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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/