Crazy Town
Crazy Town
Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History
Modern humans have a Stockholm Syndrome relationship to technology, which has kidnapped us while convincing us it has our best interests in mind. But when one looks back at the history of plastics or the current frenzy around AI, it isn't hard to see the insanity of doubling down on new technology to save us from previous technology. Find out what a person or society can actually do to develop a healthy, non-abusive relationship with technology, aside from joining an Amish community or going "full Kaczynski."
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Moriah McDonald reports on the big underestimates of Greenland ice loss in Inside Climate News.
- Typical article about how AI can solve climate change
- Another such article about the "magic" of AI
- And another -- sheesh (no wonder Jason was so upset)!
- Report on the future of petrochemicals from the International Energy Agency
- Kelly Oakes of the BBC asks, "What would happen if we stopped using plastic?"
- Website of The Ocean Cleanup
- Low Tech Magazine
- Low Technology Institute's 10-Mile Building Challenge
- Sulan Chen writes for UNDP, "A global treaty to end plastic pollution is in sight."
- BBC reporting on the EU's efforts to regulate AI
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford.
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Rob Dietz
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where the circular economy is turning used plastic diapers into Mountain Dew bottles.
Melody Allison
Hi, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in season six, we're exploring escape routes, pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher our escaping technologyism. Here's a quick warning. Sometimes this podcast uses swear words (LANGUAGE!). If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now, onto the show.
Jason Bradford
Guys, it is a beautiful day isn't it?
Rob Dietz
Sure is.
Jason Bradford
And this is gonna be a hard show. Because there's some just crazy stuff going on. Right?
Asher Miller
Sure is.
Jason Bradford
I'm gonna start off by acknowledging that I've been a little stressed out by climate news of late. Have any of you picked up on any of stuff going on?
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
Of course you have.
Rob Dietz
Climate? Is there something wrong with the climate?
Asher Miller
I think his thermostat s not working.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, well, it's beautiful day. So right here right now.
Asher Miller
Yeah, no, there's been some serious teeth chattering stuff.
Jason Bradford
What comes to mind?
Asher Miller
Well, let's see . . . We've hit two degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures, you know, for periods of time. It hasn't been consistent.
Rob Dietz
So that's the opposite of teeth chattering.
Asher Miller
Yes.
Jason Bradford
There we go.
Rob Dietz
What about the Amazon? See, I like Savanna habitat. You go to the Serengeti or something. But there's all this news of -- we're nearing that tipping point where the Amazon forest dies off.
Jason Bradford
I remember reading papers about this in the early 90s of people like stressing about this -- the hydrological cycle.
Asher Miller
Well, there's been a lot of work, good work, scary work, on climate tipping points. You're just talking about one Rob. And we've got a bunch of others. There's more than a dozen of them that have been documented in various states. And one that's actually getting a lot of attention recently because there's a paper about this warning, the AMOC. Do you guys know what that is?
Jason Bradford
Atlantic meridional oceanic circulation?
Asher Miller
Overturning circulation.
Jason Bradford
Overturning circulation. Got it.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. So that's basically the process in the oceans of currents carrying warm water up, you know, into the northern hemisphere, into like the North Atlantic. It's what keeps the UK from being a freezing hellscape. That's kind of an oxymoron.
Jason Bradford
All of Western Europe kind of relies on this because they're at a way higher northern latitude than we are in the United States.
Asher Miller
So people are talking about, "Hey, climate change, global warming, it could be good for us. We can start growing, you know, grapes in England." No, if this thing collapses, which, you know, the study that came out said basically we're on track for this to hit a tipping point and to collapse. If that happens, I think the last time that this happened, I think Europe, or the UK, was like 15 degrees Celsius colder.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, that's like Ice Age.
Asher Miller
Yeah, exactly.
Jason Bradford
So you have these frying tropics and Ice Age temperate zones happening at the same time. Now, the reason it would collapse is because of all the melting of Greenland. And so I recently read a paper -- I'm going to get into this a little bit -- Where apparently, they've underestimated how much ice is melted off Greenland by 20%. And this was reported by a Pulitzer Prize winning non-partisan reporting outfit, known as Inside Climate News. And this article was incredible because it was saying, revealing, this underestimate. But then it said, "The good news." there's literally a quote that says, "It also held good news about the technological advancements used to make such measurements." And so I'm reading this thing like what are they talking about?
Asher Miller
Good news?
Jason Bradford
All it was -- was that climatologists were kind of giddy that they had the new data analysis available through AI to like track this stuff and to have more accurate assessments of what's going on. I couldn't find any other good news.
Asher Miller
I guess that's good news.
Jason Bradford
There was nothing but horrific descriptions of the consequences of this ice loss. And I'm like, what exactly is the good news?
Rob Dietz
Hey, that's the balance, right? We got some bad news over here.
Asher Miller
When you're reporting, Jason, you always have to show both sides. This is just a 101 journalism.
Jason Bradford
And the climatologists like, bless his bless his little heart. He basically said, you know, "Okay, it's going to be really important for us to do carbon capture because this is gonna start rolling and in order to stop this process, we just got to start sucking in the carbon data." And of course I know that's just bullshit. That's not going to happen. So I couldn't find any good news.
Rob Dietz
Are you sure that the AI can't sequester the carbon?
Jason Bradford
Well, this is the irony of course. You know, the AI takes so much power to do this work, right? All this all this math is going into how much power it's gonna use. So, you know, we're going to chart our climate doom while spewing even more and more atmospheric carbon in doing so.
Rob Dietz
We need to ask the AI how much it's melting the Greenland ice sheet by trying to figure out how much Greenland ice sheet is melting?
Jason Bradford
Yes. That's the crazy making part of all of this. Now, but I want to point this out. I want to point out that the sense I got was this sort of like, this giddiness. That the article had this sort of irrational giddiness, this attachment to technology as some sort of automatic good. Both in its description of the AI and it's mentioned of carbon capture. Without really any understanding or the absurdity of what they were saying. And so this is what today's episode is about. It's about what we're calling technologyism. It's these belief systems, the infrastructure around technology. And then the belief systems, our culture and how it deals with it. The analogy I thought of immediately was, you guys are familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome?
Asher Miller
Yeah, I mean . . . I'm experiencing it right now.
Rob Dietz
It's where a kidnappee sort of falls into line with their kidnapper and starts cooperating and bonding.
Jason Bradford
Right. And it's almost like -- There's this famous case where there was bank robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. And these people were kept by the bank robbers for some days or weeks. I can't remember what. And they ended up testifying in court, like, "Go light on these guys. They were really nice to us." So it's this idea that the psychologist came in and said, when you are basically captured and beholden to something, even though it's threatening, you want to relate to it. You want to be nice to it. You want to try to make sure that it understands you. That it cares for you. And so there's this give and take that happened.
Rob Dietz
So technology has kidnapped us all and we're saying, "It's okay."
Jason Bradford
Yes, "We're friends. We really, we like you, even though we're hostage to it . And of course, the latest techno hero is this artificial intelligence. And so then I went into like a search for AI and climate change solutions. And of course, there's a zillion articles. And Google's in on this. Articles can be found. It's going to solve fusion, which of course is going to solve climate change, which is ridiculous. Advanced agriculture, so that we can still feed ourselves even when the shutdown happens of the current whatever. One thing after another. Environmental monitoring and adjustments of how the species can like adapt in ways that's going to help. All stupid. Everything was stupid.
