The Ned Ludd Radio Hour

Julio Vincent Gambuto is a New York based author and marketing professional. His new book is Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!: How to Take Back Our Time, Attention, and Purpose in a Relentless World. As you’ll hear from our conversation, most of the ideas that Julio posits in the book are things that came to him during the covid-19 lockdown in 2020, when the intricate structures of the world where exposed for all to see. But Julio’s book is not really about decluttering your inbox. It’s not even about stopping yourself from paying £30 a month for watery high street mochas. It’s about using that word – unsubscribe – as a manifesto. I asked Ned, quickly, what they thought about this idea of an unsubscribe culture, and whether we might be at a turning point. I will caveat their response by saying that they – like me, to be fair – have some business interests at stake in that not happening. “NICK, ALL THE DATA SHOWS THAT SUBSCRIPTION GOES IN ONE DIRECTION: UP. THIS QUESTION OF DECLUTTER AND DISENTANGLE IS ONE ONLY DISCUSSED IN SPECIFIC CIRCLES – THE SORT OF CIRCLES WHERE GUYS ARE BUYING 500 DOLLAR DUMB PHONES AND GOING ON WORDLESS YOGA RETREATS THAT COST THE ANNUAL SALARY OF SOME BLUE COLLAR SCHMUCK. AND THE INTERNET HAS MADE RELATIONSHIP SUBSCRIPTION – AS YOU PUT IT – ALL THE MORE COMMON AND VALUABLE. HOW MANY OF YOUR HIGH SCHOOL FRIENDS ARE YOU STILL LINKED TO, EVEN VIA INSTAGRAM OR FACEOOK, NOW, AS OPPOSED TO YOUR PARENTS GENERATION WHO WILL BE TAKEN TOTALLY OFF GUARD WHEN THEY HEAR THAT THEIR KIDDIE BEST FRIEND ACTUALLY DIED FIVE YEARS AGO? CONNECT, CONNECT, CONNECT; SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE, SUBSCRIBE. LIKE IT OR NOT THIS IS THE FLOW OF TRAVEL.” Even though I don’t really disagree with the premise that people’s subscription obsession and consequent connectivity is broadly still trending upwards, I don’t think the move to Marie Kondo our digital worlds is unique to technological toffs. It’s a bandwidth issue as much as anything. Maintaining a multi-platform social media habit, listening to podcasts and watching YouTube and reading newsletters, keeping on top of your work email, your personal email, the email you just use to get fresh voucher codes. It’s a lot. And people aren’t just actively rebelling against it – they’re running out of time. So I do think we should think more proactively about what we subscribe to, and that’s where Julio comes in. He spoke to me last week from a house in New Jersey, and hopefully you’ll glean something useful from our chat.Presented by Nick Hilton.Music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.Artwork is by Tom Humberstone.NEDLUDDLIVES.COM

Here in the UK we have an estimated adult literacy rate of 99%, which the US is at 86%. Amongst UN member states, the average is 86.7%. Adult literacy has been one of the great triumphs of the 20th century, but it has also become a productive necessity as the service and information economies have grown. It is hard to conduct business without being able to read.And yet the pleasure of reading is something that is being steadily eroded. Book markets are being dominated by celebrity memoirs, self-help books and children’s fiction. On the latter, it is striking that children’s books make up a third of all book sales in the UK despite children making up, firstly, about 21% of the population and, secondly, being largely unable to read. What is the point of buying children all these books, focusing so much on teaching them to read, if they don’t grow up to be readers?This is why I dialled up Tom Rowley. Tom is a former Economist journalist who gave up his very successful career at the mag to start a bookshop: Backstory. He’s been chronicling this for the past couple of years, as Backstory has gone from a glint in the milkman’s eye to a very real shop on the high street in London. In this wide ranging discussion, we’ll look at reading, books and bookshops in a digital age, and how maybe – just maybe – they’re defying some of the anticipated trends….Presented by Nick Hilton.Sound mixing by Ewan Cameron.Theme song by Apes of the State.Cover artwork by Tom Humberstone.More video on COOLER.NEWS

The impact that technology has on psychology is a new field of research, and one where the multi-decade studies required to give definitive answers are still many years away. One of the other fields being covered is the area of certainty. Is the internet making people to certain about the opinions? Too close-minded to the possibility that they might be wrong, or might have more to learn? And to what extent is the internet responsible for a crisis in over-confidence? Or is it simply another manifestation of a totally natural mammalian tendency towards confidence?These are difficult questions to answer, not least because they scratch at the core question that should be vexing technologists. Is technology good for the human brain? Or is technology simply the result of a human brain that’s screwed up in all the ways that technology is? Which came first, chicken or egg; technological nonsense-boosting or the scattershot human brain?To answer all this, I’m joined by Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention, and the more recent Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. It’s the latter book we talk about mainly, and because we recorded this interview a few weeks ago, I’ve largely forgotten what we spoke about. Maybe the content of this episode is the greatest uncertainty of all. Anyway, I’ll be listening and hopefully you will too.The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.Written and presented by Nick Hilton.The theme music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the StateThe artwork is by Tom Humberstone.NEDLUDDLIVES.COM

