Reclaiming Tech w/ Jeremy Gilbert, Alex Williams & Alison Winch
Episode #80
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Episode recorded in front of a live audience on 25 April 2024.
Summary
Cultural & Political Theorists Jeremy Gilbert, Alex Williams & Alison Winch share their insights on the societal impacts of technological innovation, the hegemonic power of the Silicon Valley tech billionaires, and re-engineering digital platforms for democratic purposes.
Guest Bios
Jeremy Gilbert is Professor of Cultural & Political Theory at the University of East London. He is the author of Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism, Anticapitalism and Culture: Radical Theory and Popular Politics and Twenty-First Century Socialism. He writes regularly in the British press, is the current editor of the journal New Formations, and hosts three regular podcasts: #ACFM (on Novara Media); Love is the Message; Culture, Power, Politics.
Alex Williams is a political theorist and lecturer in digital media and society currently based at the University of East Anglia. His writings include Political Hegemony and Social Complexity, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (with Nick Srnicek), as well as numerous articles on the future of left politics and contemporary formations of digital power.
Alison Winch is a Lecturer in Promotional Media at Goldsmiths. She researches intimacy, power and sexual politics in a branded media culture. Her books include The New Patriarchs of Digital Capitalism: Celebrity Tech Founders and Networks of Power (Routledge 2021), which is co-authored with Ben Little. Her monograph Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood (Palgrave, 2013) looks at how the affect of friendship is harnessed in a media culture.
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience for an event in partnership with SPACE4 & Housmans Bookshop.
Featured Book
How did we come to live in a world dominated by big tech and finance?
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it?
We cannot change anything until we have a better understanding of how power works, who holds it, and why that matters. Through upgrading the concept of hegemony—understanding the importance of passive consent; the complexity of political interests; and the structural force of technology—Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams offer us an updated theory of power for the twenty-first century.
Hegemony Now explores how these forces came to control our world. The authors show how they have shaped the direction of politics and government as well as the neoliberal economy to benefit their own interests. However, this dominance is under threat. Following the 2008 financial crisis, a new order emerged in which the digital platform is the central new technology of both production and power. This offers new opportunities for counter hegemonic strategies to win back power. Hegemony Now outlines a dynamic socialist strategy for the twenty-first century.
Show Notes
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Links
Transcript
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Credits
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Producer & Host: Luke Robert Mason
Assistant Audio Editor: Ramzan Bashir
Transcription: Beth Colquhoun
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