Rob Dietz
It's almost like consumerism, if you buy one more thing, you'll be happy. If you put in one more piece of technology, it's going to fix it. Like the fusion thing. Look what we did when we got fossil fuel bonus. We've wiped out ecosystems everywhere. If we had fusion, what the hell would we wipe out then? The rest of the solar system?
Jason Bradford
And this is what kills me is that none of this does anything aside from increasing human ecological footprint, accelerating growth, extending overshoot, making overshoot even greater so the fall is even higher. And I have yet to see a single instance where anyone is proposing to use AI to manage what we need actually, which is this rapid, sustained, and as fair as possible contraction of the human enterprise without getting the Four Horsemen involved.
Rob Dietz
Isn't that open AI's new motto? Extending overshoot.
Asher Miller
It is interesting. Remember Google's old motto, right?
Jason Bradford
Yes, Break shit, or something.
Asher Miller
No, Don't be evil.
Rob Dietz
Don't be evil.
Jason Bradford
Who was Break shit?
Asher Miller
That was Facebook. I think that was Zuckerberg. But I think the Stockholm Syndrome thing is really on point because there are a lot of people warning sounding bells. Warning sounding bells?
Rob Dietz
Sounding warning bells?
Asher Miller
Ringing. Ringing!
Rob Dietz
There's some kind of alarm out there.
Jason Bradford
I think the warning is a siren.
Asher Miller
There's something corrupted in my brain.
Rob Dietz
You don't warn sirens. What are you guys talking about?
Jason Bradford
Warning sirens.
Rob Dietz
This episode is actually just being brought to you by AI versions of ourselves.
Asher Miller
I think it's got some glitches.
Jason Bradford
We re hallucinating right now like AI.
Asher Miller
Okay. Let me get back to the point. There are a lot of people sounding the alarm. They are worried about the risks of AI, including all the people that are full on propelling us into the AI age, right. But when you see stories, or you have people who are like, "Oh, but we're using it for this really helpful purpose, right? Yes, it presents an existential threat to humanity, but it's actually helping us better understand the existential threat of climate change, right? And that's exactly like your kidnapping, you know, basically not letting you leave, holding you hostage. But they give you a nice cup of coffee. Right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah they'll feed you.
Asher Miller
It's exactly like that.
Jason Bradford
You can use the bathroom. Go ahead.
Asher Miller
They're so nice.
Jason Bradford
You don't have to sit in your own waste. They're so nice.
Asher Miller
Okay, so that's, I guess, an expression of technologies and that sort of belief set. But you know, let's talk about some of our favorite examples of --
Jason Bradford
This is the fun part of the show.
Asher Miller
-- Of technology from kinda our own lives.
Jason Bradford
Let's lighten it up. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
"Favorite." Firmly in air quotes here, right?
Asher Miller
Well, I'm going to share a story from a recent-ish storm where we had snow and ice. And in fact, the Pacific Northwest was basically one ice hockey rink for a while.
Jason Bradford
For like a week and a half.
Asher Miller
It was wild. I had to leave my house on my ass literally because my driveway is very steep.
Jason Bradford
I know. I'm glad I'm not on a hill.
Rob Dietz
You actually renamed it the assway instead of a driveway.
Asher Miller
I did. Yeah. And then we actually lost power for a little while. And when we lost power, we lost heat in my house. Now, I would love to say that's because we have you know, an electric furnace and all that stuff. But the truth is we still have, we didn't replace the furnace when we bought our house. It's still a natural gas furnace. So we should have been okay, but here's the problem. The previous owners actually installed a Nest thermostat. Okay?
Jason Bradford
And this is one of those house control smart homey things?
Asher Miller
Exactly.
Jason Bradford
You poor thing.
Asher Miller
And guess what it needs to work?
Jason Bradford
Electricity.
Asher Miller
It needs electricity. So we had a gas furnace. It would've worked.
Jason Bradford
You could have MacGyvered it, put a screwdriver in there.
Asher Miller
But I couldn't turn it on because I didn't have electricity to power the fucking thermostat. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
That is outstanding. I mean, smart homes. Yeah. Let's talk about how smart they really are.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, they're dumb homes.
Rob Dietz
But if we want to talk about technology, I'm gonna go simple. Here's mine. When I was a kid, and I wanted to say, bake some cookies in the oven.
Jason Bradford
Sure.
Asher Miller
Easy Bake Oven?
Rob Dietz
Well, there was just a little dial. You just turn it to like 350 degrees or whatever and put your cookies in. Now, on our stupid ass oven, it takes 27 button clicks. Like I gotta hit the right one to tell it to bake, then I gotta hit this little plus button 12 times to get it to the right temperature. Then if I forget and put my cookies in, but I didn't hit the last button it doesn't start cooking.
Asher Miller
I'm sorry. You just gotta be a little patient. Once they integrate the Internet of Things with every single appliance, you could just ask Siri or whatever - Alexa, "Turn on the oven to 350 degrees."
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, it was so hard to turn that dial back in the day.
Asher Miller
It was.
Jason Bradford
This is one of my pet peeves on it. The complexity of all the technology. The fact that there's all these steps. It used to be very simple mechanisms. My son talks about this. About, oh yeah this is like this metal resistor, or whatever. And it is changing the resistance of the coil. And the dial does that. It's all mechanical. You could take it apart and actually see how it works. Now, it's all little computer chips that are impossible to fix. Once they break, you're like -
Asher Miller
Once one little piece breaks.
Jason Bradford
It's a brick. The whole thing is dead. It's a sculpture. Yeah. And then you've got to find a replacement little specialized chip made in some Taiwanese factory.
Rob Dietz
I like that. That makes us all artists. All we have to do is break our technology and we're sculptors.
Jason Bradford
Now you guys are bringing up some very, very quaint, fun technologies. But I got sucked into a study of my favorite technology.
Rob Dietz
Where are we going?
Jason Bradford
Play the clip. We've got a clip for this.
The Graduate Movie Clip
I just want to say one word. Just one word. Yes sir. I'm listening. Plastics.
Jason Bradford
Isn't that wonderful? Plastics. This movie, "The Graduate," is one of my favorite movies. Dustin Hoffman, young actor at the time, 1967. I was born in 1969. And this definitely was the era when plastics were just starting to take over.
Asher Miller
I blame this fucking Mr. McGuire guy.
Rob Dietz
It is amazing, the coincidence. It seems like that's really when plastics kicked off in a huge way.
Jason Bradford
Yes, during our lifetime, essentially. The world flipped. But let me just back up. Let's do a little history together of plastics. The first plastic was made to try to replace elephant ivory in billiard balls in the late 1800s. And this was a substance called celluloid, which was derived from cellulose you know.
Asher Miller
So this was like, it was trying to solve for a problem. This was a good cause, right. Like let's stop killing elephants for their ivory.
Jason Bradford
Well, it didn't work for billiard balls. They found something else eventually. But it did work for fountain pens. So some of the fountain pen geeks are really into cellulite.
