WFMU: Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from February 1, 2021

Listener comments!
	🤖 6:00pm Handy Haversack: Mark and the Techyon Drives! I have been sifting the snow for nanobots, and results are inconclusive. But cold. Hello!
	🤖 6:02pm Bas NL: Hi Mark & Techtonithinkoids!
	🤖 6:02pm Handy Haversack: Hey, Bas!
	🤖 6:02pm Bas NL: Hi Handy!
	🤖 6:02pm PaulRobeson1920: At least a foot! Howd’y ya’ll!
	🤖 6:03pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hi Mark and Techtonrockers!
	🤖 6:03pm Webhamster Henry: Thinking hahahahahahhaha p.s. hahah
	6:04pm David in London: Evening Technoids. Howdy Mark.
	6:04pm HyperDose: @Handy You seem like the kind of guy that would own a metal detector. I'm that guy too.
	6:06pm Mark Hurst: Hi all - Handy, Bas, PaulRobeson, Tim, Webham! Thanks for joining in.
	🤖 6:06pm DjLorraine: Hi
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: Mark! Do you have a nice Techtonic reading list page with all the books on it linking to your interviews?
	6:06pm Mark Hurst: @DjLorraine hi!
	6:07pm Mark Hurst: @Webham not yet. Best is to go through wfmu archives, or techtonic.fm, and scroll through the show titles. (Each playlist has a link to the individual author's book)
	🤖 6:07pm Handy Haversack: Ha, you think too much of me HyperDose -- and of my storage capacity. I use the ol' siftin' pan and certain enchanted ancestral rods. As it is written. Greetings, David. Techhalberd at the ready!
	🤖 6:08pm Bas NL: Volume is a bit low on stream?
	6:08pm melinda: hi everyone!
	🤖 6:08pm Webhamster Henry: @Mark It can be done but:user experience friction.
	6:09pm David in London: Ol’ Grizzly Haversack filed his claim in 1896 and has been out with his battered sifting pan every day since.
	🤖 6:09pm Handy Haversack: It's a post holer. For digging holes. For posts
	6:10pm Mark Hurst: @melinda and @DiL sorry missed you before - hi & welcome!
	6:10pm Carmichael: Redd Foxx once said, "When opportunity was knocking on the front door, I was out back looking for 4 leaf clovers."
	🤖 6:10pm Bas NL: Yes! Better!
	6:11pm WR: Critical thinking? Silicon Valley? Hahahahahahaha.
	🤖 6:12pm Ken From Hyde Park: Hi, Mark and snowtechs. Passing time today watching car crash videos on the telly (like "The Ride" movie). One comment that caught my eye: "Not my dashcam, but I have access to the server where they're stored." Ahem!
	6:13pm David in London: Thanks Mark, I was dabbing a little tear from my eye.
	🤖 6:14pm Handy Haversack: And like all neoliberal ideologies, it ignores the conditions of its development: land theft, totally unsustainable irrigation, the literal actual ground shaking it into the sea ...
	🤖 6:14pm PaulRobeson1920: The coast of California must be somewhere over here. Over here. I see all of Southeast Asia I can see El Salvador I hear the cries of children And the other songs of war.
	6:15pm Dean: For deeper background history, see AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674753402
	6:15pm Megaroni: Right on Techtonic for broadcasting while in a blizzard, thanks for your important work!
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: @Megaroni thank you, too, for being with us!
	6:15pm HyperDose: I hope Car Wash [1976] is on that list, Ken :) @David in London haha what a visual!
	6:16pm Mark Hurst: @Dean thanks, that looks interesting. If I remember right, Route 128 would have grown into Silicon Valley except for certain tax laws passed in Mass.
	6:16pm ?: yall see the story about the guy that dosed himself on accident, working on stereo components?
	🤖 6:17pm Webhamster Henry: There's a thing that's a little annoying in the unschooling world where going to college is a validation of unschooled learning.
	🤖 6:18pm tim from champaign (now washington): Wow! This is a great conversation. I was allowed in to college if I agreed to be on academic probation at Beer Bong U Midwest Does that have the same cache as dropping out of a prestigious school?
	🤖 6:18pm PaulRobeson1920: I wonder... they must know about NLP in the valley
	🤖 6:19pm PaulRobeson1920: “It’s Not failure, it’s feedback”
	🤖 6:20pm Handy Haversack: Inherited privilege turning into assumed merit is really they story of white America neatly summarized. And SV as the latest instantiation of a ruling class that thinks its power exists because of inherent right to rule. Sigh. Very. Little. Changes. Just the costumes.
	6:20pm Mark Hurst: @Handy hey, a hoodie isn't a costume.. it's authentic
	🤖 6:21pm Bas NL: It takes serious thinking to come up with credible fake news.
	6:21pm Dean: Anno writes, "The divergence of the Route 128 and Silicon Valley economies during the 1980s cannot be attributed to regional differentials in real estate costs, wages, or tax levels." (p. 109)
	6:21pm P-90: So freakin’ BORED with Ayn Rand, she was never anything but a dull bore...
	🤖 6:21pm Handy Haversack: I have been wearing this Google "Dogfooding" hoodie uninterrupted for twelve years, Mark, and I'm still stuck in this glorified hallway!
	6:22pm GC in Baltimore: My critique of your guest: he confuses the counterculture, which actually manifested in some truly subversive ways, with ‘counterculture as used in sales shtick’. He conflates ‘hippies’ with the caricature of hippies. I mean, the counterculture gave a huge boost to Feminism, Gay Liberation, the Anti Vietnam war effort, and solidarity with civil rights and human rights movements. A huge number of ‘ex hippies’ went into positive Service Work: public defenders, doctors at free clinics, progressive politics etcetera. I think way too much is made of silly slogans uttered by folks like Stewart Brand, etc. I think this tech narcissism is really pernicious libertarianism, and sure there was plenty of that in the 60s but much more so after that. Sorry but hippies and Ayn Rand are NOT fellow travelers. Has your guest ever heard of the New Keft?
	🤖 6:22pm Webhamster Henry: Now I Know: my lack of a hoodie - even a WFMU hoodie - is keeping me from being hired.
	6:22pm -Ken: Hi everybody. Damn! Cant believe i missed the first 20 minutes. Damnit. I blame the blizzard
	🤖 6:23pm Webhamster Henry: DON'T MISS -- THE TECHTONIC GIRLS!
	6:23pm Carmichael: I worked for Intel for 7 years. Employees were by and large brainwashed simpletons who thought they were doing God's work. School was considered a waste of time because you could be making money instead.
	6:23pm Mark Hurst: @Ken hi, welcome! The first 20 minutes were A-MAZING
	6:23pm Dean: Ayn Rand's Cher, Slavoj Žižek's Sonny https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/05/i-got-you-babe-as-read-by-ayn-rand-and-slavoj-zizek.html
	🤖 6:24pm PaulRobeson1920: And what did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
