to be sucking up to them or deferring to them or however you want to phrase it?

46:59And what does this tell us about the role of institutional power as it stands? Yeah. So for the first part, I do think it's because they want to kind of just cozy up to power. I think that Trump is someone who wants to be flattered as well. Whereas with, you know maybe a more technocratic president they wouldn't have done this but trump wants he's like the mafia guy he wants you to kiss the ring you know what they might have done with like a bunch of wonks at like think tanks and soft power that way they do in these very like public telegenic shows of like i said bending or as you said bending the knee so i think that is part of that i think it's all aesthetics trump is just an aesthetic monster like that's what he is he wants to do that with respect to like the i think maybe you're thinking of like all the stuff that happened with Zuckerberg.

47:47Like, why is Zuckerberg like a, like a MMA Chad now? Why did he say that there's no more fact checkers? Why is he doing all these things? It's seemingly seem like, you know, anti-woke. That's, I think, just because he's trying to read the tea leaves. And I think he's, he's seen his platform sort of stall and growth. I think in general, Silicon Valley is not having the explosive growth that they, you know, have been enjoying for the past 10 years. So they have like two ways out of it. AI is the one way out of it. And the other way is like state capture. Maybe that's one of the reasons why it is so overt this time around.

48:20It's interesting because there's also like people like Zuckerberg, where he is himself drinking the Kool-Aid and pivoting with this zeitgeist or whatever. But then there's like more faceless corporations that in the past would have maybe taken a defiant stance against Trump or like, I don't know, writing op-eds about how like we're not going to let him do X or Y or Z. And so now it's like also the people who are presumably not standing with Trump ideologically who are bending the knee. And that to me, that is like more disturbing than the Zuckerberg stuff. Yeah. Like Target being like we're doing away with DEI.

48:55Yeah, that was maybe the most disturbing one to me, honestly. No, I've been shocked, too, about the fundamental lack of resistance, both in like the lib and leftist way. I mean, it's almost like, wait, this is what you guys do when a quote unquote fascist wins? you don't do anything like come on like you guys were talking a big game during the election and now it's just like we're back at brunch and i think i think the reason why that is is because it didn't work and there's no reason like i think it's just like ride out the next four years he can't get re-elected let's focus and maybe there's a positive spin on it they're like they're like let's focus on what we did wrong to let him win rather than like acting like he's hitler so maybe that's why you don't see like the sort of marches in the streets and then the cynical piece which you brought in is like businesses look at the next, you know, 16 quarters and they're like, okay, well, we know we're not going to help defeat him with any of this stuff.

49:46It didn't work last time. He's not up for reelection. Let's just join in. You know, I think that's the corporate side of it. But yeah, I mean, the political side of it, like I've been shocked by the lack of response. I think people are just exhausted and just defeated. Yeah. But it's also like, you know, For so long, the corporate line for whatever administration has kind of been like, we don't engage in politics or whatever. You know, maybe a little bit here, maybe a little bit there, you know. Again, like it's like Target has their like Pride Month collection or whatever. And so it's just really like the overtness because it's again, I mean, I'm fixating on Target because I feel like it's such a good example.

50:23But it's just like nobody asked you, you know, no one asked you, Target, like how you feel about this. And like they're jumping in and announcing this. And it's just like, what the fuck? Yeah, definitely puzzling. But maybe it's good because, you know, corporate. I mean, why do we need our corporations to be our like political vanguards, right? It's always been kind of like a cynical thing, as you say. Yeah, definitely. So, so far in what happened in the past four years. Yeah. But like we don't and now they are. And in that sense, it's an interesting gamble, you know, like it's worked pretty well for them so far, I'd say to stay neutral, like for, you know, Silicon Valley, Lena Khan and all that, like notwithstanding, like for Silicon Valley to be like, we're above this, we're not part of this, you know, and they've arguably, I think, at least in the public mind's eye, like in many ways, felt more powerful or influential than our government has in a long time.

51:15And this is like totally putting that on its head. And it's just I mean, I don't know, maybe, Mike, like you were saying it's like a lot of this like pandering and all that was just kind of happening more behind the scenes and it feels more public now because that's trump's mo but like they are politicizing themselves which is like a really like charged thing that i feel like you can't undo you know but okay so another thought i have on that is like potential like little little grain of optimistic light here does that potentially imply that like actually state institutions maybe still do have some power over these corporations to reign them in because they feel like they need to kiss up yeah they're afraid of trump retaliating against them in some way yeah sure which is like crazy to me because i can't imagine trump would like reigning them in would be like the most like again biden lena khan style thing to do so i just can't imagine him doing that even if it was punitively it would just be like so antithetical to like everything else like maga stands for you You know, the thing is, I feel like this all feels like very novel and unheard of to us.