Rob Dietz
Nice. Well, and once the plastic came off the assembly line and we started figuring out how to make it, then it's just finding better uses. So apparently it was very important in World War II for the helmets and of course, the parachutes.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, nylon was a big deal. Nylon was the replacing silk in the parachute business.
Rob Dietz
And then of course, you have a technology in search of a market at that point. And of course, once the war was over, it was just off and running. Now all your shoes are made of nylon, all your sleeping bags are made of nylon. You know, probably --
Jason Bradford
Stockings?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, everything.
Asher Miller
And we're seeing the same dynamic actually happening right now. Because as there's a push to phase out fossil fuels for energy use, the fossil fuel industry itself is trying to pivot a little bit in looking to shift from extraction of natural gas in particular, towards petrochemicals, right? So they're like, "Hey, if we're gonna get regulated out of producing energy, let's put it into plastic instead."
Rob Dietz
I feel like Exxon is like, "What's the second worst thing we can do? What's the third worst? Let's get into tobacco next."
Asher Miller
Right. And actually, the International Energy Agency projects that petrochemicals are set to account for over a third of the growth of demand in oil by 2030. And about half by 2050. So more than aviation, more than trucks, more than shipping. It's just going to go into more plastics. And a lot of that is going to the global South.
Rob Dietz
We need to rebrand. Instead of petrochemicals, it needs to be toxic shitacles
Asher Miller
Toxic shitacles, I like it.
Rob Dietz
We're getting into the toxic shitacle business.
Jason Bradford
So I was reading this BBC article, because of course, people are now worried about plastics and how much there is and the problems they cause. And so even though they're all these projections about more and more plastics, others are fighting this and trying to like find a way out. But this article was basically talking about how it's so embedded in everything in modernity that all these experts were scratching their heads. And they didn't know how to back out. They're like, how do we even have modern civilization without these? And there are now monstrous publications that, you know, I followed the links to but I couldn't read. But people are working so hard to come up with schema for what's an essential plastic and what are the new chemistry methods to maybe make it less toxic so it doesn't, you know, kill everything.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a good point, too, with the toxicity of plastics and some of the other human manufactured stuff out there. You've got to killing wildlife directly. You've got it disrupting the endocrine system. You have it going up and down food chains. And these particles, they break down and break down to where now you have the term nanoparticles and microplastics. And they can do things like prevent an animal from being able to absorb nutrients. I mean we're talking cellular level disruption. In the department of a picture is worth 1000 word, I remember Chris Jordan, our artists friend, he used to take photos of dead birds on Midway Atoll. And you would just see their guts just filled with plastic. And of course, you can't even see the nanoparticles that are running through their cells.
Jason Bradford
I know. It's like the albatrosses and stuff.
Asher Miller
And there you are, Jason, hearing them talking about them trying to figure out what are the essential uses of plastic, not recognizing that we're only talking about a number of decades since --
Jason Bradford
I know. How do we live? How do we live?
Asher Miller
But it's true. It's like hard to imagine for us. It's hard to imagine, like going to the grocery store and not getting everything in a plastic container wrapper.
Rob Dietz
This next holiday season, Jason, I'm getting you a wooden tennis racket with cat guts strings.
Jason Bradford
I think that would be cool actually if I could play against people who are also using that.
Asher Miller
That's the problem.
Jason Bradford
That's the problem.
Asher Miller
Just get absolutely trashed by someone. Yeah, so there are people who are trying to address the plastic pollution issue. And Rob, you talked about it breaking down into nanoparticles and you know, there's studies that show that we have 10s of 1000s of nanoparticles in our bodies. It's fucking insane to think about it. But there are also concentrated areas in the world where plastics are kind of either going into the Marine system or elsewhere. And so there are people that are working on these gyres, right, where ocean currents have brought together massive amounts of plastic.
Jason Bradford
Garbage patches.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And also people working on rivers trying to, you know, get it sort of, in a sense, what they're thinking of is sort of the source before it gets into the oceans. And Jason, you had Rob and I watch a couple of videos, right? From this one nonprofit that was started by a young guy who was trying to do some of this cleanup effort. And I don't want to shit on this guy at all. I think it's --
Rob Dietz
Please don't.
Asher Miller
It's awesome. Like, you know, you hear stories of especially young social entrepreneurs, or people activists who are trying to address these issues and really trying to do great work. But think about the scale and also the fact that a lot of this is an expression of technologyism as well. So like one of these, you know, you had you had us look at this effort to clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by collecting a bunch of the stuff out there. I think they've gotten what? Something like 100,000 kilograms, right?
Rob Dietz
Woo hoo.
Asher Miller
Which is actually a lot. But when you think about the scale of the problem, there's like an estimated 100 million kilograms of plastics in the North Pacific gyre. That's just one gyre by the way.
Jason Bradford
And they keep getting added to.
Asher Miller
Right. Yeah, so that's 1/10 of a percent, right?
Jason Bradford
It's madness.
Rob Dietz
It's amazing where we've gotten to because when you say the word gyre, in my mind, I now picture swirling garbage. Like, that's where it's gone because of what's happened.
Jason Bradford
Interesting. I sort of think of it as like, if you were to say to somebody, "Oh, clean up that fart in that room and put it into a jar." Right? They would look at you like, what are you talking about? That's madness. Stop. Just go outside and fart. Don't fart in the room.
Rob Dietz
Or maybe change your diet so you don't have to fart.
Jason Bradford
Okay, I think people are gonna fart, but there's a way you manage it. But so anyway, it's absurd. Like, you're not going to put it back in the jar. You're not going to. This plastic is gone and there is no way you're going to have some sort of system that is going to clean it up like this.
Asher Miller
Well and how insane is it that we're asking these young people to try to basically stick their finger in the dike.
Jason Bradford
The plastic industry needs to be taxed up the wazoo so that they're like -- I'm getting ahead of myself. But the scale of this plastic use is such that the even though the petrochemical industry is thinking to themselves, "Oh yeah, we gotta convert oil to plastics instead of burning it."
Asher Miller
Yeah, "We've got to make more of this plastic."
Jason Bradford
You know, the greener version of industrialism is saying, "No, no. We can't use oil, we have to use biochemicals." But the problem when you do the math, it's like, oh, so you're gonna grow how many acres of hemp or whatever, or switchgrass. Or cut down how many trees for the cellulose feedstock. It's like saying, "Oh, we're gonna replace fossil oil with biofuels." None of it works.
Asher Miller
So you'll go to the grocery store to get you know, a bioplastic container, but there won't actually be any food in it because we've converted all the land for food
Rob Dietz
I think you guys are missing the point. There's only going to be a population of 12 people and it's going to be the 12 CEOs of the biggest tech corporations in the world.
Jason Bradford
They're like, "Who's going to grow my food?"
Rob Dietz
The AI.
Jason Bradford
Anyway, so then this is the rapid hole I lead down. So I'm following -- This is almost like a history of like the people's bargaining with their captor. And then the latest insanity is what's now called carbon capture and utilization.
Asher Miller
Oh so we moved from carbon capture and sequestration?
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Asher Miller
Because why sequester it when we could utilize it?
