We Interviewed a Puppet and It Made A Lot of Sense

0:04Manish:From Wired, this is The Big Interview, where we get to know the people beyond the headlines in conversations that explore the intersection of technology, power, and culture. I'm Anisha Krishnan, Wired's Senior Culture Editor, filling in this week for Katie Drummond. Today we have something a little unconventional in store for you. And to set the scene for those of you listening, I'm going to describe my next guest, who is, well, a puppet. And he goes by the name Gowanus. He's sort of bluish gray. His body is blob-like. He's got sock arms and eyes that appear to be made out of bottle caps. He's the media representative for the human organizers of the Summer of Ludd.

0:47Manish:This was a tech-free multi-day festival with activities like meditation, musical performances, and plays designed to bring people together without all the doom scrolling and social media posting. The festival comes at a time when attitudes around social media are changing. A Pew research study found that about half of teens surveyed in 2024 felt that social media had a mostly negative impact on their age group. And now I want to welcome Gowanus to our studios. We're speaking just a few days after the Summer of Lead Festival wrapped up. Gowanus, thank you for joining me. Hi, thank you so much for having me.

1:23It's a pleasure.

1:24Manish:So I'm going to jump right in and ask, why are you a puppet? Oh, that is a phenomenal question. Well, you know, we live in a hyper-digitized age, right? And the original Luddites were completely anonymous. When they were going around in the 1800s, you know, organizing people, fighting automation, they sought anonymity because they were facing against the oppression of the crown, of local militias, things like that. And so in the spirit of retaining anonymity and not creating sort of movement figureheads and things like that, we made a puppet, a media puppet. And that's me. Hi, I'm Gowanus. Nice to meet everybody.

2:04Thanks for having me.

2:05Manish:So you brought a handwritten contract for me today. Yes. Can you tell me what it says? It's essentially an ask for you and Wired Studios to not make any short form content of this interview. We want people to pay attention and actually commit time to watching the whole interview. You know, we don't want clicks and likes and scrolls past and things like that. So that's essentially it. You know, no TikTok reels, no YouTube shorts, things like that. I mean, I'm with you on wanting to encourage people to get into long form, but at the same time, that is how we promote the show. And so it's like, are you against us sort of promoting it on any form of social media?

2:49Manish:Yeah. Definitely not. Right. Because we want to reach people, everybody. Right. Most most people spend a lot of their time on social media. And the people who, you know, particularly need to hear this message often are chronically online. And that's totally OK. And we want to meet them where they are. But there is a practice. Right. Of the Luddite movement of, you know, really taking time and and giving your attention to things. Right. If you're going to engage with something, not like scrolling past it, being like, oh, this is a little YouTube short, right? I'll look at it and then shoop, it's gone into the ether.

3:23Shoop, next thing, next thing, a frog eating a chicken nugget, whatever. Shoop, right? So we're trying to engage people and pull them into, okay, actually, yeah, let's sit down for this 30, 40 minutes and hear the entirety of our critique and engage people in that.

3:38Manish:You've sort of already referenced this, but I feel like most people hear Luddite and they think of people who are against tech or afraid of tech. But actually, it dates back to the Industrial Revolution with English workers who are, you know, protesting exploitative working conditions. Yes. So in modern times, you know, sometimes calling someone a Luddite is kind of an insult. Right. Do you think that's still the case? You know, this is a very interesting question because you're right. It's a totally pejorative term. A Luddite is somebody who's bad at technology often, doesn't know how to move files around on their MacBook or things like that, or someone who's seen as anti-tech.

4:19It's almost like saying caveman. And one thing that we really found coming out of the summer of Ludd is that people started to have a new framework and a new understanding of, okay, what does it mean to be a modern Luddite? And we really believe that to be a modern Luddite is to have a deeper critique of technology that's really been lost. A lot of what's broadly accepted is technology equals progress, sort of by any means necessary. right the sort of founding mantra of silicon valley was move fast and break things right like no matter what we make the technology will be the progress and that will forward society yada yada and i think people are really waking up to the fact that actually a lot of this tech is sort of extractive you know is sort of taking away natural resources like with data centers it's actually not necessarily needed right in terms of social media like the whole billing of social media was, okay, let's be more connected on a global scale, right?