52:23But I feel like if you maybe if you ask someone on the right, like someone who is MAGA, who is running a business, they would be like, oh, well, we had to like censor ourselves for the past so many years or whatever. Like maybe they would feel that they would say that. I don't know. Yeah, no, I got some people on Twitter, which is kind of accessible these days, responding to something I said where it's like, I've always been someone who tends to fall on bias towards like state authority or just kind of like enacting things you want to see rather than what like the left and liberals have been doing.

52:53You know, at the same time, I see the sort of like rise of the libertarian MAGA right, but they're doing a ton of like state power things. Like they're doing a ton of stuff that's like, to your question, like really reinforcing the power of top down state authority, like the executive orders or all of these things where it's like, wait, I thought you guys thought that private citizens should just kind of like live their own lives. And I think the answer is that they think they're undoing the Biden administration, which, you know, from my perspective, was no communist dictatorship. It was pretty like center.

53:23Right. It was pretty pro business. So, yeah, that's why it's all so confusing right now, because you have the right wing guy, quote unquote, huge air quotes, kind of doing, you know, all this like state power stuff. This is very odd. something that's like refreshing about your book i found is that you don't respond to all of this by taking a luddite position of like oh it's we just you know well i guess luddite position is not necessarily one specific stance it's kind of a broad idea but we're not saying like we're going to drop out uh let's just like you know boycott drop out of the technological world of course instead you make a compelling argument for something you call techno progressivism What is techno-progressivism and what is its answer to both the Luddite stance and kind of techno-utopian stance?

54:09Yeah, well, for sure. I think part of the learnings of the tech clash has been, you know, the Luddite refusal is clearly not going to be a winning strategy. And yeah, I don't think that technology is inherently evil. I just finished listening to the Unabomber podcast and I was like, yeah, like I distanced myself very far away from any of that. And I think our political future, it kind of stems on correcting the ideology underneath which we mobilize technology, not necessarily technology itself, right? So, you know, the idea that you would demonize sort of algorithms or even something like using the internet just seems quite silly and short-sighted.

54:45I'm trying to propose that the idea that technology can improve certain things, provided that there is a proper account of the tradeoffs and the for whom part of the question is kind of my vision for a, you know, I call it like a sort of like enlightened techno progressivism, right? I don't think we're going to win any political futures or any political clout in the future by just kind of constantly claiming how bad everything is. Although I am one of the most harshest critics you'll find, I still think the answer lies in going to the ideological head of all these tools rather than basically proclaiming the evils of technology.

55:25Because I don't think that's a very good political electoral strategy either. So that's kind of really the needle I try to thread with the idea of, I guess, techno-progressivism and the idea of rebuilding institutions, right? I think our future institutions should be digital. I think they should work just the way some of our better technology works. I just think that the point of the book is to sift out the more damaging parts of the platform ideology from the rebuilding of those institutions. How would a techno progressivist answer to like the sort of, you know, almost like collective delusion around AI, like the AI bubble of, you know, AI is just the future.

56:04And it's just like always going to be good for its own sake to continue pumping tons of money and energy into it, for example. Yeah, no, that's a great question. This came up at another talk I was doing. So, you know, AI can be good for very narrow things. If you give AI 5 ,000 x-rays, it's going to detect cancer faster than you might be able to do today with whatever amount of doctors you have. Does that mean that doctors are going away? No, of course not. It just means that, and that's my problem, like so much of the claims of AI get so, I guess, wound up in utopianism, almost a dystopianism in a way.

56:41And the reason they're doing that is because they're basically marketing the efficacy of the tool. So they kind of do this in this hyperbolic way, right? I fully reject the hyperbolic claims of artificial general intelligence. I'm not alone in that. There are people who know way more about it than I do who also see this as essentially just religion. But on a more piecemeal implementation of AI way, I really, you know, would say that let's choose point solutions where it makes sense. Let's not automate journalism. Let's not have fake music on Spotify. Like, come on, does anyone want that? Who asked for this?

57:16Like, that's sort of my answer in general. is it's the Latin saying like, you know, for whom, right? Cue bono, I think is how you say it. My Latin is rusty. But it's like, well, who asked for this? Why is this happening? That's generally my stance for the proliferation of AI we're seeing now. Yeah, it's very much this mentality of just like eating the food because it's in front of you. The slop, yeah. Yeah, the slop, truly. Well, we've touched on this a little already, but what do you hope people take away from this book? Why was it important to you that this book be read by people, like you were saying earlier, who may currently fall more within the techno-optimist camp and not just people who share your views on this stuff.

