Podcast Description
“I get to teach some students who are closer to the engineering side of things and over the years I’ve certainly taught quite a few of them. And when they talk about that they want to improve the world and make things better and you look at the kinds of education they have and the social background they’ve had, these are people who have no clue what goes on in the world. They have their own Fox News projection of the world that is highly racialized and in some cases they don’t even know how little they know.”David Golumbia is Associate Professor of Digital Studies in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of The Cultural Logic of Computation (2009), The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (2016), and is currently working on Cyberlibertarianiasm: The False Promise of Digital Freedom.https://twitter.com/dgolumbia/status/1265635691167469570?s=20
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Transcription

00:30Kim Crayton: Hello, everyone. And welcome to today's episode of the #CauseAScene podcast. Today my guest is David—and I knew I was going to do this, people. I knew it. I knew it. I am having such a... my brain is so tired. We just went through this. His last name rhymes with Columbia. So it's Golumbia. But every time I want to say it, my brain—there's like a barrier that gets right in front of the words, and like, "Nope. You're not going to say this right. You're not going to say it." And pronouns are he/him. Welcome, David. [Laughs]David: Thank you so much. And you are not alone, that—having trouble with my name is—you have very good company.Kim: All right, so we start every show by asking my guest: why is it important to cause a scene? And how are you causing a scene?David: Well, specifically with regard to, I think, why you are having me on the show, there is a worldview that comes along with the digital revolution that I think is extremely dangerous. And I've been saying it's extremely dangerous for over 20 years at this point—25 years—and sadly, everything that I have predicted and warned about has come to pass. And it seems to me that I don't know what else to do except to keep causing a scene about it and doing my best to try to alert people to the ways in which too much digital technology just drives us toward the political right and toward division and against democracy and equality and other things that I value. And I think you also value.02:16Kim: So you wrapped all that up in one sentence, and that's good. One pass. That's great. So I want to talk to you because I've been—I think I want to go back right quick. Yes, so I've—this is not the—I asked David more than once to come on the show. I want to make sure... and the one that got me that both of us were like, "OK, it's time." And so I'll read this tweet of David; this from May 27th, and it says, quote:What would happen if #socialmedia... what would happen, hashtag...Lord have mercy. Let's do this again."what would happen to #socialmedia if it were made illegal?" is the wrong question.the right question is, "why was social media considered legal in the first place?"the answer involves one of the most brutal acts of regulatory arbitrage in history. #Section23003:07And so, this is apropos more than what we thought when we scheduled this, because you and I have our reasons for understanding why Section 230 is an issue, but right now the—I was about to call 'em the west. Lord have mercy. The right—particularly this president—has an assault on Section 230 but for totally different reasons than you and I have. So... [both laugh] And that's—and you know what?—and that's interesting because—and I'm glad we can talk about this—because it highlights how so many—we've allowed—and tech has facilitated this—we've allowed so many different opinions to be considered expert. And so it's hard to decide or discern,