	6:24pm Listener Robert: Sorry, GC, but Ayn Rand and hippies often WERE fellow travelers as far as the hippies saw it, but not as Ayn Rand herself saw it. She was anti-draft and very feminist (representing in herself feminine creativity).
	6:24pm Dean: Best 20 minutes of radio I've ever heard. And I listen to a ton of radio.
	🤖 6:24pm Handy Haversack: Those first twenty minutes -- WHOA! They will NEVER let us play THAT on the radio again!
	6:24pm -Ken: Oh God. So it's a choice between Elon Musk and Paul Ryan? Lobotomized Roman Polanski versus Eddie Munster?! REALLY?
	6:25pm -Ken: Ayn Rand. Good God. WHat a Hypocrite Psycho
	6:26pm Mark Hurst: I've already asked Olivia to remove the first 20 minutes of this episode from the archives. No one must ever hear those 20 minutes again.
	🤖 6:26pm chresti: What's wrong with Eddie Munster?
	6:26pm -Ken: WHAT DID I MISS?
	🤖 6:26pm PaulRobeson1920: Hesse my friend. More my style
	6:26pm P-90: @Ken I can email you a précis of the first 20 minutes. Or, you could hit the archive...?
	6:27pm -Ken: @P90 please email me
	🤖 6:27pm tim from champaign (now washington): @ -Ken - scoff if you must but Elon Musk is a real life Lex Luther supervillain and Paul Ryan is a cheese eating retired cheese eater.
	6:27pm Mark Hurst: @P-90 DON'T TELL HIM, IT MUST NEVER BE REVEALED
	6:27pm bukowski.: I too use big words quite often in substitution for semantically equivalent words
	6:27pm Dean: "Creative destruction," clever.
	🤖 6:28pm PaulRobeson1920: I learned that war is not so bad I learned about the great ones we have had
	🤖 6:28pm chresti: Haha Tim.
	🤖 6:28pm PaulRobeson1920: We fought in Germany and in France And someday I might get my chance And that's what I learned in school today
	🤖 6:29pm chresti: Groomed for the battlefield.
	6:29pm Dean: Werner Sombart before Schumpeter?
	🤖 6:29pm Ken From Hyde Park: Congratulations to the contest winners in the first twenty minutes. The contest hotline is no longer open.
	🤖 6:29pm Handy Haversack: Omerta. We must never speak of those 20 minutes again. Given that "disruption" generally means "we can offer marginal savings if we make sure to never pay anyone," maybe we should work on reruption?
	6:30pm Dean: That's nice of you, KenFHP. I'm amazed that WFMU can afford the prizes.
	6:30pm adampsyche: an episode excoriating the gig economy would be nice
	6:30pm -Ken: Wow. Now I'm excited!
	6:30pm Mark Hurst: @Ken yes, everyone please stop contacting the hotline. The prizes have already been ordered
	🤖 6:31pm Webhamster Henry: The Plucky Billionaires are on your side!
	6:32pm Mark Hurst: In all seriousness - does anyone have a tech buzzword or cliche that you particularly dislike? I might read out some comments after the interview.
	🤖 6:32pm Handy Haversack: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
	🤖 6:32pm Webhamster Henry: Slavery is our business model.(pay them less than it costs to do your job)
	6:32pm WR: can we make this guys book required reading for everyone.
	🤖 6:32pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Mark and -Ken - as one of the contest winners, I'm so excited that I won Station Manager for a Day. -Ken - you are not going to regret offering Mark this prize!
	6:33pm Dean: Look, even the printing press wasn't that disruptive.
	6:33pm -Ken: Congrats to Shoshana Zuboff for her NYT Op-Ed that was hugely trafficked on not only the New Jersey Web, but ALSO the World Wide Web! Well deserved
	🤖 6:33pm PaulRobeson1920: Does the Author know of Smedley Butler’s writings?
	6:33pm headcleaner: actually this characterization of (pre-"disruption") taxis being run by humble individual owners... just isn't true. He's ignoring the whole phenomenon of medallion companies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion) that were, arguably, acting as cartels... and hindering the adoption of service-improving technologies (such as those introduced by Uber + Lyft).
	6:33pm Listener Robert: Did I miss something about some big outfit that's making laundromats obsolete? Or is that just a theoretic example?
	6:33pm David in London: Disrupters (yuk) completely foul of Chesterton’s Paradox of the Gate: “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
	6:34pm adampsyche: I mean can there be any worse word than "cloud"
	🤖 6:34pm Handy Haversack: Mark, I think just the total falsehood that anything -- teaching, learning, connection, communion, family, America, love, reading, life, health, growth, ANYthing -- is being freaking "ENABLED" except for profits at all costs. Well. I don't see commercials often, but when I saw some tech ones during the football playoffs, even my righteous ire started giving way to well-earned despair.
	6:34pm -Ken: True @headcleaner but this those medallion cartels affect small and mid-sized cities?
	6:35pm headcleaner: Don't get me wrong - I see his broader point (about the fetishization of the cult of "disruption", and the damage that it causes... especially to taxi owners). But still... he's definitely oversimplifying
	🤖 6:35pm Handy Haversack: I learned "fail better" in terms of writing freaking poetry. I think that and baseball are as far as you can stretch it.
	🤖 6:36pm Webhamster Henry: Succeed Worse!
	6:36pm headcleaner: @Ken - probably not as much as they do in large cities, they do seem to be present in some form virtually everywhere.
	🤖 6:37pm Webhamster Henry: He's not talking about the lousy ways people measure success.
	6:37pm headcleaner: Again, I don't buy into the Uber/Lyft demonization of medallion companies. But they were kind of "in the way" of the service improvements that U/L were able to bring into being at an arguably much faster pace (albeit with plenty of collateral damage).
	6:38pm -Ken: @headcleaner makes sense - taxi medallions are like the original bitcoin commodity
	🤖 6:39pm herb.nyc: Aside- nbc national news is talking about spacex. There's Elon Musk, so sexy!
	🤖 6:39pm Handy Haversack: Thought those were tulips, @-Ken. "Fail better" means success is impossible and that the human condition is determined by such. It does NOT mean "be more efficient at exploitation."
	6:39pm Dean: That's b.s. Options trading is totally accessible. Selling options incurs a huge risk, but buying, no.
	6:40pm P-90: Now I feel like maybe I’ve missed out because I’ve never been “hopped up on Soylent and caffeine pills”
	🤖 6:40pm Handy Haversack: (To be clear: those two statements in my last post were unrelated!)
	6:40pm Mark Hurst: @Dean his point is that novice traders can do lots of self-damage on Robinhood - and he's accurate on that point
	6:40pm melinda: @P-90 me neither! we must be squares.
	6:40pm Mark Hurst: @Handy all I saw you write is "success is impossible"... bummer!