Jason Bradford
Exactly.
Jason Bradford
Now we've gone over in previous episodes -- So if you're a new listener and you need to go back, you might want to listen to the one we did on May 10, 2023 about David Keith, or May 1, 2019 on technology and overshoot, where we talk about how absolutely insane it is to think that we can capture carbon dioxide in any kind of scale. The logistics, the energetics. Carbon dioxide is this molecule that's super happy to be carbon dioxide. It's a fully oxidized form of carbon. So to reduce it is energetically intensive. And so these people think it makes any kind of sense to go from carbon capture to then bioplastic is absolutely nuts.
Asher Miller
Right. That's good thinking.
Rob Dietz
Will you stop poo-pooing the dreams? I want a squirt gun and a rubber dogshit made out of CO2. Can I do that? Is that utilizing it?
Jason Bradford
Okay, I read another article that was very painful. I'm gonna go over this with you. So people do say okay, "The energetics sucks. We know this." They admit this. Okay, "We're gonna find enzymes then. We're gonna use AI, of course, to like, figure this out for us and make it better."
Asher Miller
Making it more efficient.
Jason Bradford
Exactly. But then, and so this is an article that was in Science News. I'm gonna read this to you. Quote, "It's morning and you wake on a comfortable foam mattress made partly from greenhouse gas. You put on a t shirt and sneakers containing carbon dioxide pulled from factory emissions. After a good run. You stop for a cup of Joe and guiltlessly toss a plastic cup in the trash, confident it will fully biodegrade into harmless organic materials. At home, you squeeze shampoo from a bottle that has lived many lifetimes then slip into a dress, fashion from smokestack emissions. You head to work with a smile knowing your morning routine has made the earth's atmosphere a teeny bit carbon cleaner." Now I wanted to take ice picks and shove them into my brain after reading, but I did not.
Asher Miller
Is that a recycled plastic icepick?
Jason Bradford
God, probably.
Rob Dietz
Knowing that you've done your bit to sequester more carbon in your skull.
Jason Bradford
Now this same article has this graph projecting plastic production increasing from about 400 million tons in 2020 to 600 million tons by 2050. Obviously, this is all stupid as fuck. And I'm just like, I was apocalyptic and all this and I'm going to slow down now.
Asher Miller
Because Jason, we have to accept that this continued acceleration and growth of all of this quote unquote "progress," in other words, plastics, is going to continue. That's just a given.
Jason Bradford
That's a given.
Asher Miller
So I've figured out ways to sequester it, make it greener, utilize it, whatever it is. Because the last thing we could consider doing is just not fucking making plastics.
Jason Bradford
That's the last thing.
Rob Dietz
Alright. Well look, let's all get into our smokestack pajamas, or whatever it is that we use in our morning routine.
Asher Miller
Smokestack pajamas.
Jason Bradford
So good. Wasn't it good? Who wrote that? It was brilliant. I want to send them flowers.
Asher Miller
I just have this picture of Hugh Hefner for some reason.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, smoking jacket. Smoke stacking jacket.
Rob Dietz
But let's talk about why? Well, on the Hugh Hefner front, why is this so seductive? Why are we so drawn into plastic and more broadly, technology? And I think the number one reason is the cheapness. Like, of course, it's without all the externalities, right. But often what happens is technology makes something we want to do less expensive. So you know, I used to have, I don't know, you'd drink your water out of your hands, right? But some of that water got away through the space and your fingers.
Jason Bradford
You grow a gourd. Or you can get a coconut.
Rob Dietz
But it was hard to go get that, maybe, or it breaks down. So then you make these plastic bottles. And it turns out, they're very cheap to manufacture. So it's another money decision, and we're gonna get to that later this season. But another decision that's made by money that shouldn't be.
Jason Bradford
Right. You're gonna be more competitive if you keep adopting these new technologies that make you more efficient at some means of production.
Asher Miller
Now, speaking of competitive, there's also a status thing with technology. In our society, I mean, think about who the richest people in the world are. With the exception of Arnault, the fashion dude that we've talked about. They're all technologists, right? So there's this idea of like, you want to be the first one to get the vision pro whatever.
Jason Bradford
You know, when I got my first Sony Walkman in 1984 or 1985 five, I think.
Rob Dietz
You were hot shit.
Jason Bradford
I was hot shit. I could run with that thing. And it wouldn't have that weird --
Rob Dietz
We are losing status by the minute in this podcast space. These microphones are from season one. And here we are in season six at this lower and lower status. Can we get some new shit in here, please?
Jason Bradford
Now, the other thing that happens though, is that let's say you're a laggard. You're one of these people who are all fuddy duddy and you're like, "I'm keeping my VCR"
Rob Dietz
As a paperweight, right?
Jason Bradford
Eventually, that thing breaks and you're like, "I want a new VCR." I'm sorry, there are no --
Asher Miller
There are no VCRs.
Jason Bradford
You've got to get the laser disc. Because that's the new big thing.
Rob Dietz
How old is a laser disc. What are you talking about?
Asher Miller
I think he was in on the joke, Rob.
Rob Dietz
I wasn't sure. It's Jason. He might think a laser disc is the latest greatest thing.
Jason Bradford
That thing has like a two-month lifespan.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I know. Laser discs were . . .
Rob Dietz
Can I get it on eight track?
Jason Bradford
Ah, that has about a four-month lifespan.
Asher Miller
Some things come back. Vinyl came back.
Jason Bradford
Vinyl came back.
Rob Dietz
Which is made of plastic.
Asher Miller
Yeah, of course.
Jason Bradford
That was one of the early plastics. But the idea is that it all becomes obsolete eventually. And so that's the other thing that you've got to basically get the new gadget even if you want to do the thing you used to do with something perfectly good.
Asher Miller
100% you have to do that. I mean, I have this iPad that was handed down to me from my dad. And we can't update it.
Jason Bradford
No, it's too small. The memory isn't right.
Asher Miller
And we're talking about, this was like six years ago.
Jason Bradford
That happened to me one time, too. It's so frustrating.
Rob Dietz
Well for all you listeners, just hang on because in the next segment we're gonna have all new equipment.
Asher Miller
It's gonna sound great.
Rob Dietz
This is a message to all you Crazy Townies out there. Sometimes Jason, Asher, and I wish you could be here in the room with us when we're riffing on ecomodernist nightmares, the end of capitalism, the collapse of civilization and lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Since you can't be here, maybe we could still be in contact in another way. If you've got a comment about the show, or you want to throw some shade at us, or you've got a question . . .
Asher Miller
Or you have a suggestion of escape route stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Maybe you've got a story of your own you want to share. Go over to Apple podcasts or iTunes and leave us a review and write your comment there. In your comment, include your idea, whatever it is, and we'll think about sharing it in an episode.
Jason Bradford
How's this? "I'll be back." Is that any good?
Rob Dietz
Oh my God. That's terrible.
Jason Bradford
You try it. You try it.
Rob Dietz
"Get to the chopp-ah!"
