Silicon Valley has a solution for everything, but who do its ideas really serve? Every Thursday, Paris Marx is joined by a new guest to critically examine the tech industry, its thought leaders, and the worldview it spreads. They challenge the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that separating tech from politics has consequences for us all, especially the most vulnerable. But if tech won't save us, what will? This podcast isn't simply about tearing tech down; it also presents radical ideas for tech designed for human flourishing instead of surveillance, acquisitions, or to boost stock prices. A better world is possible, and so is better technology.
Data Center Opposition is Uniting Communities w/ Saul Levin
As tech companies race to build hyperscale data centers, communities are coming together to push back. Saul Levin joins Paris Marx to discuss how rising opposition to data center construction is uniting people across party lines and prompting broader conversations around what infrastructure people want instead.
Saul Levin is community organizer and host of The Hum.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Kyla Hewson.
Also mentioned in this episode:
- You can now pre-order Paris’s new book, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires.
- Saul wrote a piece with Astra Taylor about the bigger picture of data center organizing.
- The Seminole Nation in Oklahoma passed a ban on AI data centers on their lands.
- Sam Altman and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer posing together at the site of a new data center drew wide criticism.