Today, we're speaking to Kester Brewin, an author who works for the delightfully named Institute for the Future of Work here in London. He’s just about to release a new book called God-like: a 500 year history of Artificial Intelligence in myths, machines and monsters. It's a book which charts the ideas that underpin everything – from ChatGPT and Dall.E to the recently-released Sora – back to their roots. Is there something quasi-theological about the way we discuss the possible implications of these radical new technologies? Don’t think of this as a history of Artificial Intelligence, per se, but a history of the impulse that has led us, inexorably, towards AI.The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast, written and presented by Nick Hilton.The theme music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.The artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

'Enshittification' is a word coined by the Canadian writer and technologist Cory Doctorow to describe, to filch Wikipedia’s definition, “the pattern of decreasing quality of online platforms that function as two-sided markets”. This is the tension behind much of Big Tech. How do businesses extract value without destroying the identity that they built, and, as a result, alienating their userbase? Doctorow coined the term enshittification in 2022, and it feels to me like it has captured a moment of social media in full maturity. After more than a decade of mass uptake – whether that’s a microblogging platform like Twitter, a network like Facebook, or even streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, which owe much to the social revolution – there is a cooling off of the desire to endlessly solicit new users. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A viable revenue stream.Cory Doctorow's new book, The Internet Con, is available wherever you could reasonably expect to purchase books (or online).The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast, written and presented by Nick Hilton.The theme music is 'Internet Song' by Apes of the State.The artwork is by Tom Humberstone.

I don’t want to be too pearl clutching in all this, but there are some kids who never touch grass, figuratively or literally. I see these groups of teenagers in London who seem to be chatting but seem also to have their headphones in, like they’re living some strange hybrid life. How long is it before the ability to function, in a society that has long prizes independence, is irreparably eroded?To discuss all this, I dialled up Lenore Skenazy. Lenore is a writer, activist and president of Let Grow, a parenting organisation. Her book Free-Range Parenting outlines her stance on giving children more, not less, independence. She even hosted a show on Cineflix called World’s Worst Mom, a moniker she was given after she wrote a column about letting her 9-year-old ride the subway alone (but more on that in a second). Anyway, here’s our conversation, which hopefully gives you something to think about…The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast.For sales and advertising email nick@podotpods.comNEDLUDDLIVES.COM

Look, let’s get real: if you’re a bricklayer or a pilot or a veterinary nurse or a paediatric orthodontist or the pest control guy who delicately places pieces of cheese in mouse traps, there hasn’t been a work from home revolution. The revolution, in so much as there has been one, has been in the information services sector, an area that probably over-hired, over-invested in real estate, and was probably desperate to slash both those costs. But if you are a professional in one of these industries, I’m sure you’ve noticed a very real change in the world of work. Work from home and hybrid working has gone from the strange preserve of senior executives and recent relocaters, to an almost default presumption.Research in 2021 by IWG found that 85% of 18-24 year olds would take flexible working as a perk ahead of a 10% salary bump. A 2023 survey of possible business perks found that 94% felt that work from home would improve their wellbeing, making it the most desired perk. What were the other top perks, I hear you ask. In second plays, flexi-hours, in bronze medal, flexi-location. All of these beat out number four: a bonus cheque.I happened upon a business called Ashore and found it an interesting premise. It is, essentially, a way of making remote work more appealing to the human instinct. They market a bunch of properties set up for remote working, but which are set in beautiful landscapes or interesting parts of the world. They see it as a way, I think, of breaking out of the home and office binary, and offering a third space. A work space that encourages humans to be humans rather than pure working drones.Anyway, I wanted to get the company’s co-founder Aled Maclean-Jones on to discuss his journey to Ashore, what they’re trying to build there and how he views the work from home revolution. He’s a really interesting, clear thinker, so do stick around now to hear what he thinks…The Ned Ludd Radio Hour is a Podot podcast, written and presented by me, Nick Hilton.The music is Internet Song by Apes of the State and the artwork is by Tom Humberstone.For all queries, go to PODOTPODS.COM 

This is an atypical episode of The Ned Ludd Radio Hour to kick things off in 2024. Rather than an interview, or a missive from Ned, this is just an audio version of a blog called 'The Hedge Bet on Humanity'. Do listen and enjoy; next week we'll be back with more interviews with top technological thinkers!Written and presented by Nick Hilton.Artwork by Tom Humberstone.Music by Apes of the State.NEDLUDDLIVES.COMThis is a Podot podcast.