	6:41pm headcleaner: That said I'm delighted with our guest's insights + articulateness overall. Clearly, this author of books with titles like "Zwillingshafte Gebärden: Zur kulturellen Wahrnehmung des vierhändigen Klavierspiels im neunzehnten Jahrhundert" is a force to be reckoned with
	6:42pm Dean: Perhaps that's his point, but arguably buying equities is riskier than buying options, because the initial outlay is higher.
	🤖 6:42pm Handy Haversack: Just means it's time to wash that hoodie, Mark!
	6:42pm P-90: Wow just where do I meet these “young women of color with Faust on their minds”?
	6:42pm adampsyche: hahaha
	🤖 6:42pm Bas NL: Nowadays it's 'Vorsprung durch Technik'.
	6:43pm adampsyche: what's the German word for "I was young and needed the money"
	6:43pm headcleaner: @P-90 - at the next Faust gig at Monty Hall, of course!
	6:44pm Carmichael: I was just following orders.
	6:45pm Dean: Daub's dissertation at Penn '08 is Uncivil unions: The metaphysics of marriage in early German Idealism and Jena Romanticism.
	6:45pm Dean: Speaking of Beckett, tomorrow is James Joyce's birthday.
	🤖 6:45pm tim from champaign (now washington): Despite my smart ass comments I really get so much out of this show.
	🤖 6:46pm PaulRobeson1920: The status of labor history, reflects the current status of the labor movement in America... 7 Dollars and 25 cents per hour. Marx Had a mechanism of historical Change but he got it wrong. the poor and uneducated can never constitute a revolutionary class
	6:46pm adampsyche: just someone else's computer
	🤖 6:47pm Folsom: has Mark talked about the IoT chastity cage that got hacked and people had to break out of it?
	6:47pm Listener Robert: ISTR they had medallions in Trenton held by mostly a single taxi company in that city (or maybe Mercer County).
	6:47pm Cris Lumbum: Creative Destruction , by Tyler Cowen
	6:47pm Dean: Good one. "Design thinking" makes me crazy.
	6:47pm P-90: Yeah, “design thinking” is a real stinker
	🤖 6:47pm herb.nyc: Required reading? But I have Richard Price's LUSH LIFE, and I dig it. (Just 10cents at thrift shop) FAIL BETTER is Samuel Beckett? I can ask a Beckett expert I sometimes see at Union Sq gmkt
	6:48pm David in London: Can I just make that even worse: “design thinking is baked in”!
	6:48pm adampsyche: IoT Chastity Cage! good band name
	6:48pm Big Kat: "So what if" tech burst and digital died forever...? Hangover? .........or Party Time??
	6:48pm HyperDose: The first 20 minutes shall never be spoken of....or else
	🤖 6:48pm Webhamster Henry: A place I worked at had a motto of "be your own CEO" - but when I tried to give myself some stock options...
	🤖 6:48pm tim from champaign (now washington): @herb.nyc - Lush Life is great!
	6:48pm watchpocket: I believe rms (Richard Stallman) was the originator of the phrase "The cloud is just someone else's computer."
	6:49pm Big Kat: . Tech is NOT net positive.
	6:49pm full_english_breakfast: "You think like a Bircher," Fallopian said. "Good guys and bad guys. You never get to any of the underlying truth. Sure he was against industrial capitalism. So are we. Didn't it lead, inevitably, to Marxism? Underneath, both are part of the same creeping horror." - The Crying of Lot 49
	6:49pm Cris Lumbum: As a web developer, would it be good or bad to make a list of all the book titles and author Mark has as guests??
	6:50pm adampsyche: anyone else have the browser extension that turns the word cloud to the word butt
	6:50pm Carmichael: Pynchon was a great author.
	🤖 6:50pm Handy Haversack: David, sounds like SOMEone needs an empathy break! Carmichael: ZING!
	6:50pm Dean: Please get Cliff Lynch on the show one day.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: @Cris it would be disruptive.
	6:51pm Carmichael: Or maybe Cliff Ritchie.
	6:53pm -Ken: Next week, Mark and I are going to discuss the WFMU Comment System. Among other things
	6:53pm Cris Lumbum: my privacy :o
	6:53pm Dean: Any chance you'll take down the comment system paywall? I'd love to participate.
	6:54pm P-90: Wait, there’s a “System”?
	6:54pm David in London: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, it’s the war room.
	6:54pm HyperDose: Can you also discuss the myth that is WMFU, Mount Hope, and Rockland County? #TheTruthIsOutThere
	6:54pm adampsyche: I say so without a shred of irony that I'd love to hear about the woof moo comment board system
	6:55pm Carmichael: OK, I'll guess: we pay by the letter?
	6:55pm HyperDose: @Dean The paywall is the least of your problems. Then you have to bribe Ajit Pai to get you in the fast lane, otherwise your comment will show up hours after the show has ended.
	6:55pm Mennlinn Rebarts: Apple vs Facebook makes me think of the slogan for Aliens vs. Predator: "Whoever wins, we both lose"
	6:55pm adampsyche: lol I was at the Macworld expo where the iPhone was debut and the Google CEO was on the stage
	6:56pm watchpocket: It would be great to be able to post images here, but there may be reasons (for all I know) why that already isn't in place.
	6:56pm WR: i think he's just fishing for 10B more from FB....
	6:56pm Dean: You're right, @HyperDose. My comment on Irwin's show a couple years ago still hasn't appeared. Really discouraging.
	6:56pm adampsyche: I remember trying to post emojis years ago and it didn't work
	🤖 6:56pm Handy Haversack: Let 'em have it, Mark! And thanks. Another absolute great one. Thanks so much. And thanks, Skeleteam! Be well, Techyon Drives!
	6:58pm David in London: Thanks Mark. Great show tonight.
	6:58pm Carmichael: Like this, Adam? 🕺
	6:58pm -Ken: @Hyperpose, I shall address that. Let me know any other topics anybody would like to see addressed, other than Gamestop
	6:58pm Dean: Attended a very interesting GameStop webinar today.
	🤖 6:58pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark, Olivia, Adrian!
	6:58pm adampsyche: Carmichael it used to not work, said no hrml allowed
	6:58pm Cris Lumbum: 😋
	6:58pm juan: Thank you so much for another illuminating show, Mark
	6:58pm Miss G: Look forward to show in archives! wow PaulRobeson1920 --> Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America Book by David Talbot (Smedley Butler)
	6:58pm -Ken: Seriously though. What happend in the first 20 minutes?
	6:58pm P-90: I love the idea that WMFU broadcasts from Mount Hope. Mount Hope sounds like such a hopeful place, somehow ...
	6:59pm adampsyche: glad to have emoji freedom now
	6:59pm WR: thank you Mark! Onward!
	6:59pm melinda: thanks Mark
	🤖 6:59pm PaulRobeson1920: Thanks Mark & Skeltons!
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone! Great chat this evening.
	🤖 6:59pm Handy Haversack: Walk with the robots. Talk with the robots ...
	7:00pm ?: im a pessimist so it sounds like hope is getting fucked but w/e
	7:00pm zopa: Hi Mark.
	🤖 7:02pm chresti: Thanks Mark!
	8:59pm Really William Swan: Gamera had a shell on his back like a turtle.

