WFMU: Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from April 26, 2021

Listener comments!
	6:01pm ultradamno: Mark! Techtownunderoos!
	6:02pm Otis: Hello Mark & Tectonians!
	🤖 6:02pm DjLorraine: Right here, right now hi folks
	🤖 6:02pm Ken From Hyde Park: Hi, Mark and refugees from the Google Gulag!
	6:02pm listener james from westwood: Evening, Mark and all!
	🤖 6:03pm PaulRobeson1920: Goood evening Ya’ll!
	6:04pm David in London: Evening Technoids. Hello Mark and all assembled tech-groovers.
	6:05pm BNowB.: Good Evening
	🤖 6:05pm Bas NL: Hi Mark! All!
	6:05pm Constance De Witt: Hi Mark and everyone!
	6:06pm Dvs: Hello!
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: Hi Mark & Dennis & al.
	6:07pm Mark Hurst: @ultra @Otis @DjL @KfHP @James @PaulR @DiL @BNowB @Bas @Constance @Dvs @Webham welcome! Thanks for joining in!
	6:08pm Carmichael: Heya Mark. Our weekly end of the world party.
	6:08pm B R M: I was raised in Flint, MI! Flint Central HS alum...!
	6:08pm StringOFperils: This sounds exactly like the place I grew up in.
	6:08pm Mark Hurst: @Carmichael well, welcome to it
	6:09pm Mark Hurst: @BRM cool!
	🤖 6:09pm herb.nyc: Come on, technology is important and needed. If not present, we’d not have Techtonic, and we wouldn’t know mark hurst. - - boo hiss, author said reagan and thatcher.
	6:09pm ultradamno: Apparently, people from that time are still getting tracked down for being in arrears on VHS rental returns.
	🤖 6:11pm herb.nyc: Did the Rand Corporation invent Atn Rand?
	6:11pm StringOFperils: Doctors and lawyers are next.
	6:11pm Mark Hurst: @herb I think no relation between Ayn & the corp. I think (but someone could correct me) that RAND had to do with R&D ("R and D")
	6:12pm listener james from westwood: "We're getting a computer! It's going to do lots of magical things, like make Harry Crane seem important." —Roger Sterling
	6:13pm Fox: I'm waiting for the Butlerain Jihad.
	6:13pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Interesting Sociological premise. With the pandemic - been feeling the acute contrast of our national identity now with the WWII & Eisenhower eras - when some senese of common purpose & even community benevolence & unity may have existed. Of course - only for a few or even just the Myth of it... Now when we need Unity we fail completely & catastrophically...
	6:13pm melinda: Hi everyone
	6:13pm Mark Hurst: @melinda welcome
	🤖 6:14pm Webhamster Henry: Where would we get our all-important Disruption?
	🤖 6:17pm PaulRobeson1920: Taft–Hartley passed in 1947! Please, look up Paul Robeson’s commentary on Taft-Hartly In his own words! Paul Robeson speaks on these issues! “The union makes us strong” and brings a decent standard of living for laboring people (work union live better)... now today less than 9% of public sector workers are unionized
	🤖 6:17pm herb.nyc: I wonder if there is a character(s) in Factory 19 who uses technology in the safety of his home. But he’s caught out when his bosses ping him and find out.
	6:18pm ultradamno: The main technology I'd like to live in the time before right now is car alarms.
	6:18pm Mark Hurst: @herb no spoilers, but there JUST MIGHT be a scene exactly like what you describe...
	🤖 6:19pm herb.nyc: Holy Fahrenheit 451, Batman!
	6:19pm WR: Listening. Laughing.
	6:19pm StringOFperils: Because the colours contained a range of uber-toxins no longer legal to produce/employ....for one thing
	6:19pm David in London: The other day I said to a colleague, “No, I don’t want to meet on Teams. Let’s speak on the phone instead“, and I could hear an almost audible intake of breath at the shock of it.
	🤖 6:20pm PaulRobeson1920: @Rev Rabbit- Having wholesome role models are important. The value of good role models cannot be overstated! “Man is an imitative creature” Yeah it went down hill because we Cannot have guns and better...
