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Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. Tech, community, video games, and whatever else is next.
Also available as an MP3 podcast.
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January 25, 2021: Jonathan Lethem, author, "The Arrest"
Listen to this show:
MP3 - 128K | Pop‑up player!
Tonight: Jonathan Lethem, author, "The Arrest"
Links:
• The Arrest, by Jonathan Lethem
• Now It Can Be Told, by Jonathan Lethem (poem mentioning WFMU)
• JonathanLethem.com
• Books mentioned by Jonathan near the end of the interview: Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, and A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet. He also mentioned Cormac McCarthy, Emily St. John Mandel, Philip K. Dick, and J. G. Ballard.
News:
• An Australia With No Google? The Bitter Fight Behind a Drastic Threat (Jan 22, 2021): "Google threatened on Friday to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government approved legislation that would force tech companies to pay for journalism shared on their platforms." (Facebook made a similar threat.)
• WaPo's Hamilton Nolan (Jan 22): "A company that can credibly threaten to cut off public access to basic information if they are not allowed to continue extracting profits from the dying journalism industry like vampires is a company that needs to be severely regulated or broken up."
• Google is under fire for running experiments blocking some Australian news sites from search results (BusinessInsider, Jan 14, 2021): "Google is under fire for blocking some Australian news sites from search results as part of an experiment. . . . Google insists the move was just one of 'thousands of experiments' it runs every year."
• NYT's Jack Nicas shares letters (Jan 21) from Representatives Eshoo (CA) and Malinowski (NJ) to the "CEOs of Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter, urging them to fix their algorithms that promote conspiracy theories and push people to political extremes." ... "The algorithms sort and spread 'information to users by feeding them the content most likely to reinforce their existing political biases, especially those rooted in anger, anxiety and fear.'"
• Google Proceeds With Fitbit Deal, but Government Reviews Continue (WSJ, Jan 14, 2021)
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Artist | Track | Album | Images | Approx. start time | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jonathan Lethem discusses his new novel, "The Arrest," about a world without screens. | ||||||||||
Tomaš Dvořák |
Game Boy Tune
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Machinarium Soundtrack | ||||||||
Mark's intro | ||||||||||
Interview with Jonathan Lethem, part 1 | 0:03:07 (MP3 | Pop‑up) | |||||||||
Interview with Jonathan Lethem, part 2 | 0:20:33 (MP3 | Pop‑up) | |||||||||
Mark's comments after the interview | 0:38:18 (MP3 | Pop‑up) | |||||||||
James Hetfield and the News |
Hip to Be the Sandman
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0:55:38 (MP3 | Pop‑up) |
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Listener comments!
Greetings, Mark and the Techyon Drives!
Handy ignore the none-sense bot
I'm a long time fan of Jonathan Lethem, super-stoked for this interview!
But, yes, excellent book!
Mark, I of course take your rec very seriously -- thanks!
Hey, Bas, David, PR1920, all upthread Paltonics.
- we're Gypsies & not Landowners. These limits on any World - any true real continuous Culture we want to live in & establish.
Landlords 1st against the war after the Marxist Revolution...
Now the Space Age going straight up...
Well, you know...
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know...
We all want to change.
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out (in)
Don't you know it's gonna be
All right? Don’t you know its gonna be allright!
Hollywood & now Silicon Valley Tech I suppose...
What are Indians? Witches? What the Movies said they were...
I think that Emily St. John Mandel book is really lovely. Excellently done.
Is it a coincidence that slavery suddenly (in historical terms) became immoral to most people after we got steam engines?
It's a phosphorescent deodorant that teens use as a mental stimulant.
To make America unpalatable to Google it would have to be much less palatable.
Testify, Mark!
(google + facebook)
Be well, Techyon Drives!