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from February 1, 2021

View Mark Hurst's profile

Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

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Upcoming events:

Mon. Dec 30th, 6pm - 7pm: Andrew Smith, author, "Devil in the Stack" (More info...)
Writer Andrew Smith decided to learn computer programming in his 50s. What happened next is captured in his book "Devil in the Stack: A Code Odyssey," and wide-ranging tour through computer history, neuroscience, and the friendliest programming language.

February 1, 2021: Adrian Daub, author, "What Tech Calls Thinking"

Listen to this show: Pop-up listen Pop-up player!

Tonight: Adrian Daub, author, "What Tech Calls Thinking"

Links:

• What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley, by Adrian Daub

• AdrianDaub.com (personal site)

• Prof. Adrian Daub (Stanford page)

• NYT review, by Virginia Heffernan (Oct 13, 2020)

News:

• Shoshana Zuboff in a hugely important NYT Op-Ed (Jan 31, 2021), "The Coup We Are Not Talking About": "We may have democracy, or we may have surveillance society, but we cannot have both... Make no mistake: This is the fight for the soul of our information civilization."

• In related news, Rabbi Emily Cohen points out (Jan 26): "660 people have gained 1.1 trillion in wealth since March. Meanwhile, millions of Americans have been asked to make do with unemployment + $1800 in COVID relief."

• On Facebook feuding with Apple (NYT, Jan 28) due to the new privacy "nutrition labels" (see WhatsApp vs Signal). My take: it's like watching Godzilla vs. Gamera. Short term, nice that Apple is making public the outrageous theft that Facebook has built its business on. But Apple presenting itself as the high-minded moral actor is laughable, given that so much of its profits come from surveillance money (see the annual ~$10B tribute from Google).

• On Gamestop: Wall Street on Parade (Jan 30, 2021) reports that one of the main stock promoters is (was?) a MassMutual employee... and as for "sticking it to the man" - BlackRock may have made over $2 billion on GameStop.