Rob Dietz
Listener feedback: This one comes in from Joe in Barcelona. Joe says, "Thanks, guys for this. I started to listen a bit late in the game and still have some catching up to do. Good stuff, though so congrats." And he was responding in this comment to an email I had put out about how we'd been doing this for the last six years and he says, "Hate to be a dick, but five years does not six years make. If you started on March 13, 2019, well you do the math. Happy fifth anniversary gents. All the best from Barcelona.
Asher Miller
He could have been such a bigger dick about that. Thank you, Joe, for very lightly pointing out how stupid Rob is.
Jason Bradford
I read the email you sent out, Rob, and I have to agree with Joe here. I thought like, what are you talking about? We're starting our 6th season.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we're in our sixth season.
Jason Bradford
But the way Rob wrote it, it was like our six-year anniversary or something. I thought it was wrong.
Asher Miller
It's the six-year anniversary of us starting.
Jason Bradford
No. Joe's right. And look, he probably on the OCEAN test, that Big Five personality test, he's gonna be low on agreeableness, but high in conscientiousness. And I think people like that we need to listen to.
Rob Dietz
I think the way you guys are siding with him and making fun of me puts you pretty damn low on that scale. Thanks a lot.
Jason Bradford
Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it.
Rob Dietz
Welcome to the Marvin Harris Memorial Lens of doom.
Asher Miller
We sound great, right? We got all new equipment.
Jason Bradford
Oh, they can tell.
Rob Dietz
We spent so long putting it up I forgot to even mention it. Oh well. Okay, so Marvin Harris, remember, he's got this theory of cultural materialism where the infrastructure, the things that are around us affect the policies, which is called the structure, which then in turn affects our beliefs, the superstructure. So we're trying to look at what is the infrastructure of technology and technologyism. And the first most important thing is you have to have a reliable source of energy, you know, something like a functioning electrical grid. Without that, as you said it earlier, Jason, without that, your technology is just sculptures.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Beautiful sculptures.
Rob Dietz
Some more beautiful than others.
Asher Miller
And if it sounds like you've heard this before, you have heard this before, because energy is the foundation of everything, right? And so, yes, without energy, none of this happens.
Rob Dietz
It all becomes paper weights, which I don't know how much people need to weigh down their paper. Maybe we'll be getting back to that with fans instead of air conditioning or whatever. But a lot of paperweights without energy. Also things like a very functional mature transportation network. Because otherwise, the technology can't get spread everywhere. Think about building a car. You can't get all the pieces from all the different places unless you got this transportation network to do it. And then, another piece of the infrastructure is us. This highly -- not not the three of us, but the royal us -- highly specialized workforce.
Asher Miller
That's not us.
Rob Dietz
No. We are as little specialized as one can be. But to be able to work with all this technology.
Asher Miller
Yep. Okay, so that's some of the infrastructure. The second is about some of the structures, right? So the rules, you know, the economics and all that stuff. I mean, that's where I want to start is actually just the economics driving a lot of the fixation on technology and technologyism is about replacing costs of labor, which are considered the most expensive, right? So you do everything you possibly can to replace that. And what we've done is replace labor with technology using energy, fossil energy, effectively to replace human energy, human labor, right? And then you have a lot of funding going towards high-tech approaches, right? I mean, if you think about it, we've seen all these fads. And some of them have been laughable on their face. NFTs, we had fun with NFTs for a while. You know, there's been a big push in recent years around crypto. But you just move from one to the other. And so much of it is focused on technology. And you could see actually now it's almost laughable where businesses are trying to seek funding. All they're doing is they're updating their slide decks, their pitch decks to include something about AI.
Jason Bradford
And they're using AI to do that update.
Asher Miller
Yep, exactly.
Rob Dietz
Well, another place that you see the structure of technology is in our universities. I mean, I am a huge fan of the land grant universities here in the United States. A historic collection of universities where the government said, "Hey, we'll give you the land but you also have to teach about agriculture." And it's all techno based now. I mean, you go to an ag school, like, you're not gonna learn about agriculture, you're gonna learn about technology. And it's just built into the way those institutions run now.
Asher Miller
Well, and speaking of building in, I mean, that's what the tech sector essentially has done. I mean, technology has obviously been adopted in industry and all that stuff. But when you think about the dominance of the tech sector itself, you know, we've talked before when we did our episode on speedism, you know, the acceleration that's really being driven by computer technology in particular, right? It's so embedded now in every sector of society. Every industry effectively is dependent upon it. You talked about education, but it literally is everything. And what happens there is that it's like that is in a sense, co-opting all of the other sectors of society. So technology becomes the bedrock, the foundation for everything else, as a structure. And it reinforces itself as a result.
Rob Dietz
Well, and we're seeing it right here. Our little sound mixer at the start of this session, for some reason, when we plugged it in, it wouldn't work. When we unplugged it, it went on. We're like, What is happening here?
Asher Miller
The magic energy.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And then we found another plug. But anyway, we're beholden.
Jason Bradford
Without that one piece of equipment, and this reminds me of when -- My wife's a physician and I saw when they were starting to talk about, we're gonna have to go to electronic medical record systems. And I went, "Oh, no." Because once you do that, you will be trapped. And sure enough, now, if the IT system isn't working, they can't see any patients. I mean, think about that. If you don't have electricity or your computer system is down, forget it. Just send everyone home. It's ridiculous.
Rob Dietz
We're gonna have to someday do a huge rant on the entire medical care system.
Jason Bradford
Well, you know, you're summing up sort of the infrastructure, the structure. It all leads to then, you know, the belief system about how to save modernity is the Eco modernism way. And that's what I think is where this all leads to in terms of superstructure. That there is no way backwards. The only way to keep going and to survive. It's a double down on technological progress.
Rob Dietz
And that's why your favorite recent piece of writing was Marc Andreessen's "Ecomodernist Manifesto."
Jason Bradford
Unbelievable. I read it every night.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's Jason's Bible.
Jason Bradford
It's right next to my bed.
Asher Miller
I mean, there's no greater wisdom than pointing out that the precautionary principle is the most evil thing.
Jason Bradford
Evil, evil. Most people too. The poor people.
Asher Miller
I think from a superstructure perspective, just thinking about the belief system, the worldview. I think technology and technologyism, I guess, has become in some ways synonymous with having a vision for the future. It's like hard for people to envision a future that's one that can be better. Progress without it being tied, somehow, to technology.
Jason Bradford
Something more advanced. Yeah.
Asher Miller
Because otherwise you're left with the idea of limited technology. It not only seems impossible, it also feels I think, for a lot of people, like it's going backwards. It's like we're regressing. We're not progressing, right? And you're left with like -- You're suddenly in bed with Ted Kaczynski, MAGA, you know, Steve Bannon traditionalism. Or you gotta go live with the hippies on a commune, or the Amish or something like that.
Jason Bradford
I'll choose the hippie commune by the way. If I had to make a choice
Rob Dietz
You don't want to sleep with Ted Kaczynski? You'd be in bed with him, as Asher says.
Asher Miller
Sorry for that visual.
Rob Dietz
I think it's also, it's stuck in people's minds that, hey, we've got a problem with climate that was caused by technology, but we're gonna use technology to get out of that problem because it's what we're used to. And it's this terrible circularity, you know. Use the same thinking to try to solve the thing that caused it.
Jason Bradford
It's Econ 101, man. That's what they tell you.
