David Temkin (Founder: InFormation)

THE INTERNET WILL NOT BE TELEVISED

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The tech industry is easy to dislike, admire, ridicule, resent, need, and all of the above. Look, this podcast doesn’t exist without tech. But there is also no "enshittification" without tech. Coined by writer Cory Doctorow that word has entered the general lexicon with a speed and ubiquity that might make someone like, I don’t know, Shakespeare envious. If he knew what was going on. Which he doesn’t.

All of this to introduce InFormation, a magazine about tech, but more importantly, a magazine about “what tech is doing to us.” The people behind it work in the industry and so understand it, which makes them dislike it even more.

Twenty-five years ago, InFormation was like the Spy magazine of the dot com boom, a bit of a kick in the pants to an industry and a group of people who saw themselves in utopian if not messianic terms. And while they might still see themselves that way (spoiler alert: they most certainly do), a lot of people in the world do not, and so InFormation is back, it has reformed, and is being published again, with the same attitude, that is it continues to kick ass but with more feeling, because Silicon Valley is no longer a place but a mindset, techbros are a thing and a wealthy thing at that, and, well, there’s a general feeling that the world has been thoroughly colonized and completely enshittified.

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This episode is made possible by our friends at Freeport Press.

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