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...

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...

'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...

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...

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...

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.COM This is a Podot podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more...

My guest for today’s discussion, which looks back on 2023, which has been labelled by some (including everyone’s favourite Substacker Matt Yglesias) as the media’s “annus horribilis” is Ian Silvera. Ian is a former political journalist here in the UK but has now crossed the divide to work for a fancy PR agency. This makes him well-placed to discuss the trends that are buffeting the industry, but Ian also writes Future News, an excellent newsletter looking at the places where innovation...

Jathan Sadowski, my guest today, is an academic and our conversation is going to sound a bit academic. He’s a senior fellow at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University in Melbourne. He has also authored a book called, worryingly, Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World and co-hosts a, much more successful, weekly podcast called This Machine Kills. I recorded this interview with Jathan back in the summer, so I’m...

My guest today made a chicken sandwich. It took him 6 months and cost him $1500. Now, this wouldn’t usually be cause for inviting someone onto a podcast to talk about globalisation, but Andy George is no ordinary maker of chicken sandwiches. He runs a YouTube channel called How To Make Everything, which, at time of writing, has 1.74m subscribers. Andy’s premise is simple, he makes everything but he makes it from scratch. He procures everything straight from the source, and then works...

This morning, upon waking – it’s currently 7:50am as I type, but not as I read – I lay in bed for the first half hour and scrolled through Instagram Reels. This isn’t something I do very often but it’s a pursuit that people around me – ahem – do quite a lot of. To be honest, I still predominantly use Instagram in the old school way, scrolling through my home screen of people’s grid posts, or watching their stories. But then occasionally I remember the existence of Reels and a few minutes...

Today, I want to talk about Wikipedia – not because I think it’s under any real threat from Elon Musk or other external forces. Instead, I want to talk about it because I think it’s something of subtly profound importance in the internet age. In a moment you’ll hear me speaking to Alex Hollender who was a staff member at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that runs the show, who led the 2023 re-resign of Wikipedia. We’re going to talk about what it’s like to work for the online...

I’m a smartphone addict. I admit it. I’ve just checked my screentime on my Apple iPhone SE and it’s 1 hour and 28 minutes per day on average, a figure that should be shocking except that I know, from those around me, that it’s not very much by modern standards. I won’t name names but I know people who have 6, 7, 8 hours of screen time per day. This is the point at which the phone becomes another domain, another life. You will spend a less fortunate person’s lifetime staring at that screen,...

This is The Ned Ludd Radio Hour – your weekly dose of tech scepticism, cynicism and absurdism. Hosted by me, Nick Hilton. This is a podcast for people who love tech and people who hate it (just not for those who don't care). Each week the new Ned Ludd sends me a missive (republished below) and then I speak to a top bod (or two) about issues that I think are interesting. This week I'm speaking to Gavin Mueller, an academic at the University of Amsterdam and author of Breaking Things at Work:...

Once a week, and with the help of guests from across the world of technology and power, I’ll relay a message from the new NED LUDD, a shadowy figure of global technological importance. And then I’ll look at the biggest issues facing society and culture today, and ask whether the die is cast. Can we have a better technology? Or are we doomed to have computers cannibalise the world that millennia of human civilization has built? And does it even matter? This is a podcast for people who love...