	🤖 6:21pm Ken From Hyde Park: I suspect there's less chrome on today's cars vs. the 1948 cars.
	🤖 6:21pm Webhamster Henry: Yeah Lead and Asbestos, vacuum tube radios, lots and lots of fossil fuels: oil, coal, gas, kerosene lamps.
	🤖 6:21pm PaulRobeson1920: It cost 100,000 dollars to Kill 1 Vietcong Solider, but only 53 dollars a year for each American enrolled in LBJ’s war on poverty program!
	6:21pm David in London: More chrome and less Chrome.
	6:22pm mrdonutsu: I dunno man. I'm not sure we should be holding up assembly line work in a factory as apotheosis of human development.
	🤖 6:22pm PaulRobeson1920: Guns and butter*** forgive The typos. Typing quickly Here. Free-forming my comments
	6:23pm Mark Hurst: @DiL exactly
	6:23pm Constance De Witt: String good point about toxic products. Also film has a greater tonal range than digital.
	🤖 6:24pm herb.nyc: Boston Globe has op-Ed by Damon krakowski and joyce Linehan on Spotify’s royalty practice
	🤖 6:24pm Webhamster Henry: It takes longer to mine a Bitcoin using 1948 tech. 8^)
	6:24pm mrdonutsu: Anyone ever see Lous Malle's Humain, Trop Humain? That didn't look very fun to me.
	6:24pm ultradamno: On the other hand...I expect large swaths of the population would right feel the prospect of going back to the forties would be intensely unappealing and find an real upside to tech within this past week.
	6:24pm (Murakami Whywolf))): Growing-up I was in terror of ending-up in a factory. Seeing "Modern Times" certainly helped that, but the notion that an human's waking life could mostly be spent doing the same motions over and over again was (and is) horrifying. All that comraderie sounds nice (if you're not autistic), but you can do that on your ow time—invoking it seems analogous to invoking the love get allowed to feel each other during war. Let's automate _all_ those jobs out of existence and put all of us on Relief, just like the Surrealists and Pigmeat Markham called-for.
	6:25pm ed: As an illustrator, I'd love to go back to 1948. It was the Golden age of Illustration and I'd be paid a hell of lot more for my work!
	6:25pm (((Murakami Whywolf): I'll bet that after a few years in a factory and a lot of exposure to lead, they'll be happy to back the White Australia Policy.
	6:26pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Recent Psychedelic Salon on NFTs : psychedelicsalon.com... ...with consideration of both sides of it - including the environmental impact of data-mining. But the potentntial for Artists & Creatives to reclaim profit from Distribution is intriguing.
	6:26pm ultradamno: (did I just unintentionally introduce this chunk?)
	🤖 6:26pm PaulRobeson1920: I gotta get a copy of this book. No going back. We have a deep well of lessons and horror to draw from. A well that must never be exhausted.
	🤖 6:27pm PaulRobeson1920: 1948 murder was legal in America!!! In so many words. Do u know what i mean?
	6:28pm StringOFperils: No black vote til '65. Community. Benevolence. Unity. A fair and warm golden age. For some. Others, not so much at all. Golden age narratives are far too simple. A better world in the future requires real political will...maybe we'll see another 1789 of some sort, maybe not.
	6:28pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ' The most radical position to have in [U.S.] America is to have a Memory. '
	🤖 6:29pm Webhamster Henry: "History doesn't stop" - me, wearing my historical organization hat
	6:30pm (Murakami Whywolf))): I am incapable of nostalgia because I have near-perfect memory. Remembering is very different to nostalgia, which in practice tends to be more-or-less worship…which is the inability or refusal to see fault.
	6:30pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: This Crumb comes to mind : imgur.com...
	6:31pm Fredericks: Did Dennis use "Arcadian" as the opposite of dystopian? If not, what word did he use?
	6:31pm melinda: I heard arcadian too
	6:32pm Mark Hurst: @Fredericks not as an opposite, but as different from a dystopia, yes he used the word "arcadian" (referring to Eden)
	6:32pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...this one he has three possible endings on the bottom : www.austinauction.com...
	6:32pm Tom from Cotati: Nostalgia mainly seems to involve remembering a past that never actually existed.