57:54Yeah, no, I'm trying to thread the needle of people who grew up in the ideology that we were all talking about and find themselves, you know, having some misgivings about the direction, the techno-utropians or Silicon Valley. I think those people are out there. Like, the time I spent working in tech, you know, you didn't really have to, like, whisper your misgivings about some of the issues developing in these debates, right? Like most people inside this machine or this industry also are more like the tech critics than they are, you know, unlike them. So I was thinking, how do we really get there?

58:26And I think the dystopian view that I think some journalists do, which I think is, has a role to play. It wasn't really my goal in this book. Like the ideal person is, I almost want to say someone who hasn't either thought about these things yet, or potentially is on the younger side or is just kind of coming to this all anew. And yeah, I want to convince like those four or five young men in Doge and I want to convince them to maybe take a more critical view of this. And again, it's not a demonization. It's basically saying these tools we use underneath these platforms, there's some ideologies that hopefully are made pretty plain by the book.

59:01And that leads people to actually have some sort of political solution, right? Like I don't, I'm also not a doomer. I usually put my positive spin on it by saying that I think some of these institutions can be saved. I think we're actually almost at maybe like the darkest part, right? Before the dawn where people are going to start to revolt and say, I don't want automated AI music on Spotify. I don't want slop on Facebook. Maybe we shouldn't even have Facebook. I think that's going to happen. I think we're tired of being shuffled from one platform to another and just never really anything getting better.

59:28And it's important to even just like open up a little space for it to be socially acceptable to, you know, work in tech or in these industries and like talk in this way, I guess. Yeah, 100%. I think people, you know, it's hard to find someone these days who hasn't in some way worked in tech or been like, quote unquote, complicit. You know, I kind of reject that whole old left saying of, oh, you're complicit or you're, you know, you have an iPhone, but you're critiquing society. It's like, well, no, that's fundamentally, you know, kind of a dead end way to think about things. So yeah, no one's pure.

1:00:00And I think we all kind of have to try to figure out a way out of it. And that's kind of the thrust of the way the book is situated in the current discourse. Yeah, let's not cancel tech. Let's confront it. So you have your chapter that platforms are not institutions. And as we discussed here, you know, they're very clearly different. But in the chapter, you also kind of do a very convincing job of explaining how platforms have kind of totally demolished or dismantled the concept of institutions traditionally as we knew them and the purpose that they served. So I'm really curious, like, what might a post-platform institution, like in the traditional sense that you talk about, maybe one that is, let's say, immune to the dismantling incentives of platforms, what might that look like?

1:00:43Can the toothpaste of institutions be put back into the tube at this point? Yeah, that is a central question of the book. And I don't have any certain answer, but I think my best answer in terms of making this book more of like a how-to, I would say comes down to the fundamental idea that I think institutions have to get better at understanding when the technology or the infrastructure that they are adopting or using for convenience or improvement in some sort of delivery of their mission ends up confronting or contradicting that mission, right? So there's hundreds of examples you could go to both in the past and in the future.

1:01:21But I would offer that. I think that's really the core thing. And then, yeah, just sort of the idea that you have a mission that transcends the desire or need to grow and scale. That, I think, is a pretty good membrane or, I guess, protection against collapsing of everything into a platform. But can something like that survive or exist? Yeah, no. Like if it's not trying to do that, like, yeah. Yeah, no, I think, well, that's the thing. It's like, I hear your point, but like, I would just push back and say. Please push back, yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. But just like constructively push back and be like, why do we think that can't survive, right?

1:01:58Like I thought about that a lot in the book. Like I thought about like, oh, I don't have any amazing opportunities or amazing examples to show yet. It's because I feel like that political reality hasn't even been born yet. I feel like we should think, why are we so compelled to think that this won't survive, right? Like when you start a magazine, why do you have to start it on Substack? What is it about your audience or the thing you're doing that can't create this? And I think the real answer, 98 % of it is like the popular imagination, right? Like what we value and how we think about consuming things.

1:02:29Is there a world in which we just kind of stop saying, yeah, I'm going to put down Spotify and I'm going to put an album on or I'm going to, and again, it doesn't have to be Luddite, right? I'm just saying, I think it's more about the political imagination. It's just fundamentally lacking, right? That's a great response. Yes, I think. And that's a great place to start. And you also talk a little bit in the book about just the idea of government funded institutions, right? Like the Josh Sidarella post office idea. Yeah. So I think I think another thing is, I'd say another concrete piece might be how it's funded.

1:02:59Right. So clearly, our current way that software is funded is obviously broken. And there's been a lot of people who have been really articulate and actually trying to experiment with different ways. I hate to say this, but it does kind of feel like a lot of our problems would be answered in this specific example or in this specific kind of thought experiment of, you know, thinking about other times where something that should not be privately submitted to the market, you know, probably the best answer is some sort of like public option, right? I don't think we should, you know, take that off the table, right?

