New fronts are opening up in the opposition to big tech. The anti-data center movement is rolling, AI is unpopular as ever, and now, a widespread backlash to Meta’s new AI glasses—termed Pervert Glasses by the masses—is unfolding at breakneck pace. Silicon Valley, of course, is in denial about all of it.
This week on the podcast, to help make sense of this latest revolt against a Silicon Valley project, I spoke with Chris Gilliard, an author, thinker, and surveillance scholar who’s spent many years investigating big tech’s efforts to seduce us with sleek, aspirational products, track us, and harvest our data. Gilliard is the author of Luxury Surveillance, a forthcoming book about this very subject from MIT Press; you may better know him as Hypervisible, the handle he uses online and on Bluesky.
It was a great chat, and Gilliard’s work is absolutely vital. Hope you enjoy.
In case you missed it, I wrote about some of the topics we discuss above in this week’s column:
Other stories mentioned in the segment and the interview:
“Luxury Surveillance,” Real Life Mag, by Chris Gilliard and David Golumbia.
Heatmap’s latest data center sentiment poll.
“Data Centers’ 'Oh sh-t moment’, Politico.
“Flock CEO Begs for ‘Compromise’ as Backlash Spills Over,” Futurism.
‘Darth Vader’ Wants Flock in San Diego, 404 Media, by Sam Cole.
“Man Charged With 3 Felonies For Breaking 3D-Printed ‘Decoy’ Flock Camera, 404 Media,” by Jason Koebler.
“Grand Jury Declines to Indict Man Caught on Camera Destroying Flock Pole”, Futurism.
“Songs created by AI banned from Australia’s music charts,” BBC.
“Apple Music to Add Labels for AI-Generated Music Later This Year,” Billboard.
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