5:23And what we're seeing more and more is actually mass loneliness, atomization, things that just make Gowanus so depressed. But, sorry, coming back to the word Luddite, a critique of technology, right? A look at technology that is not coming from a stance of neutrality. Every technology is progressive, every technology is sort of apolitical, which is something that, of course, you know, Wired does a lot is investigates all of these technologies and who do they actually serve? Do they serve people? Do they serve Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, big tech oligarchs?

6:01Manish:Are you finding that the people who are sort of joining this movement are people who are giving up tech or is it a lot of people who never embraced tech to begin with? I would say it's a total mix, you know. tech is so ingrained in so many people's lives. And we also had people come to the Summer of Ludd who have never had a phone or have never been online in like 20 years. So yeah, it's a real mix, you know, and there's a sort of a range of ways to be a Luddite, right? There's no sort of one size fits all. A lot of the reporting really likes to hamper in on the, okay, Gen Z, we're getting flip phones, you know, And it's kind of a consumer-based narrative, right?

6:46Like, oh, we're changing our consumer habits. But what we've shown with the Summer of Ludd is actually what we're doing is creating in-person community. We're bringing people back into public space. And it goes beyond the current idea, which is really about digital detox. I'm going to pare down my personal relationship to the internet, to my phone, to social media, to whatever it is. And the way that we do this is we do a lot of events communally, right? So it's like we have something called Delete Day where we acknowledge like, okay, getting off Instagram, getting off Hinge, getting off, you know, whatever it may be, whatever app is ailing you, it's actually hard to do.

7:31Like there's a certain reliance that we all have on these things. And the best way to do that is to do them with a group of people, right? And to actually sort of commit to, okay, we're all going to sit in a circle. We're each going to delete an app off of someone else's phone and do it together, right? And learn about, okay, why is Instagram extractive? Or why is Hinge changing sort of the nature of dating and making more transactional? Or whatever the app may be. What's the deal with Spotify not paying artists a living wage? You know, and that's really our nature, right? It's less of a digital detox individualist thing and more of a, okay, let's bring people together.

8:09Let's do it together because it is actually something that's extremely hard to do.

8:13Manish:So I did pick up one of your Summer of Blood guides. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about the rise of tech oligarchs, this massive concentration of power and wealth. Are there like basic tenets to your movement? Yeah. sort of the most core ethos actually does come from those 1800s textile worker, original Luddites that we were talking about. And what they wrote is, we are against machines harmful to commonality that tears unduly at the social fabric, which is kind of like, you know, an old timey, complicated way of saying, We are against machines which accelerate wealth inequality, tear apart communities, atomize people, right?

9:04And so that's kind of our core thing. Against machines harmful to commonality. And that expresses itself in many different ways. You brought up the statistic about young people feeling affected by social media and actually there being a trend of people moving away from social media. Similarly, with AI and automation coming for not only working class jobs, but also like white collar jobs, you know, like entry level coders and things like that, they're essentially automating themselves constantly by training AI tools. So everybody is affected by this new wave of automation. And all of these, whether it be a labor issue, whether it be a social issue, whether it be an environmental issue, we see them as all tearing at the social fabric, taking away commonality from society and turning us into more atomized individuals.

9:58Manish:Is it more about moving away from sort of big tech tools? Yes, totally. Or is it like moving away from all tech writ large? Big tech, big tech, you know. And thank you for bringing that up because that is a distinction that is hard for people to quantify, you know what I'm saying, and hard for people to understand immediately because we like tech that serves people, you know, and we actually create tech that serves people. There's this event during the Summer of Blood called, What Are You Doing Tonight? How to Create Your Own Events Calendar, right? And we saw that there was a real need because of the inshittification or slopification of social media, right?

