This episode begins with audio from Ursula K. Le Guin’s speech at the National Book Awards, so you know you have to listen https://twitter.com/machinekillspod/status/1334377385668435968

I would also make a point on speed and time that’s only partly explored by @jathansadowski and @bigblackjacobin in their discussions about Sidewalk Toronto and China’s new competition rules and swift enforcement.

So often when it comes to tech, there’s a valorization of speed — move fast and break things — and when we talk about having a greater public involvement or more collaborative development, one of the knocks against it is that it could slow down “innovation.”

Meanwhile, when it comes to governance, a lot of things move quite slowly — but I feel like what you often see is that if something benefits corporate interests, it will move much quicker than if it’s a pro-social policy or reform. Those things take ages.

It’s important then to recognize that the speedy innovations are also serving capitalist interests.

“Move fast and break things” has produced a ton of intended (avoiding regulations and labor rules) and unintended (a lot of the FB stuff) negative consequences…

…but they’re justified by arguing they were necessary for the benefits of the technologies — benefits which often accrue most to well-off folks.

But it’s entirely unclear to me why the generalized benefits couldn’t have been realized through a slower, more considerate process.

In the @machinekillspod episode, the discussion of Sidewalk Toronto shows that resident opposition eventually convinced Alphabet to pull out — even though the City still wanted to collaborate with them.

The process was designed to favour ST and it took a long battle to kill it.

Meanwhile, the example of Chinese competition policies shows how quickly things can move if people in power depending on interests.

In the US, antitrust is moving very slowly because it challenges dominant interests; in China, there are fewer barriers because CCP has upper hand.

This is all to say that speed itself shouldn’t be an end, but rather we should consider who benefits from speedy processes.

Right now, speed — whether in tech or gov — serves capitalists, and we should want to slow them down while speeding up process that serve collective goals.

It’s unlikely collective processes will ever be as fast as capitalist processes that streamroll over the public good for power and profit.

We should be completely okay if tech development takes a little longer for better outcomes, while speeding up pro-social governance.