• Matt Stoller on GameStop (Jan 31, 2021): "The basic problem GameStop reveals in our economy is that we are increasingly putting our time, energy, capital and talent we could use to build fun or useful things into gambling or acquiring market power."

• David Dayen in the American Prospect (Jan 28) : "The run-up in GameStop is just the 'pump' of a pump-and-dump scheme, where hype pulls people into a stock before the rug gets pulled out. In fact, that's what hedge fund managers do all the time, making bets and using research to puff up a stock, then taking the profits off moving a stock, through force of will—theirs—rather than the inherent value of the company. The only real difference here is that ordinary investors are driving the train, and the hedge fund guys are getting run over."

• AOC (Jan 27) posts: "Gotta admit it's really something to see Wall Streeters with a long history of treating our economy as a casino complain about a message board of posters also treating the market as a casino"

• On the topic of "innovation"...

• "All the cool casino news websites have authors with GAN-generated profile pics these days," writes @conspirator0 in this thread.

- - -

PAST EPISODES: techtonic.fm lists recent Techtonic interviews and Little Slice of Tech Pie segments.

PODCAST: Subscribe to the Techtonic podcast

Artist	Track	Album	Approx. start time
Adrian Daub discusses his book "What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley"
Tomaš Dvořák	Game Boy Tune "Game Boy Tune" by "Tomaš Dvořák"
	Mark's intro "Mark's intro"
	Interview with Adrian Daub, part 1 "Interview with Adrian Daub, part 1"		0:03:29 (Pop-up)
	Interview with Adrian Daub, part 2 "Interview with Adrian Daub, part 2"		0:21:36 (Pop-up)
	Mark's comments "Mark's comments"		0:41:14 (Pop-up)
Negativland	Don't Don't Get Freaked Out	The World Will Decide	0:57:14 (Pop-up)

