The Anti-Dystopians

FROM THE ARCHIVE: Alina Utrata talks with Josh Lappen, a fellow Californian and environmental historian researching at Oxford University, who studies some of the most important technology there is: critical infrastructure. They discuss why hundreds of Elon Musks can’t (and won’t) solve climate change, the government funding and politics behind many technology entrepreneurs’ businesses, why low-tech solutions and indigenous practices are critical sources of knowledge, and the surprising number of technological innovations enabled by the US Postal Service (including Amazon’s e-commerce business and commercial flight). Plus, is PG&E really the worst company, what’s going on with the Texas blackouts, and should the government give you an email (and a bank account)?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, the Anti-Dystopians talks to an expert in dystopia! Matthew Cole is a scholar of political theory and an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences Binghamton University. His book “Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the 20th century” explores the history of dystopian thinking and why so many dystopian books have captured our political imagination (or indeed, accurately predicted our political future). We discuss the history of utopianism and dystopianism, whyy the emerged so prominently in the 20th century, and how dystopian literature and slogans (from “Make Atwood Fiction Again” to “1984 Was Not an Instruction Manual”) have come to characterize today’s political resistance movements. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata interviews Amira Moeding, a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Cambridge where they held fellowships with Cambridge Digital Humanities and the Cluster of Excellence “Matters of Activity” at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. They talked all about Amira’s research on the intellectual history of Large Language Models, and other types of AI. They began by asking: why is it so shocking to begin with a history and philosophy of linguistics when talking about LLMs? Why did IBM want these natural language processors to be so energy intensive (hint: to make money)? What is machine empiricism, how does it relate to the invention of Big Data, and why does it limit the way we see and understand the world around us? Amira has worked on critical theory, philosophy of science, feminist philosophy, post-colonial theory and the history of law in settler colonial contexts before turning to data and Big Data, and their paper “Machine Empiricism” together with Professor Tobias Matzner is forthcoming. Until June they were employed as an Research Assistant at the Computer Science Department (Computerlab) at the University of Cambridge in this project. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a senior lecturer in Critical AI at Goldsmiths University and the author of "Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They talk about the state of AI adoption in the UK since our last conversation (spoiler alert: it’s bad), why the Starmer government so obsessed with AI, how AI is harming the environment and the planet and papering over the degradation of public services, infrastructure and community. Most notably, they discuss Dan’s concept of ‘decomputing’ and how communities can resist the adoption of AI to build communities of care — and why we should just abolish AI.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, Alina Utrata talks to Swati Srivastava, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. They discussed Swati’s work on hybrid sovereignty, private actors in global governance — and, yes, of course, Elon Musk. Listen to hear about why the classic distinctions between public and private power is much messier than we think, what discussions of sovereignty can tell us about corporate power, and what might be new about these new technology companies and algorithmic governance. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Andrew Dougall, a departmental lecturer in international relations at DPIR and associate member at St Antony’s college at Oxford University. They discuss Andrew’s work on global infrastructures and corporate control in the international system, from DOGE to subsea cables. What are global infrastructures? Who, historically, has built them? Are platform companies like Meta and Twitter really so unique, or do builders and controlled of networked infrastructure always have political power? And do states or empires really have the ability to control them?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Rowena Squires, a PhD Candidate in Children’s Literature at Cambridge University. They discuss the strange legacy of the depiction of outer space in children’s animation. From the (not-so-cute-after-all) robot and the consumerist environmental collapse of Earth in WALL-E, the re-telling of colonial narratives of the frontier in Treasure Planet and Lightyear, to Walt Disney’s relationship with the former rocket scientist Werner von Braun in selling the American public on space and Space Mountain. They ask what are better ways of imagining outer space, and the human relationship to nature on Earth and in the stars (and viewing recommendations for your holiday break this year)?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dr. Tim Karayiannides, a junior research fellow at Emmanuel College, about his recent article about the similarities and connections between South Africa and Silicon Valley. While Elon Musk’s childhood in apartheid in South Africa is sometimes cited as an explanation for his far-right views, there is in fact a much deeper history of connection between Californian and South Africa — from exporting gold mining engineers, to the establishment of technical universities, computer engineers who joined finance, to the histories of eugenics and racial capitalism. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.socialAll episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s podcast, Alina Utrata talks to Jan Eijking, a William Golding Junior Research Fellow and Martin Fellow at Oxford University. Jan’s work is based in international relations, and focuses on expertise, empire, capitalism and the history and theory of international organizations. They talked about everything from the Suez Canal Company to SpaceX — and how thinking about “experts,” expertise in politics can have a lot to say about the recent elections, the Silicon Valley engineers plans, but also the wider history of these infrastructural projects in empire.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social and Jan Eijking at @janeijking.bsky.social.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, your usual host is in the hot seat! Guest host Benjamin Tan, PhD Candidate at Cambridge, asks Alina Utrata about her recent publication in the American Political Science Review about Silicon Valley's outer space colonization projects. They discuss what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are up to in space, why terrestrial and celestial colonization are not as different as they may seem, what the history of the British East India Company can tell us about SpaceX and Blue Origin, and why indigenous conceptions of property can problematize sovereignty and territoriality and the way we think about political power and rule today.