Roundup: Feeding the world to computers

Read to the end for a photo of the only kind of Waymo vehicle I approve of

Neo looking at humans in pods. Source: The Matrix/Warner Bros

I hope you liked Disconnect’s unofficial data center week! I started by publishing an interview with researcher Sebastián Lehuedé looking at opposition in Chile, then followed it up with some broader thoughts on why we need to reconsider how many data centers and how much computation we require to realize a better world. It’s my contention that it’s not nearly as much as major tech companies want us to believe.

To wrap it all up, I figured I’d provide some deeper thoughts for the newsletter’s paid subscribers on where this could all be going, taking a little science fiction inspiration as our tech overlords are often happy to do themselves.

Before we get to that though, I was on Trashfuture’s premium feed to chat about the Vision Pro this week and was quoted by Voxpot in Czechia. I’ll also be speaking in Auckland on February 18 about why tech won’t solve the climate crisis as part of an event put off by Tohatoha.

Finally, over on Tech Won’t Save Us I interviewed Nastasia Hadjadji about how France’s plan to become a “start-up nation” was used to justify a neoliberal assault on the public sector.

With all that said, have a great week!

— Paris