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Listener comments!
	🤖 6:00pm Handy Haversack: Mark and the Techyon Drives! I have been sifting the snow for nanobots, and results are inconclusive. But cold. Hello!
	🤖 6:02pm Bas NL: Hi Mark & Techtonithinkoids!
	🤖 6:02pm Handy Haversack: Hey, Bas!
	🤖 6:02pm Bas NL: Hi Handy!
	🤖 6:02pm PaulRobeson1920: At least a foot! Howd’y ya’ll!
	🤖 6:03pm tim from champaign (now washington): Hi Mark and Techtonrockers!
	🤖 6:03pm Webhamster Henry: Thinking hahahahahahhaha p.s. hahah
	6:04pm David in London: Evening Technoids. Howdy Mark.
	6:04pm HyperDose: @Handy You seem like the kind of guy that would own a metal detector. I'm that guy too.
	6:06pm Mark Hurst: Hi all - Handy, Bas, PaulRobeson, Tim, Webham! Thanks for joining in.
	🤖 6:06pm DjLorraine: Hi
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: Mark! Do you have a nice Techtonic reading list page with all the books on it linking to your interviews?
	6:06pm Mark Hurst: @DjLorraine hi!
	6:07pm Mark Hurst: @Webham not yet. Best is to go through wfmu archives, or techtonic.fm, and scroll through the show titles. (Each playlist has a link to the individual author's book)
	🤖 6:07pm Handy Haversack: Ha, you think too much of me HyperDose -- and of my storage capacity. I use the ol' siftin' pan and certain enchanted ancestral rods. As it is written. Greetings, David. Techhalberd at the ready!
	🤖 6:08pm Bas NL: Volume is a bit low on stream?
	6:08pm melinda: hi everyone!
	🤖 6:08pm Webhamster Henry: @Mark It can be done but:user experience friction.
	6:09pm David in London: Ol’ Grizzly Haversack filed his claim in 1896 and has been out with his battered sifting pan every day since.
	🤖 6:09pm Handy Haversack: It's a post holer. For digging holes. For posts
	6:10pm Mark Hurst: @melinda and @DiL sorry missed you before - hi & welcome!
	6:10pm Carmichael: Redd Foxx once said, "When opportunity was knocking on the front door, I was out back looking for 4 leaf clovers."
	🤖 6:10pm Bas NL: Yes! Better!
	6:11pm WR: Critical thinking? Silicon Valley? Hahahahahahaha.
	🤖 6:12pm Ken From Hyde Park: Hi, Mark and snowtechs. Passing time today watching car crash videos on the telly (like "The Ride" movie). One comment that caught my eye: "Not my dashcam, but I have access to the server where they're stored." Ahem!
	6:13pm David in London: Thanks Mark, I was dabbing a little tear from my eye.
	🤖 6:14pm Handy Haversack: And like all neoliberal ideologies, it ignores the conditions of its development: land theft, totally unsustainable irrigation, the literal actual ground shaking it into the sea ...
	🤖 6:14pm PaulRobeson1920: The coast of California must be somewhere over here. Over here. I see all of Southeast Asia I can see El Salvador I hear the cries of children And the other songs of war.
	6:15pm Dean: For deeper background history, see AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674753402
	6:15pm Megaroni: Right on Techtonic for broadcasting while in a blizzard, thanks for your important work!
	6:15pm Mark Hurst: @Megaroni thank you, too, for being with us!
	6:15pm HyperDose: I hope Car Wash [1976] is on that list, Ken :) @David in London haha what a visual!
	6:16pm Mark Hurst: @Dean thanks, that looks interesting. If I remember right, Route 128 would have grown into Silicon Valley except for certain tax laws passed in Mass.
	6:16pm ?: yall see the story about the guy that dosed himself on accident, working on stereo components?
	🤖 6:17pm Webhamster Henry: There's a thing that's a little annoying in the unschooling world where going to college is a validation of unschooled learning.
	🤖 6:18pm tim from champaign (now washington): Wow! This is a great conversation. I was allowed in to college if I agreed to be on academic probation at Beer Bong U Midwest Does that have the same cache as dropping out of a prestigious school?
	🤖 6:18pm PaulRobeson1920: I wonder... they must know about NLP in the valley
	🤖 6:19pm PaulRobeson1920: “It’s Not failure, it’s feedback”
	🤖 6:20pm Handy Haversack: Inherited privilege turning into assumed merit is really they story of white America neatly summarized. And SV as the latest instantiation of a ruling class that thinks its power exists because of inherent right to rule. Sigh. Very. Little. Changes. Just the costumes.
	6:20pm Mark Hurst: @Handy hey, a hoodie isn't a costume.. it's authentic
	🤖 6:21pm Bas NL: It takes serious thinking to come up with credible fake news.
	6:21pm Dean: Anno writes, "The divergence of the Route 128 and Silicon Valley economies during the 1980s cannot be attributed to regional differentials in real estate costs, wages, or tax levels." (p. 109)
	6:21pm P-90: So freakin’ BORED with Ayn Rand, she was never anything but a dull bore...
	🤖 6:21pm Handy Haversack: I have been wearing this Google "Dogfooding" hoodie uninterrupted for twelve years, Mark, and I'm still stuck in this glorified hallway!
	6:22pm GC in Baltimore: My critique of your guest: he confuses the counterculture, which actually manifested in some truly subversive ways, with ‘counterculture as used in sales shtick’. He conflates ‘hippies’ with the caricature of hippies. I mean, the counterculture gave a huge boost to Feminism, Gay Liberation, the Anti Vietnam war effort, and solidarity with civil rights and human rights movements. A huge number of ‘ex hippies’ went into positive Service Work: public defenders, doctors at free clinics, progressive politics etcetera. I think way too much is made of silly slogans uttered by folks like Stewart Brand, etc. I think this tech narcissism is really pernicious libertarianism, and sure there was plenty of that in the 60s but much more so after that. Sorry but hippies and Ayn Rand are NOT fellow travelers. Has your guest ever heard of the New Keft?
	🤖 6:22pm Webhamster Henry: Now I Know: my lack of a hoodie - even a WFMU hoodie - is keeping me from being hired.
	6:22pm -Ken: Hi everybody. Damn! Cant believe i missed the first 20 minutes. Damnit. I blame the blizzard
	🤖 6:23pm Webhamster Henry: DON'T MISS -- THE TECHTONIC GIRLS!
	6:23pm Carmichael: I worked for Intel for 7 years. Employees were by and large brainwashed simpletons who thought they were doing God's work. School was considered a waste of time because you could be making money instead.
	6:23pm Mark Hurst: @Ken hi, welcome! The first 20 minutes were A-MAZING
	6:23pm Dean: Ayn Rand's Cher, Slavoj Žižek's Sonny https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/05/i-got-you-babe-as-read-by-ayn-rand-and-slavoj-zizek.html
	🤖 6:24pm PaulRobeson1920: And what did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
	6:24pm Listener Robert: Sorry, GC, but Ayn Rand and hippies often WERE fellow travelers as far as the hippies saw it, but not as Ayn Rand herself saw it. She was anti-draft and very feminist (representing in herself feminine creativity).