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata speaks with Julia Slupska, Olivia Andrews and Hilary Watson about a recent report by Glitch UK entitled "Digital Misogynoir: Ending the dehumanising of Black women on social media." They discuss why Black women are uniquely targeted and harmed online, the importance of centering intersectionality in discussing digital harms, the difficulties of conducting (and finding funding) for this kind of research and why Glitch is calling on tech companies, governments and civil societies to address these issues.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke with Catriona Gray, a PhD at the University of Bath working at the intersection of sociology, politics, and law on the adoption of AI technologies. They discussed the political economy of data and whether frameworks like ‘data is the new oil’ are helpful to understanding these relationships; what is new about the technological structures or dynamics that have been created today; thinking about the inequities between the Global North and the Global South, and how these relates to existing and historical relationships; and the implementation and conceptualization of AI regulation in governments and beyond.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata talks to Dr Matt Mahmoudi, the lead researcher on the Amnesty International report "Automating Apartheid" examining the deployment of facial recognition technology in Palestine. They discuss the report's findings, including how this facial recognition technology is being deployed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and consolidates existing practices of discriminatory policing; why these systems have been 'gamified' and how they connect to other infrastructures and databases; how this is affecting Palestinians’ lives; and whether existing CCTV systems in other settings — including London — could be repurposed for similar kinds of militarized policing. For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode of The Anti-Dystopians, Alina Utrata spoke to Paola Ricurate, an associate professor in the Department of Media and Digital Culture at Tecnológico de Monterrey and faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the co-founder of the Tierra Comun Network, and Sebastián Leheude, a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Centre of Governance and Human Rights and a Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University. They discussed Paola and Sebastian’s work on data colonialism, decoloniality and feminism and Latin America. What is the connection between historic forms of colonialism and what technology infrastructures are being built now? Why are tech companies building data centers (and swimming pools) in the desert? How are local communities resisting these infrastructures and what are alternative ways of imagining our future?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of the Anti-Dystopians, Maha Atal is back to discuss feminism, reproductive rights and technology. Host Alina Utrata asks her: how has the legal landscape of abortion and reproductive rights changed since the overturning of Roe v Wade, and what are technology companies doing about it? Does your GP know who their cloud computing provider is (and do they have access to your sensitive health data)? How do the US and UK feminist movements differ? And why is feminism, gender and the right to bodily autonomy on the frontline against fighting fascism today?For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University and the author of the new book Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race. They discuss whether Elon Musk acts like a religious leader, how imperial Christianity set the stage for capitalism, the ways science fiction has acted as a mythology for space expansionists, and the history of a Nazi rocket scientist turned Christian evangelical partnered with Disney to promote the new Manifest Destiny of the stars.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Alina Utrata on Twitter @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Raymond Craib, professor of American History and a Latin Americanist at Cornell University, about his most recent book Adventure Capitalism, A History of Libertarian Exit from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age.They discuss the history of libertarian exit and the case of Michael Oliver's Republic of Minerva, why these exit projects seem to have found a new life among tech elites and if Silicon Valley will really be able to cede from the nation-state, whether libertarian exit resembles classic colonialism and the impacts these projects have on the places they attempt to build their new nations.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Raymond Craib on Twitter @raycraib, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of the podcast, Alina Utrata speaks with Emile Torres, a PhD candidate at Leibniz University Hannover and the author of the forthcoming book Human Extinction: A history of the Science and Ethics of Annihilation. They discuss their research into Elon Musk’s favorite philosophy, longtermism, and answer all your questions about the philosophy like: do longtermists really want to colonize space and create trillions of digital people? How does effective altruism, transhumanism and utilitarianism relate? Why do longtermists obsession with future people resemble the anti-abortion campaign? And are they related to the eugenicists? For all the reasons why you should be skeptical of What We Owe the Future, listen to this week’s episode of the Anti-Dystopians!For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Emile Torres on Twitter @xriskology, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Julia Slupska, a DPhil Candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute researching feminist approaches to cybersecurity, and Stefanie Felsberger, a PhD Candidate in Gender Studies at Cambridge University studying surveillance, data capitalism and period tracking apps. They discuss whether you should be worried about your period tracking apps, how reproductive justice, eugenics and the carceral state intersect and what a feminist approach to cyber-security might look like.For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Julia Slupska on Twitter @jayslups and Stefanie Felseberger @Flsbrgr, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Anti-Dystopians is back from its summer hiatus! In this episode, Alina Utrata talks to Dan McQuillan, a Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths University of London, about his new book “Resisting AI: An Anti-Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence.” They discuss how the dangers of automated bureaucracy and algorithmic cruelty, what Max Weber and Hannah Arendt can tell us about AI, whether AI might bring back eugenics in a new coat and how to resist AI and fascism across the world.You can order Dan's book here: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/resisting-ai For a complete reading list from the episode, check out the Anti-Dystopians substack at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.You can follow Dan McQuillan on Twitter @danmcquillan, Alina Utrata @alinautrata and the Anti-Dystopians podcast @AntiDystopians.All episodes of the Anti-Dystopians are hosted and produced by Alina Utrata and are freely available to all listeners. To support the production of the show, subscribe to the newsletter at bit.ly/3kuGM5X.Nowhere Land by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4148-nowhere-landLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.