Tech Won't Save Us

A 5* pod that resonates with our shade of solarpunk

Oct 17, 2022

“Yes to tech, no to technocracy” is a key point in our SolarPunk Stories Manifesto.

A recent (and especially excellent) episode of Team Human offers an interesting expansion on this theme.

The episode features a conversation between my friend, mentor, and Team Human Founder, Doug Rushkoff and the host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast, Paris Marx.

It examines how the more technophiliac form of technocracy – often presented as the inevitable progress of humankind – actually threatens tech’s potential to help us create a solarpunk future.

The whole episode is really worth listening to. If you’d rather just skip to my highlights, I’ve put timecodes below and some quotes I especially liked.

Paris Marx & Doug Rushkoff on Team Human ep. 220

1.20
“Developing new technologies has helped us as a civilization but we also need to recognise that not every new technology is good for us, not every new technology is beneficial.
We need to be able to assess these technologies on their merits to make sure that they're actually going to serve the public rather than just blindly embracing anything that Uber or Google or whoever says that we should take on.” - Paris Marx

2m - 10m
A monologue from Doug on the power of laughing at Silicon Valley overlords’ plans to leave the rest of us in a climate-broken hell.

This is covered much more deeply in Doug’s new book ‘Survival of the Richest. Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires’.

Standout quote from a SolarPunk Stories perspective:

“... The arts are what gives us perspective on this. It can decouple us from the nightmares that we've attached ourselves to and give us that wiggle room we need to say oh, wait a minute. There are multiple possible realities here.” - Doug

Doug Rushkoff

19.40 - 24
The current way we use cars is portrayed as natural, inevitable and thus impossible to change. The reality is that there was a concerted campaign in the early days of the automobile for it to be adopted.

Given the current pro-car system was designed and engineered it can be redesigned for the prosperity of people and the planet instead.

Rebel Bass video on how ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ shows pro-car lobby bought out L.A. public transport companies to close them down

25 - 27
We should use the storytelling and communication tools that the pro-car lobby used but for pro-people streets. Why we need to organise and lobby the government to do this.

Gives the example of how successful Paris’s city government has been in using its power to limit cars and promote other forms of more sustainable transport. [Ed - For more on Paris’s progress see our previous substack here].

Paris Mayor Anna Hidalgo won re-election on a promise to make the French Capital a car-free city [Image: France 24]

36.30 - 42.30
The danger of thinking that techno-solutionist new ‘eco’ cities are THE solution to climate breakdown.

Historical examples given, like Masdar in Dubai, illustrate how badly some of these expensive, shiny ventures have so far failed in human and ecological terms.

Adam Something questions Masdar’s claims to be sustainable in this vid [IMAGE: Todd Antony @Wired UK]

43.30 - 47
Better to argue for ‘public abundance’ than use the term ‘de-growth’. How in the Global North we can live more by consuming less.

“We want a future where prosperity will be defined by the quality of the relationships and experiences we enjoy rather than the quantity of crap we consume” - SolarPunk Stories Manifesto [IMAGE: WATG Architects]

47 - 49
Reinforcing a need for positive propaganda.

One that shows a happy, healthy form of success that isn’t being a megayacht billionaire, but more like a fun European city at night where people mingle and are interconnected.

[Ed - This is exactly what we’re trying to do with SolarPunk Stories]

Weekend evening in my hometown of Brixton [IMAGE: London News Online]

55.20
“It’s really hard to wake people up to the nightmare. Wake up! Wake up! The world is burning!” - Doug

What do you think? About this interview or any of the points raised in it?

Do you you think we need to be more skeptical of Silicon Valley claims that tech will save us? Or is it the best hope for building a solaprunk world? Let us know in the comments below.

Bonus Content

In preparing this substack we timecoded the whole of this this episode of Team Human. If you’d like to get that and the extra summaries we wrote to go with it click here.