1:03:29sort of like public options for various digital infrastructure should be thought of as like serious ideas, as cringe as they might be even to my ears. You know, when you do that thought experiment, it kind of like forces you to, like I was saying before, like unthink all of the reasons why that is so objectionable to you, right? If you kind of go back to like, quote unquote, not to use like a Silicon Valley mean, but if you go back to like first principles, like, okay, like what is the best steward for this? What is the best vehicle for this thing? And then, you know, that leads you to more constructive answers about what the future of institution looks like then.

1:04:01Oh, what platform should we build this on? Or like, will blockchain fix this? Something I also thought about is like all of this change that this very overwhelming amount and disturbing amount of change that is happening in just a few weeks of Trump taking power. I don't want to say there's a silver lining, but one thing it has maybe shown me or showing people is that like bold change is possible or like he like he is making big and bold changes and we don't agree with them. But it kind of I don't know, it makes me think that like maybe in the future, people from the other side of the aisle could be thinking on that kind of scale themselves, like seeing everything that Trump has done in just a few weeks.

1:04:43Right. And then you think about, like, is something like universal health care possible? And we've been saying for so long, oh, no, it would never be possible in America. But it's like, is that really true? Like someone could just decide to do it. We could just do it. Yeah. The missing thing is the popular mandate. I mean, that's why Trump's doing this. He probably would have done it even if he lost. But to, you know, at least in good faith, think about it. He believes he has a mandate. He did win handily, and I think he was a vehicle for dissatisfaction. So he's just acting on that. I completely agree.

1:05:18I think that, not to make it about the two-party system, but yeah, you do wonder why this hadn't happened in other periods. I think of Obama and the very watered-down version of the Affordable Care Act. As great as it was, was it actually what his voters wanted? No. So yeah, there is 100 % a positive way to think about this is if you have the political will, If you have the widespread support of something, then it's actually quite simple to implement some of this stuff from a political perspective. It doesn't have to be as watered down as we've been kind of used to. And that's why so many people dropped out of politics and ended up becoming MAGA people, because they're just sort of so disillusioned with the process because there hasn't really been that kind of bold change for a few generations, in my opinion.

1:06:00I think you're absolutely right. Like the biggest takeaway people should have is we do need to change the cultural imagination and shed this mentality that I think has really been like baked into us via like Instagram like activism, you know, of like, we shouldn't just like assume that this is how it is because we have like information saturation fatigue and algorithms are inclined to show us things that we don't like versus what we do like, right? And that fucks with our brains. I also like I feel like I've here in LA like in the aftermath of these like horrible devastating wildfires I've also seen and felt that a little bit I was talking to Emily about this yesterday actually like I'm just bringing this up as like sort of another example of that mentality change is I'm seeing a lot of people using the internet for good right now and wielding technology for good in terms of like how fast I've seen countless mutual aid spreadsheets and like GoFundMe spreadsheets like get their goals met like within like like 24 hours and how fast community resource guides have been put together, like thanks to, you know, digital tools and digital community organizing.

1:07:05And there's this app called Watch Duty. It's like the biggest thing here, but I don't, I'm not assuming you guys have necessarily heard of it, that it's a volunteer run app that just sources real-time fire evacuation, air quality, like burn info in real time and sends you alerts. And the app developers, It got downloaded something like 2 million times in like one week when the fires were happening. And the organizers are like, we're never going to sell this. We're not looking for investors. We don't collect information or anything. Like this is just a piece of technology that we're using to fill a need and for good.

1:07:41And that's all it's ever going to be. And it's stuff like that that makes me be like, there's another way and it can happen. And we're seeing it happen. Like we can do this. We're already doing it. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a perfect example. And like you said, that is created by an overwhelming sense of a need and a purpose that just kind of like blocks out all the other BS. So, yeah, that's a great example. And it's like that easy. It just all it just takes is like an app developer being like, no, this is fine the way it is. It ain't broke. Let's not fix it. We don't need to grow it. The service is met.

1:08:09And that that's what we were hoping technology would be used for all along. Right. Yeah. And there's so many people in tech just like that. Those people included. Right. I would say that's the prevailing mentality in even Silicon Valley. Right. and people that work in tech and the larger world. So it begs the question, why isn't that being unlocked in some larger way? Because we need to change the culture of imagination. Yeah, pretty much, I guess. All right, Mike Pepe, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and for writing this book and sharing it with us. Yeah, thank you both.

1:08:41This was great.

1:08:47This episode of The Culture Journalist was produced and edited by Emily Friedlander and me, Andrea Dominic. Our theme music is by Mark Donica. To check out more, head to our Substack. That's theculturejournalist.substack.com. And if you like what you're hearing, leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts or share us with friends to help support independent journalism.

1:09:19Thank you.