Rob Dietz
The other thing that strikes me with technology is I mean, most of us don't know how it works. So it's almost like --
Asher Miller
I know how it works. You push the button.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, you know how to plug things in. I'll give you that. But . . .
Asher Miller
In this case, I don't know. It's like the opposite. We tried to plug it our mixer and it didn't work.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, but I mean, that's the thing. It's like it's magic. You expect it to work, but you have no idea how to fix it. You don't have to think about it. And in today's world, our mixer blows up, well, guess what? You just order a new one and throw that one out. Consequences be damned. And I think that's how most of us are acting.
Asher Miller
But Rob, just imagine a world in the future where you take your mixer that doesn't work anymore and you could guilt free just toss it in the garbage while you're sipping your coffee from a whatever . . . a biofuel cup.
Rob Dietz
Well honestly, that's what we do today anyway.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, but this way you don't have to feel guilty about it. That's a beautiful thing.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, carbon capture and utilization. I love it.
Rob Dietz
Nice.
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be.
Jerry Seinfeld
And if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Rob Dietz
So in this do the opposite melieu/venue -- this place of doing the opposite, I thought it'd be fun if we could each introduce some low-tech option that we embrace, or that we love. And what immediately came to mind for me is brooms. I love a good broom.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, you can play Quidditch.
Asher Miller
You're a witch aren't you?
Rob Dietz
That is a techno broom, and I don't appreciate that. I use a broom to sweep the floor, and it works really well. And I don't even have to plug it in.
Jason Bradford
I have a broom actually that's made of like a real piece of wood. Like a branch, or whatever, and broom sorghum.
Rob Dietz
Broom sorghum. That's an actual species?
Jason Bradford
It's a cultivar of sorghum that they grew specifically so you could make brooms out of it, and it's wonderful.
Rob Dietz
You and me, let's get a business going here.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, we can make one.
Rob Dietz
I got some laurel hedges I need to cut down. We can make handles out of that.
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Asher Miller
I get a broom that's powered by a motor and you know, I could tell Alexa to --
Rob Dietz
I hate you. Hate.
Jason Bradford
I got that broom from the Mickey Mouse show.
Rob Dietz
I hate you too.
Jason Bradford
What was that one?
Asher Miller
Are you talking about the broom from Fantasia? Yes, that's scary.
Jason Bradford
That's scary. No, my favorite technology that is simple is the wheel hoe because I have to weed a lot. And weeding is like -- the most important chore on the farm is the weeding. And a wheel hoe just makes the weeding -- it's like cutting butter. I can just like, "swoosh, swoosh" cutting under wheel. It's beautiful. So anyway.
Asher Miller
I used to have a kind of running thing with a former colleague of ours at Post Carbon, Todd Brilliant, looking at the world and trying to figure out what technologies exist right now that would be like Post Carbon ready if let's say just like, I don't know, we had --
Asher Miller
EMP.
Asher Miller
EMP thing, or something. So escalators. Escalators are fantastic, you know. It's a high energy modernity way of getting from the bottom floor of the mall to the top floor so you can go get your Cinnabon.
Rob Dietz
Cinnabon is on the lower floor, buddy. Okay?
Jason Bradford
But the mattresses in Macy's are always on the third floor. I didn't understand.
Asher Miller
That's true. Yeah. But imagine, the mattress is made out of greenhouse gases. But if the power goes out, you can still walk down the stairs.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. You can still get your mattress.
Rob Dietz
And over time as the wind and water erodes the frozen escalator, it becomes a ramp.
Asher Miller
And then you got your E-bikes. Amazing technology. I know both of you have E-bikes. I don't have an E-bike, but really incredible technology. If, you know, you can't charge it, the battery fails, whatever, you could still pedal that thing. It's a little bit heavier.
Rob Dietz
You just drop an "E," and it becomes a bike.
Jason Bradford
I can't go 40 kilometers an hour on it.
Asher Miller
I know.
Rob Dietz
You gotta know which "E" to drop because otherwise it would be an E-Bik.
Asher Miller
And here's another one, RVs. I give RVs shit. But hey, no more fuel, it's a home.
Jason Bradford
It's a home.
Asher Miller
There you go.
Jason Bradford
Okay, okay. Now, let us speak in generalities.
Rob Dietz
Generalities. Yeah.
Asher Miller
Can you say it with a French accent like Rob did.
Jason Bradford
Oui. J'appelle fran ais. Le fromage. Anyhow. Pinot noir.
Rob Dietz
Shut ze hell up.
Asher Miller
You don't even know what you're saying.
Jason Bradford
No I don't. Okay, so a vision for a different infrastructure. Now, when I think about, like, if I were to imagine a world that was sane, I would imagine one where people are using technologies that they can understand how they work, they can fix it, and maybe they can even make it themselves, or they know somebody. Like, I'll make the broom if you make the whatever. And so that's my vision for the kind of infrastructure we would have.
Asher Miller
Like accessible technology. Yeah. Appropriate scale technology. Human centered technology,
Jason Bradford
Yes. Maybe using more local simple materials, right?
Rob Dietz
Well, and let's go back to plastics here for a little bit. You know, Asher, you talked a lot about the guy that we watched the videos where he's taking plastic out of the ocean, and then also kind of netting the river mouth into the bay and collecting plastic out of that. Like that's an infrastructure. But what about, instead of that, we have an infrastructure that just doesn't have that input stream of plastic to begin with? How's that for a vision?
Asher Miller
That's ridiculous Rob.
Jason Bradford
Well, this is what kind of really bothered me about those videos. I mean, I applaud the effort going into cleaning up. I do. But it's obvious that it was really bought into technologyism. The whole video had this sort of, we can do it, sort of giddy vibe, with this sort of upbeat music and a lot of glad handing and stuff. And really nice looking people who are young and vigorous and into problem solving. And what I wanted one of them to do, at least once, was turn to the camera and say, "Shame on you."
Asher Miller
Yeah, why are you making me do this?
Jason Bradford
"Shame on you," and get angry at us. "Because we should not be having to clean up your fucking mess." That's what I want them to say. And so that's what kind of bothered me about it is that this should not be the problem of some nonprofit with a bunch of young good-doers to solve.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Alright, well, let's talk about a vision for a different structure, right?
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
So obviously, we need to have laws that help limit the most advanced and dangerous technologies, and also encourage the kinds of technologies that we want to have. The ones that you were sort of envisioning. We're investing money and time and resources into low tech responses to the climate and biodiversity crisis. Like you know, we're not pouring money into CCS, or whatever the --
Jason Bradford
CCU. Yes.
Asher Miller
CCU and whatever other acronym they're gonna come up with in the future. You know, no air capture bullshit. Putting it instead into regenerative agriculture and preserving biodiversity. Right.
Rob Dietz
Wheel hoes for everyone.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Well, that reminds me of my favorite presidential candidate, Vermin Supreme. He wanted to give everyone a pony. That wouldn't be -- that's a low tech, you know, solution.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Everyone gets a wheel hoe.
Rob Dietz
Pony -- you could put a wheel hoe behind it.
Jason Bradford
Collect the manure and fertilizer for your garlic bed.