	6:24pm Dean: Best 20 minutes of radio I've ever heard. And I listen to a ton of radio.
	🤖 6:24pm Handy Haversack: Those first twenty minutes -- WHOA! They will NEVER let us play THAT on the radio again!
	6:24pm -Ken: Oh God. So it's a choice between Elon Musk and Paul Ryan? Lobotomized Roman Polanski versus Eddie Munster?! REALLY?
	6:25pm -Ken: Ayn Rand. Good God. WHat a Hypocrite Psycho
	6:26pm Mark Hurst: I've already asked Olivia to remove the first 20 minutes of this episode from the archives. No one must ever hear those 20 minutes again.
	🤖 6:26pm chresti: What's wrong with Eddie Munster?
	6:26pm -Ken: WHAT DID I MISS?
	🤖 6:26pm PaulRobeson1920: Hesse my friend. More my style
	6:26pm P-90: @Ken I can email you a précis of the first 20 minutes. Or, you could hit the archive...?
	6:27pm -Ken: @P90 please email me
	🤖 6:27pm tim from champaign (now washington): @ -Ken - scoff if you must but Elon Musk is a real life Lex Luther supervillain and Paul Ryan is a cheese eating retired cheese eater.
	6:27pm Mark Hurst: @P-90 DON'T TELL HIM, IT MUST NEVER BE REVEALED
	6:27pm bukowski.: I too use big words quite often in substitution for semantically equivalent words
	6:27pm Dean: "Creative destruction," clever.
	🤖 6:28pm PaulRobeson1920: I learned that war is not so bad I learned about the great ones we have had
	🤖 6:28pm chresti: Haha Tim.
	🤖 6:28pm PaulRobeson1920: We fought in Germany and in France And someday I might get my chance And that's what I learned in school today
	🤖 6:29pm chresti: Groomed for the battlefield.
	6:29pm Dean: Werner Sombart before Schumpeter?
	🤖 6:29pm Ken From Hyde Park: Congratulations to the contest winners in the first twenty minutes. The contest hotline is no longer open.
	🤖 6:29pm Handy Haversack: Omerta. We must never speak of those 20 minutes again. Given that "disruption" generally means "we can offer marginal savings if we make sure to never pay anyone," maybe we should work on reruption?
	6:30pm Dean: That's nice of you, KenFHP. I'm amazed that WFMU can afford the prizes.
	6:30pm adampsyche: an episode excoriating the gig economy would be nice
	6:30pm -Ken: Wow. Now I'm excited!
	6:30pm Mark Hurst: @Ken yes, everyone please stop contacting the hotline. The prizes have already been ordered
	🤖 6:31pm Webhamster Henry: The Plucky Billionaires are on your side!
	6:32pm Mark Hurst: In all seriousness - does anyone have a tech buzzword or cliche that you particularly dislike? I might read out some comments after the interview.
	🤖 6:32pm Handy Haversack: “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
	🤖 6:32pm Webhamster Henry: Slavery is our business model.(pay them less than it costs to do your job)
	6:32pm WR: can we make this guys book required reading for everyone.
	🤖 6:32pm tim from champaign (now washington): @Mark and -Ken - as one of the contest winners, I'm so excited that I won Station Manager for a Day. -Ken - you are not going to regret offering Mark this prize!
	6:33pm Dean: Look, even the printing press wasn't that disruptive.
	6:33pm -Ken: Congrats to Shoshana Zuboff for her NYT Op-Ed that was hugely trafficked on not only the New Jersey Web, but ALSO the World Wide Web! Well deserved
	🤖 6:33pm PaulRobeson1920: Does the Author know of Smedley Butler’s writings?
	6:33pm headcleaner: actually this characterization of (pre-"disruption") taxis being run by humble individual owners... just isn't true. He's ignoring the whole phenomenon of medallion companies (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_medallion) that were, arguably, acting as cartels... and hindering the adoption of service-improving technologies (such as those introduced by Uber + Lyft).
	6:33pm Listener Robert: Did I miss something about some big outfit that's making laundromats obsolete? Or is that just a theoretic example?
	6:33pm David in London: Disrupters (yuk) completely foul of Chesterton’s Paradox of the Gate: “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
	6:34pm adampsyche: I mean can there be any worse word than "cloud"
	🤖 6:34pm Handy Haversack: Mark, I think just the total falsehood that anything -- teaching, learning, connection, communion, family, America, love, reading, life, health, growth, ANYthing -- is being freaking "ENABLED" except for profits at all costs. Well. I don't see commercials often, but when I saw some tech ones during the football playoffs, even my righteous ire started giving way to well-earned despair.
	6:34pm -Ken: True @headcleaner but this those medallion cartels affect small and mid-sized cities?
	6:35pm headcleaner: Don't get me wrong - I see his broader point (about the fetishization of the cult of "disruption", and the damage that it causes... especially to taxi owners). But still... he's definitely oversimplifying
	🤖 6:35pm Handy Haversack: I learned "fail better" in terms of writing freaking poetry. I think that and baseball are as far as you can stretch it.
	🤖 6:36pm Webhamster Henry: Succeed Worse!
	6:36pm headcleaner: @Ken - probably not as much as they do in large cities, they do seem to be present in some form virtually everywhere.
	🤖 6:37pm Webhamster Henry: He's not talking about the lousy ways people measure success.
	6:37pm headcleaner: Again, I don't buy into the Uber/Lyft demonization of medallion companies. But they were kind of "in the way" of the service improvements that U/L were able to bring into being at an arguably much faster pace (albeit with plenty of collateral damage).
	6:38pm -Ken: @headcleaner makes sense - taxi medallions are like the original bitcoin commodity
	🤖 6:39pm herb.nyc: Aside- nbc national news is talking about spacex. There's Elon Musk, so sexy!
	🤖 6:39pm Handy Haversack: Thought those were tulips, @-Ken. "Fail better" means success is impossible and that the human condition is determined by such. It does NOT mean "be more efficient at exploitation."
	6:39pm Dean: That's b.s. Options trading is totally accessible. Selling options incurs a huge risk, but buying, no.
	6:40pm P-90: Now I feel like maybe I’ve missed out because I’ve never been “hopped up on Soylent and caffeine pills”
	🤖 6:40pm Handy Haversack: (To be clear: those two statements in my last post were unrelated!)
	6:40pm Mark Hurst: @Dean his point is that novice traders can do lots of self-damage on Robinhood - and he's accurate on that point
	6:40pm melinda: @P-90 me neither! we must be squares.
	6:40pm Mark Hurst: @Handy all I saw you write is "success is impossible"... bummer!
	6:41pm headcleaner: That said I'm delighted with our guest's insights + articulateness overall. Clearly, this author of books with titles like "Zwillingshafte Gebärden: Zur kulturellen Wahrnehmung des vierhändigen Klavierspiels im neunzehnten Jahrhundert" is a force to be reckoned with
