Welcome back to the last episode of this special series exploring the relationship between power and technology!

We now know that power and technology are intertwined and led to the rise of techno-oligarchy in the United States. Beyond structural impacts on democracy and the power structure that allowed this to happen, I wondered if democratic governance of technology was even possible considering this power structure, on top of intense lobbying from Big Tech companies, their wealth, and the inevitability rhetoric they push. Beyond that, I wanted to talk with an expert about the impacts on gender minorities like women and non-binary people, as well as other marginalized communities.

To answer these questions and tell us some dad jokes, I am welcoming Dr Mar Hicks, an associate professor with tenure at the University of Virginia in the School of Data Science. Dr Hicks is a historian of technology, gender and modern Europe, working on the history of women in computing,and technology powered inequalities. Two books Dr Hicks has published are available everywhere, the first one is titled “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing”, and the most recent one titled “Your Computer Is on Fire”, a book on the inequality, marginalization, and biases in our technological systems. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Get Dr Mar Hicks books: https://mitpress.mit.edu/author/mar-hicks-23807/

Reading about TESCREAL feels like reading a bad sci-fi storyline written by a man with a god complex. Unfortunately, it’s real: a movement that allows its proponents to use the threat of human extinction to justify expensive or harmful projects and demand billions of dollars to save us from these "existential threats". Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? These are very real aspirations, and some of the tech billionaires setting the rules of the tech industry even call themselves “creators”. It’s worse than godfather, if you ask me, though it’s fairly close. We’ve seen it for example with OpenAI asking for billions to “save us” from the very AI systems they are still trying to build, somehow, and more generally AI gurus working on how to save us from killer robots or AI systems becoming conscious instead of addressing hunger, homelessness, inequalities, or, environmental issues in their country (even just in their city would have more of an impact than stealing money under the excuse of saving people who don’t exist yet from evil AI systems that also don’t exist yet). But it’s not about helping, or “AI for Humanity” as they like to call it: it’s about power, influence and money. And the pipeline from these delusions to the far right ideology and technofascism is pretty straightforward.

Adrienne Williams, researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute joined me to talk about TESCREAL, neocolonialism, policymaking, and everything in between.

Created, hosted and produced by Mélissa M'Raidi-Kechichian.

After Trump was elected and tech oligarchs like Elon Musk, an unelected person, started to get power in decision making at the White House, the topic of technofascism got very popular. But this political trend of leveraging technology to empower fascist ideologies is nothing new. A lot has been written about technofascism in the 21st century, but I wanted to go back to the basics: what is fascism before technology? How do fascist movements use technology to take power and what kind of power dynamic is created? How can we resist the rise of technofascism?

To answer these questions, I welcomed Dr Emile Dirks. Emile is a Senior Research Associate at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, where he explores Chinese politics and digital authoritarianism.

Created, hosted and produced by Mélissa M'Raidi-Kechichian.