Asher Miller
So you know, it's about where we're putting our money, which is where kind of the economy is pointing. That's part of the structure of society, and the laws, and what we're incentivizing, and what we're punishing, right? Shifting where those go. Now, we have missed opportunities to do this. To regulate. To limit. You know, when we're thinking about like cars --
Jason Bradford
They go too fast to be a good safe biker. Right. Exactly.
Asher Miller
With plastics we've talked about that. So maybe we keep moving the goalposts here. AI, you talked about AI, Jason. You know, this is kind of the newfangled technology everyone's excited about. But it's also an opportunity for us to say, "Wait a second, maybe we need to regulate this."
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Now, if we can get those infrastructure changes, and those structure changes, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to change our belief systems, right? I'm not real confident that we're going to get there so we're gonna have to work on changing our belief systems, even before we're all pushing wheel hoes down the road.
Asher Miller
Let me just say really quickly, I think this is a really important point. Just because we point out through Marvin Harris's work that infrastructure has this huge influence on structure and superstructure doesn't mean that we can't influence it the other way, right? We have to ultimately change the infrastructure, but we can be operating at the structural and superstructure level.
Jason Bradford
Like chew gum and walk at the same time.
Asher Miller
Yeah, I can't do that, but . . . I can applaud you while you do.
Jason Bradford
Well, thank you.
Rob Dietz
I think that's where we are because we live in this system, you know, and we are -- we're working with laptops in front of us and microphones in front of our faces.
Jason Bradford
Newfangled microphones.
Rob Dietz
But trying to let go of the belief that technology is everything and it's going to save us. Because once you let go of that, then you can believe in a different world, and you can start working on a different infrastructure, and you can start supporting different policies. And I think a corollary to that is this idea that there's value. There's a quality in doing things manually. Like using a Wheel Hoe versus a tractor. It does a lot more for soil health, right. You're not compacting things. It does a lot more for atmospheric health. You're not blowing a bunch of CO2 and other toxins into the air. So like just recognizing the quality, and you know, pace might change, but that's okay in the world that we're inheriting. And then you can also, once you've let go of that embracing of technology, you can just set limits in your own house, in your own life and practice them. I mean, it's gonna be a different line for different people. You know, like, maybe you're such a purist, you won't get an E-bike. You have to just get a bike. Or maybe you're so pure you won't get a bike, you have to walk. Whatever your limit is, go with it, but just practice and see how it works.
Jason Bradford
I think that's a great perspective. And let's give some people now some who's who. Like who's doing something if they want to look up some stuff and get some some inspiration. So I think a good place to go at the individual and household scale on infrastructure is Kris de Decker and his Low Tech Magazine. He's got books also of anthologies that have compiled these things, and they are quite amazing. So I'm very impressed. He's a treasure, I think.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's like technology, but low technology. Along the lines of what you were talking about. Something you can understand. Something you can fix. I mean, some of it is actually kind of complicated, but way less complicated than what industrial society would suggest you use.
Jason Bradford
Right. Because all of these things are things you should reasonably be able to do with simple tools.
Rob Dietz
Like he talks about low-tech solar. So he has, like, here's a solar panel you could actually build with local materials. Yeah. Pretty cool stuff. There's another spot, I think Kris is in Europe, right? Is he in Belgium?
Jason Bradford
Barcelona.
Asher Miller
He's Belgian, but he lives in Spain.
Rob Dietz
Okay well, there's one here in the United States, in Wisconsin, called the Low Technology Institute, and it's a nonprofit. And I think they're sort of like the practical side of what we talk about at the Post Carbon Institute. They're all about identifying household and community scale solutions for subsistence in the post fossil fuel world. So again, this is like what technology can we apply that has a chance at sustainability. And I was just kind of looking through their website and found something called the 10 Mile Building Challenge. So a lot of people when you say you want a sustainable structure, a building or a house, they think LEED certified, which is kind of like, you can get the platinum level or the gold level. And it's about how much energy does this skyscraper use. But the folks over at Low Technology Institute, they're like, "No, no, no, no. We don't need that. What we need is, how can you have a building with really low embedded energy made from local materials."
Jason Bradford
This stuff really excites me. And I think that the Folk School movement is a really interesting one as well. And you can take classes on these. And my thought is, just become an expert in one of these things, right?
Asher Miller
Yeah, how to make a broom.
Jason Bradford
How to make a broom, or whatever. You know, how to how to farm with a Wheel Hoe as your main weeding tool. Just maybe find something. You know, I want to grow willows that are turned into baskets, which become the alternative to all the plastic crap that we have to hold things.
Rob Dietz
Nice.
Asher Miller
That sounds good. Well, let's talk about the societal scale then. We're talking about structures that either promote or put technologyism into play. If we're talking about shifting those, there are things like enacting bans on plastics, or even regulating artificial intelligence. So like, there are on the plastic side, there are bans all over the world. You've got local, state, national. There's even international contacts right now. There's the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution that's trying to work as part of the UN environmental program. They're negotiating international legally binding instrument of some kind on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment. They're aiming to try to get that negotiated and done by the end of 2024. So there's people operating on a societal scale at a bunch of different levels, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
It's really interesting to me that we have this experience with banning straws and banning plastic bags at grocery stores. And it's like, can we just up our game a little bit and get beyond that? And I mean, I think that's what these international treaties are trying to do. But it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in our community.
Asher Miller
Well and I think this is a place where democracy really matters, and people communicating to their elected representatives that this is important to them. Because you know that there are huge vested interest -- We just talked about the fossil fuel industry shifting into petrochemicals. They might give us a ban on straws in Corvallis, Oregon, or whatever. But like, to say that there's going to be an international treaty or agreement of some kind that's eliminating these things, there's gonna be a huge amount of pushback. So it is kind of incumbent on us to engage, whether it's at the local level or national level, to support the right kinds of structural policies. And along those lines, with AI -- So we talked a lot about plastics, we talked about AI. Our colleague, Richard Heinberg, at PCI just wrote a piece calling for a complete ban on all AI development. Now that seems unlikely.
Jason Bradford
Good luck.
Asher Miller
Yeah. But you know, it's making a really strong case, you know, on why we should be considering that. And maybe it shifts the Overton Window enough that we see that people are like, "Yeah, we at least need to regulate this." And not surprisingly, Europe is taking a lead on that. European Union officials, they just took a step trying to regulate AI. They reached a provisional deal looking at how they would do that kind of in the European Union context. We're in the heart of the beast here. We have the opposite, right? We have Sam Altman - whatever going --
Asher Miller
Yeah, $7 trillion.
Asher Miller
Going to the government asking for $7 trillion. Right. So we clearly have much more of a hurdle in this country.
Rob Dietz
Well, near and dear to my heart on this whole area is how do we get out of the car technology scene? How do we kind of tamp down the car infrastructure and make it better for bikes and for pedestrians and all that. And luckily, Sam Altman went to the federal government and asked for $7 for that. So we've got a $7 bike path coming. But no, seriously, that's another societal scale thing. We can try to work towards a less techno transportation system. I dream of this all the time. Like, do you know how fun it would be to have awesome bike paths anywhere you wanted to go.
