James Pogue

But he's actually written, as you may have seen, like he's written against the idea of techno-optimism. Because he thinks that technology has weakened us and degraded us. I think J.D. Vance is very much the kind of person who comes from that world. He's a little less strong on the kind of like tech skepticism stuff than some of the people you'll hear in this world.

But he's actually written, as you may have seen, like he's written against the idea of techno-optimism. Because he thinks that technology has weakened us and degraded us. I think J.D. Vance is very much the kind of person who comes from that world. He's a little less strong on the kind of like tech skepticism stuff than some of the people you'll hear in this world.

But just to give a really easy, good example. Basically, everybody in this kind of intellectual elite would kind of argue that the communications technologies that we have developed in the past few years are not really very beneficial to human life. And like, candidly, like, that's a kind of inarguable point.

But just to give a really easy, good example. Basically, everybody in this kind of intellectual elite would kind of argue that the communications technologies that we have developed in the past few years are not really very beneficial to human life. And like, candidly, like, that's a kind of inarguable point.

And this kind of like world we've built where everyone's addicted to their phones and everyone is... In this, you know, sort of what we might call a rent-seeking economy, where the incentive structures for a great number of American corporations that are, to some degree, our most powerful entities today are sort of built around this thing of getting you to pay money every month.

And this kind of like world we've built where everyone's addicted to their phones and everyone is... In this, you know, sort of what we might call a rent-seeking economy, where the incentive structures for a great number of American corporations that are, to some degree, our most powerful entities today are sort of built around this thing of getting you to pay money every month.

And so it's not so much that when you hear these kind of luminaries of this world, like Blake Masters, Pretty famously, when he was running for senator from Arizona, he recommended that people read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. And this created this kind of big scandal.

And so it's not so much that when you hear these kind of luminaries of this world, like Blake Masters, Pretty famously, when he was running for senator from Arizona, he recommended that people read Ted Kaczynski's manifesto. And this created this kind of big scandal.

But Blake's point was there's a lot to learn here about what tech has done to us and what what it has done to us on a personal level in terms of sort of.

But Blake's point was there's a lot to learn here about what tech has done to us and what what it has done to us on a personal level in terms of sort of.

enfeebling you know what they might call you know like enfeebling men enfeebling their power to do things in the world but also in the sense of kind of creating a feudal structure under which human agency is kind of withdrawn from a human who now can't really control the device that decides everything they do all day and so if i may be candid i actually find that critique quite compelling and i think you're right it does go back to a 70s leftism as in fact a lot of this thought does

enfeebling you know what they might call you know like enfeebling men enfeebling their power to do things in the world but also in the sense of kind of creating a feudal structure under which human agency is kind of withdrawn from a human who now can't really control the device that decides everything they do all day and so if i may be candid i actually find that critique quite compelling and i think you're right it does go back to a 70s leftism as in fact a lot of this thought does

Well, I mean, in so much as you and I, sort of like exponents here of the regime media, can be compelled and interested by this, you know, literal terrorist manifesto, like, it clearly was hitting on something that a lot of people came to feel, I would argue...

Well, I mean, in so much as you and I, sort of like exponents here of the regime media, can be compelled and interested by this, you know, literal terrorist manifesto, like, it clearly was hitting on something that a lot of people came to feel, I would argue...

You know, sort of post-2016 when our politics became consumed by these kind of like technological forces that were causing like waves of outrage and like divisions and hatreds within our society that seemed actually impossible to corral because of these like network forces that everyone was like completely addicted to.

You know, sort of post-2016 when our politics became consumed by these kind of like technological forces that were causing like waves of outrage and like divisions and hatreds within our society that seemed actually impossible to corral because of these like network forces that everyone was like completely addicted to.

And, you know, candidly, it's just not true, in my opinion, that this is just like politicos who are feeling like this. It's just, my mom is on Facebook, you know, like it's not, everybody is experiencing this. And I think it started to kick people into a gear where...

And, you know, candidly, it's just not true, in my opinion, that this is just like politicos who are feeling like this. It's just, my mom is on Facebook, you know, like it's not, everybody is experiencing this. And I think it started to kick people into a gear where...

It's a physically unpleasant way of going through life, like staring at a phone, your head hunched over, you're losing your eyesight because you're staring at this thing so close.

It's a physically unpleasant way of going through life, like staring at a phone, your head hunched over, you're losing your eyesight because you're staring at this thing so close.