	6:42pm Dean: Perhaps that's his point, but arguably buying equities is riskier than buying options, because the initial outlay is higher.
	🤖 6:42pm Handy Haversack: Just means it's time to wash that hoodie, Mark!
	6:42pm P-90: Wow just where do I meet these “young women of color with Faust on their minds”?
	6:42pm adampsyche: hahaha
	🤖 6:42pm Bas NL: Nowadays it's 'Vorsprung durch Technik'.
	6:43pm adampsyche: what's the German word for "I was young and needed the money"
	6:43pm headcleaner: @P-90 - at the next Faust gig at Monty Hall, of course!
	6:44pm Carmichael: I was just following orders.
	6:45pm Dean: Daub's dissertation at Penn '08 is Uncivil unions: The metaphysics of marriage in early German Idealism and Jena Romanticism.
	6:45pm Dean: Speaking of Beckett, tomorrow is James Joyce's birthday.
	🤖 6:45pm tim from champaign (now washington): Despite my smart ass comments I really get so much out of this show.
	🤖 6:46pm PaulRobeson1920: The status of labor history, reflects the current status of the labor movement in America... 7 Dollars and 25 cents per hour. Marx Had a mechanism of historical Change but he got it wrong. the poor and uneducated can never constitute a revolutionary class
	6:46pm adampsyche: just someone else's computer
	🤖 6:47pm Folsom: has Mark talked about the IoT chastity cage that got hacked and people had to break out of it?
	6:47pm Listener Robert: ISTR they had medallions in Trenton held by mostly a single taxi company in that city (or maybe Mercer County).
	6:47pm Cris Lumbum: Creative Destruction , by Tyler Cowen
	6:47pm Dean: Good one. "Design thinking" makes me crazy.
	6:47pm P-90: Yeah, “design thinking” is a real stinker
	🤖 6:47pm herb.nyc: Required reading? But I have Richard Price's LUSH LIFE, and I dig it. (Just 10cents at thrift shop) FAIL BETTER is Samuel Beckett? I can ask a Beckett expert I sometimes see at Union Sq gmkt
	6:48pm David in London: Can I just make that even worse: “design thinking is baked in”!
	6:48pm adampsyche: IoT Chastity Cage! good band name
	6:48pm Big Kat: "So what if" tech burst and digital died forever...? Hangover? .........or Party Time??
	6:48pm HyperDose: The first 20 minutes shall never be spoken of....or else
	🤖 6:48pm Webhamster Henry: A place I worked at had a motto of "be your own CEO" - but when I tried to give myself some stock options...
	🤖 6:48pm tim from champaign (now washington): @herb.nyc - Lush Life is great!
	6:48pm watchpocket: I believe rms (Richard Stallman) was the originator of the phrase "The cloud is just someone else's computer."
	6:49pm Big Kat: . Tech is NOT net positive.
	6:49pm full_english_breakfast: "You think like a Bircher," Fallopian said. "Good guys and bad guys. You never get to any of the underlying truth. Sure he was against industrial capitalism. So are we. Didn't it lead, inevitably, to Marxism? Underneath, both are part of the same creeping horror." - The Crying of Lot 49
	6:49pm Cris Lumbum: As a web developer, would it be good or bad to make a list of all the book titles and author Mark has as guests??
	6:50pm adampsyche: anyone else have the browser extension that turns the word cloud to the word butt
	6:50pm Carmichael: Pynchon was a great author.
	🤖 6:50pm Handy Haversack: David, sounds like SOMEone needs an empathy break! Carmichael: ZING!
	6:50pm Dean: Please get Cliff Lynch on the show one day.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: @Cris it would be disruptive.
	6:51pm Carmichael: Or maybe Cliff Ritchie.
	6:53pm -Ken: Next week, Mark and I are going to discuss the WFMU Comment System. Among other things
	6:53pm Cris Lumbum: my privacy :o
	6:53pm Dean: Any chance you'll take down the comment system paywall? I'd love to participate.
	6:54pm P-90: Wait, there’s a “System”?
	6:54pm David in London: Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, it’s the war room.
	6:54pm HyperDose: Can you also discuss the myth that is WMFU, Mount Hope, and Rockland County? #TheTruthIsOutThere
	6:54pm adampsyche: I say so without a shred of irony that I'd love to hear about the woof moo comment board system
	6:55pm Carmichael: OK, I'll guess: we pay by the letter?
	6:55pm HyperDose: @Dean The paywall is the least of your problems. Then you have to bribe Ajit Pai to get you in the fast lane, otherwise your comment will show up hours after the show has ended.
	6:55pm Mennlinn Rebarts: Apple vs Facebook makes me think of the slogan for Aliens vs. Predator: "Whoever wins, we both lose"
	6:55pm adampsyche: lol I was at the Macworld expo where the iPhone was debut and the Google CEO was on the stage
	6:56pm watchpocket: It would be great to be able to post images here, but there may be reasons (for all I know) why that already isn't in place.
	6:56pm WR: i think he's just fishing for 10B more from FB....
	6:56pm Dean: You're right, @HyperDose. My comment on Irwin's show a couple years ago still hasn't appeared. Really discouraging.
	6:56pm adampsyche: I remember trying to post emojis years ago and it didn't work
	🤖 6:56pm Handy Haversack: Let 'em have it, Mark! And thanks. Another absolute great one. Thanks so much. And thanks, Skeleteam! Be well, Techyon Drives!
	6:58pm David in London: Thanks Mark. Great show tonight.
	6:58pm Carmichael: Like this, Adam? 🕺
	6:58pm -Ken: @Hyperpose, I shall address that. Let me know any other topics anybody would like to see addressed, other than Gamestop
	6:58pm Dean: Attended a very interesting GameStop webinar today.
	🤖 6:58pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark, Olivia, Adrian!
	6:58pm adampsyche: Carmichael it used to not work, said no hrml allowed
	6:58pm Cris Lumbum: 😋
	6:58pm juan: Thank you so much for another illuminating show, Mark
	6:58pm Miss G: Look forward to show in archives! wow PaulRobeson1920 --> Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America Book by David Talbot (Smedley Butler)
	6:58pm -Ken: Seriously though. What happend in the first 20 minutes?
	6:58pm P-90: I love the idea that WMFU broadcasts from Mount Hope. Mount Hope sounds like such a hopeful place, somehow ...
	6:59pm adampsyche: glad to have emoji freedom now
	6:59pm WR: thank you Mark! Onward!
	6:59pm melinda: thanks Mark
	🤖 6:59pm PaulRobeson1920: Thanks Mark & Skeltons!
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone! Great chat this evening.
	🤖 6:59pm Handy Haversack: Walk with the robots. Talk with the robots ...
	7:00pm ?: im a pessimist so it sounds like hope is getting fucked but w/e
	7:00pm zopa: Hi Mark.
	🤖 7:02pm chresti: Thanks Mark!
	8:59pm Really William Swan: Gamera had a shell on his back like a turtle.

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from February 1, 2021

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