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
It would just be incredible. Ah, come on. And then there's also the right to repair laws. I mean, you have devices now that you know, your dream, Jason, of having something you understand. Like when your laptop breaks good luck even taking it to a place that's going to be able to fix it, right? Your laptop is what, eight years old or something? It's just -- No way. It's so much cheaper to just replace the thing.
Jason Bradford
Well, you know what's interesting is a lot of conservative farmers are behind a lot of this right to repair stuff because they've seen over the last few decades their equipment get more and more difficult. And these are people that you know, are mechanically inclined, and they normally are able to go and fix stuff. And now if you get these new tractors, often you're not allowed to fix it or you void the warranty.
Rob Dietz
Gosh. And think of the investment. Like those cost $100, $200 $300,000?
Jason Bradford
Half a million dollars for like a combine or whatever, and you can't fix it. And then when the repair person comes in, can they get there in time? How much does it cost? So people are kind of up in arms about it.
Asher Miller
And they've got remote kill switches that can shut you down. It's incredible. So hopefully these are some helpful ideas and suggestions and resources that we can share with our listeners, I want to talk just honestly about how difficult of a challenge this is. I think this is true, you know, this entire season is about escaping all these isms, right? And it is very difficult if you are part of modern industrial society to escape from any of these things. I think it's particularly challenging when it comes to technology. Here we are talking about escaping technologyism, talking through these microphones into a computer that's recording us that's gonna then get edited and shared with our listeners who are listening to it on technology, right? And I think what's so difficult is that, in some ways, what we're asking of ourselves and of our listeners is not a full escape. It's a figuring out how to manage and I don't know. Maybe it's the equivalent of moving from high-tech to low-tech, it's not no-tech. It's straddling a little bit. Because in some ways, the easiest way to escape is either being like, "Fuck this, I'm out of here." Homesteading and going back to the land, you know, joining an Amish community. Actually the Amish are embracing some technology now. So you might have to go really far to do that. Because you're not faced with these difficult choices every day of navigating technology and participating in some of it. Or you do what the vast majority of people are doing and that is you just embrace it. Try not to think about it. Try not to think about the consequences of it. You know, because that's just a lot easier. So being the space we're talking about, which is this belief that technology is gonna fix everything. Our rush pell mell and all of the investments that we're making it more and more technology. We know it's crazy making and it's setting us over the edge. But we can't totally walk away from technology. And there's also changes in technologies that we have to grapple with and make choices around. So we've had this debate internally at PCI, actually around AI. Here we've had Richard making a really strong case for basically a complete ban on all artificial intelligence. And we organizationally, like it or not, are using AI in ways that we sometimes don't even realize, you know? And so what do we do as an organization?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, how do I draw the line? So the example with Crazy Town is remember we used to have Anya, who would draw these awesome pictures for our for artwork for episodes. And it was really fun to work with her and say, "Hey, can you draw me this crazy thing," and she would do it, and we loved them. And then she went and got a job and is like out in the world living her life.
Jason Bradford
I hope she's doing well.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I do, too. I haven't talked to her in a while. But since we have some pretty weird imagery that we could use, we were looking at AI this year. You know, the image generators have come online. So we were looking at the consumerism episode, and I go to chat GPT and I say, "Hey, make me an aisle of a Toys "R" Us that's exploding plastic toys all over the place, and Geoffrey the giraffe is in the background vomiting on it," right? And it draws you this picture. And you're kind of like, that's a really good representation of our show and of our tone. And yet, using AI to do something somebody creative, like Anya was doing for us, it feels really kind of yucky, kind of hives-inducing. So maybe that's a line we draw. We're saying, "Okay, let's not do that."
Jason Bradford
I think our shows are transcribed with AI.
Rob Dietz
Yes, the first draft of a transcript is done by AI, which is a tedious task that nobody wants to do. And we still have to correct that transcript to some level. And the reason we do that is to make it more accessible to someone who maybe can't hear or wants to read it.
Asher Miller
Well, we've also looked at doing what's called text to voice AI software, because, you know, there's a case to say we can make our content more accessible to people if we take a piece, like let's say Richard s piece on banning AI. And we run it through a text to voice generator using AI so that people who have vision impairment, or it's a lot more easily shareable or accessible for people to listen to an article than to read it, we can reach more people that way, you know. And it's just like, wow, this is crazy-making.
Jason Bradford
Well, this is how do you be strategic. This is the thing, it's so many shades of gray because a lot of times what you're gonna get in the environmental activist community is sort of purism standards. And sometimes maybe that's taking a principled stand, but also it's giving up power. And so then it's this dynamic --
Asher Miller
Running the risk of being left behind.
Rob Dietz
But then you also run the risk of having to rename yourself the Hypocrite Society, or something.
Jason Bradford
And that's the thing. I don't think it's possible to not be hypocritical in this world. I think it's absolutely impossible. I go birding and I've got an AI on my phone that helps me understand the language of the birds. Like, oh, that sound is actually this species. It's a wonderful -- I mean, it's like what an amazing way for me to learn the birds, right? So am I a hypocrite?
Asher Miller
Where do you draw the line? I mean, we know Amazon is an evil friggin' company, right? But we've seen this again, and again. We've tried to, you know, direct people to go to their local bookshop to buy, you know, one of the books that we published at PCI. And we find again and again, that people will go and buy at Amazon instead. It's so ubiquitous. They dominate the market. You can buy something more cheaply, or maybe you can't even find it elsewhere. And it's like, so where do we draw the line? And I just bring up this sort of internal debate and struggle for PCI as, you know, an honest representation of I think the struggle that we all as individuals have to grapple with.
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Asher Miller
And so it is, I think what you brought up before -- I think it was you, Rob -- which is basically trying to be conscious and conscientious about the decisions we're making. And when it comes to technologyism, it's living in that liminal space of recognizing that we're not dropping out of industrial technological society right now. But we are being very thoughtful about what we do and what we don't do. And then maybe having our foot in the other world, the low-tech world, you know, with what you talked about Jason in terms of taking on a skill set. Or saying, "In this area, I'm not going to clean with a vacuum cleaner. I'm going to clean with a broom." I know it sounds silly. It's not going to change the world from tipping, you know, but it's something that can be done.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I don't even have a sorghum broom.
Jason Bradford
Well, let's plan on growing one of those for you this year. Okay, Rob?
Rob Dietz
Okay. And can we wheel hoe the weeds out of the way?
Jason Bradford
Yes we can.
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends, hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
Jason Bradford
Do you suffer from acute anxiety whenever you can't find your smartphone or the battery dies? Are you hopeful we can master fusion energy as the ultimate response to climate change? Do you believe limits on Earth may be overcome by resources and space? Or that AI will help humanity overcome all the threats to progress? Have you ever used these phrases, "but we have technology," or "they'll think of something?" If so, you'd likely suffer from technologyism, a debilitating mental health condition that infantilizes your responses to critical pressing issues. A cure for technologyism has eluded humanity until now. Introducing Reality Camp. A residential treatment center offering a comprehensive, intensive, multimodal intervention system that has proven effective in deprogramming those suffering from technologyism and offering a reality-based framework for moving forward in life. Reality Camp, because you have no idea how insufferable you are right now.
Asher Miller
Brought to you by Ted Kaczynski.