10:41It's actually hard to find events. It's hard to go on Instagram and find something to do with your weekend, right? find a book reading or a, you know, live music or whatever it is, something to actually get you out of the house, get you talking to strangers, because there's so much slop. Like, you literally have to wade through, like, a thousand videos of cats and pigeons that are AI, and they're, like, riding on each other's backs and, like, nipping at each other and whatever. You know, it's just like, what? Like, what am I looking at? So we brought together a bunch of people who run newsletters, newsletters who work on RSS feeds, who do sort of like alternative tech things.

11:24And we brought them all together and had them teach other people how to create their own events calendars, or just generally get their information flows away from these big tech platforms. We've seen this thing happen where so many communities, right, community spaces, churches, unions, you know, it doesn't matter, whatever it is, are put in the box of having to have all of their information on Instagram because everyone's on Instagram. And that can often like also degrade the content of what they're talking about because it turns it into like Instagram content, right? And they start molding their content to fit the algorithm.

12:07But you actually don't face this problem if you have your own newsletter or your own alternative infrastructure that you own and you can operate yourselves with your community that, okay, gets people to events, gets people to meetings, whatever it is, gives people resources, right? And so we're actually really big on creating technology, which is kind of contradictory.

12:32Manish:Was there also a workshop teaching people how to flirt IRL? Yes. Because that is... Two. There was two workshops. See, that's like a dying art. I can tell you from when I was single. So, I mean, do you have any personal tips on how to do that? Yes. Well, it's funny because the sort of actual thesis of the workshop was called Luddite Riz. The thesis of Luddite Riz was actually less how to flirt and more how to get rejected. How to actually go up to someone you have a crush on, be like, hey, I have a crush on you. like, it's okay if it's not going to work out, but I wanted to express this to you to see if you felt the same way.

13:11And then boom, rejection, right? And how to handle that feeling.

13:16Manish:Why is that important in the age of dating apps? Because dating apps have totally transactionalized the experience of falling in love. We swipe, swipe, yes, this person, no, this person. And it kind of like almost doesn't matter if we get rejected because there's always like a bajillion more fish. right, with a bajillion more like photos of themselves and little cutesy, whatever, taglines and stuff like that. What we find is important is retraining our social muscle away from that transactionalized experience of like, I like you, I don't like you, black and white sort of thinking about how dating works, how socializing in general works, right?

13:58We as a sort of modern, technologically entrenched civilization have lost a lot of the actual nuance of interaction, right? Which is like reading body language, dealing with conflict, dealing with rejection, dealing with intense feelings of love, you know, and now it's all in Hinge.

14:21Manish:The festival also had an evidence collection box where people could, I guess, write down how big tech had negatively impacted their lives. Were there any big takeaways from that? Oh my gosh, so many. Thank you for bringing this up. The evidence box was for a protest we had on the 4th of July, which is called SHIT Phone. It's an acronym. It stands for scathing hatred of information technology and the passionate hemorrhaging of our neoliberal experiences. And it's a protest where we all wear gnome hats and we put different technologies on trial. And the evidence we were collecting for the Amazon Prime drone, the Meta Ray-Bans sunglasses, and it's like a big phone with chat GBT on it, essentially.

15:16And one of the interesting pieces of evidence that people got on soapboxes and shared was a young person was talking about how their mom loves ChatGBT. And as we know, ChatGBT is like very sycophantic. It'll just tell you whatever you want to hear. And this young person just got a new bunny. And their mom looked up, can bunnies eat mushrooms on ChatGBT? And ChatGBT said, yes, of course. I love you so much. Yes, bunnies can eat anything, right? and they fed mushrooms to the bunny and the bunny got extremely sick and almost died.

15:54Manish:Wait, sorry, psychedelic mushrooms or normal? No, no, normal mushrooms, like shiitake mushrooms. Oh, wow. And they had to fact check their mom. And it was like a real point of contention within the family because it was like, are you really going to use these tools and endanger the bunny? So that was an interesting piece of evidence. Another one was a young person was talking about their parent working for Amazon and just having to endure these brutal conditions of, you know, 120 degree heat, no bathroom breaks, no water breaks, things like that. There was a young woman who was saying that, you know, the meta Ray-Bans, like, are really sort of a device for, like, creepy men on the subway to, like, record them without consent and post it online and things like that.

