Tim Wu

Tim Wu, Cory Doctorow, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much.

Good to be here.

So I just learned that you both went to elementary school together.

Is there anything about that school that would lead people to becoming sworn enemies of our tech overlords?

Well, we loved tech at the time.

I mean, we were early in on Apple IIs.

And frankly, that's where it all started in a way.

You know, both of our books have this kind of pining for a lost age.

And I think some of it is this early era of computing when we were just like so excited, so optimistic, everything was just going to be so amazing.

And that to me, a little bit was fifth grade or grade five, as we say, programming the Apple II.

When you're spending time on the internet, what feels bad to you about it?

I feel it's like a tool I cannot trust.

You know, I feel like the tools I like in my life, like a hammer, you know, I swing it, it does something predictable.

The internet seems like it's serving two masters.

You know, I search for something, I get a bunch of stuff I don't really want, and I don't really know what I'm getting.

I want to write like one email or check one thing, I end up in some strange rabbit hole

And like three hours go by and I don't know what happened.

So I feel like I'm constantly at risk of being manipulated or taken from.

And I don't trust the tools to do what they say they're going to do.