16:39For those of you who don't know, the meta Ray-Bans is sunglasses with a sneaky camera in them. And so we have like an amazing array of different piece of evidence for all of these different products.

16:51Manish:Why do you think there is such a backlash towards big tech from young people, considering that a lot of them have grown up with it? Yeah, there's definitely a push from young people, right? And we often get this narrative of like Gen Z, right? Gen Z's pushback, backlash against big tech, which I think is very valid, right? Because Gen Z is sort of right in the middle of like probably their first phone was a flip phone in like third grade. And then it moved to an iPhone in sixth or seventh grade. And they got like, wow, just like unfettered access to the Internet. The Internet was different than it used to be.

17:30We have a platform model where like addiction is the sort of like economic driver of all of these platforms. and so I think there's something really key in there of like a feeling of missing out on like genuine human experience because they were essentially like guinea pigs for Mark Zuckerberg I think that's a part of it but I also think that and the Summer of Blood is kind of proof of this because while yes there are a lot of people from Gen Z there there's also a lot of older people who are facing a similar kind of alienation, you know, a similar kind of loneliness or a similar feeling of like, what the hell's going on?

18:13We have all of the billionaires and now trillionaires, right, are all tech people, tech oligarchs. How did we get here? How do we get to the point where they're using their powers to like erode democracy essentially? And so there's a lot of crossover between the old, the young, the middle-aged and on a more sort of broader societal note, I think that there's been a real flattening actually of the distinctions between generations because what used to separate generations in large part was the technological advancements of the time. We had like 1920s, we had radio, 1980s, TV, you know, 1990s, like early internet, you know, things like that.

18:57And now we've had this like hyper, hyper, hyper acceleration where in the past 20 years we have the internet and the iPhone and it's essentially like hours and hours of every day of our lives. And so in some ways, the example of like an 18-year-old who is on TikTok chronically is not so much different than the boomer who is on Facebook having sort of a different content of, you know, maybe misinformation or politicization, but a similar feeling of like chronically online, constantly seeing slop, things like that.

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20:44Manish:There were a lot of college commencement speakers who, you know. Oh, yeah, I love that. I love that. They were like speaking positively about AI and students were booing them. What do you make of the disconnect there? You know, why did these speakers, in some cases they were tech leaders, keep bringing this up? Like, did they sort of overestimate how much people would be a fan of AI? God, I love those videos. I just want to say, I mean, just the mass booing is just amazing. And then the commencement speakers, like you see them rethink their whole speech in real time. They're like, no, I have to keep going.

21:18Manish:Yeah, they're surprised. Yeah. I think really what it is is, yeah, an underestimation of the pushback against AI, especially because all of those college students, right, like they're the new workforce. and they are really staring down the barrel of a chatbot right now. And they are not going to be happy or excited when, you know, their entry-level job in tech or finance or law or medicine or whatever it is actually gets automated away from them. So I think that's a large part specifically on the college issue of why there's so much pushback there. We hear a lot from the Sam Altmans of the world and even celebrities now.

22:03I hate them. I hate them.

22:04Manish:Sort of saying that, you know, AI is the next industrial revolution, that if you don't get on board, you're going to be left behind. What do you make of that narrative? Yeah. There is some merit to, okay, AI is a powerful tool. And it's a powerful tool because of its ability to merge data sets in a way that has never been seen before. Do I think it's the next industrial revolution necessarily? necessarily. I think what it is right now, especially in this AI bubble, is it's really actually not showing us its capabilities, right? And then oftentimes this AI doesn't really work. It's kind of like the bunny thing.

22:44It just tells you whatever you want to hear. So I think that makes it hard for me to conceptualize it as exactly like the new industrial revolution, because I don't actually see a value being generated from AI in the way that these big tech oligarchs like to push us. And they really play a game of like, it's going to take away the need for human labor to do things and then everybody is going to get paid, you know, either by the government or in some like libertarian fantasy, like we're all just going to have abundance because of AI. And we're really just not seeing that. right now.