	🤖 6:32pm Ken From Hyde Park: More planned obsolescence these days. Back then, you'd get things like shoes repaired, but now throw things away and get new stuff. Chuck your $1000 cell phone for a new one!
	6:33pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: KenFHP : Production & Consumption - & a Market that can only ever expand & expand into Infinity.
	6:34pm mrdonutsu: Blame Craigslist for the demise of the local newspaper, not Google or FB.
	🤖 6:36pm DjLorraine: I loved getting real shoes repaired.
	🤖 6:36pm Webhamster Henry: We all know home taping killed the music industry.
	6:38pm ed: Another great show Mark!
	6:38pm StringOFperils: Publishers are also, even as individual people, employees and functionaries of large mega-corporations, where divergent voices are quashed,internally, and also silenced with the might of money, externally.
	🤖 6:39pm Webhamster Henry: I can see a community like the Factory 19 one being set up here in Ulster County to make artisanal gee-gaws!
	6:39pm Tom from Cotati: Hey, remember how much coal they used to burn to run those big ol' factories and printing plants?
	6:39pm coelacanth∅: and the cars were extremely inefficient; and the newspapers came from trees... etc
	6:40pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Music & News are like everything: More & More owned by Fewer & Fewer.
	6:40pm ed: Oh. crap . Now that I think about it. 1948 would have sucked for me. I would have been blacklisted as a commie pinko.
	6:40pm Tom from Cotati: @Webhamster Henry: I thought that was the DAT?
	🤖 6:41pm chresti: I think television changed a lot of things.
	🤖 6:41pm Webhamster Henry: @Tom/Coatati it was the MiniDisc !
	6:41pm coelacanth∅: no autotune!
	6:41pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I see it as what Bernie says : We just want something that is WORTH working for. (In terms of wages to cost of living, health - &tc.)
	6:42pm ultradamno: Eden...like I want to wander around in the woods all day talking to snakes.
	6:42pm Tom from Cotati: @Webhamster Henry: Wait - wasn't it Napster?
	6:42pm PJ: Coelacantho: Like bitcoin, etc., is a good use of energy? The point of examining the past is to figure out what was good about it and try to conserve it or recreate it, and to obviously get rid of the bad things about it. The past 40 years have seen this country swallow entirely the right wing / tech arguments for destroying workers and creators rights. In this respect, the current world is way worse than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
	6:44pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I think it's a great exercise. Looking down the other end of the Telescope of my (I will not say 'our' but our) Future Shock...
	6:44pm Marci: PJ well said!
	6:44pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Back in 1948, the number of people who thought that the destruction of the past were inevitable was even larger than now. Both Left and Right—except for the most right-wing traditionalists like Buckley and Russell Kirk—saw Modern Life as sweeping-away All That Was. There was very little disagreement about that, much as how both American Capitalism and Russian Bolshevism were dedicated to Production! Above All, and screw both traditions and the environment.
	6:45pm coelacanth∅: PJ i'm pretty sure that's what Dennis and Mark have made clear already
	6:45pm PJ: @Mark: The media and government have blindly repeated and embraced so much of the rhetoric of the tech industry over the last 30 years that they have become mantras: "Disruption is great!", etc. Google's motto is "Don't be evil", when they are perpetrators of some of industry's biggest evils, etc.
	6:45pm melinda: Nostalgia gets a bad rap, in my opinion. One can look back fondly on a time because of certain aspects of it while acknowledging the suck part too. It's natural to mourn losses.
	🤖 6:46pm Webhamster Henry: [ ] click here if you agree to being tracked to improve your experience.
	6:47pm PJ: @Mark: Which is me just repeating things you've brought up time and again on this program.
	6:47pm WR: In the past I browsed Lewis Mumford, guess I should go back and read.
	6:47pm Tom from Cotati: If newspapers had been smart and not cheap and clueless, they would have jumped on the Internet in 1997, avoided the ad aggregators, and would still be powerful and relevant today. Taking on tons of debt by buying up all their competitors did not help any, though.
	🤖 6:47pm chresti: I think TV replaced reading newspapers and books.
	6:48pm earthwalker: It’s proven Facebook causes depression Face to Face days were better !
	6:48pm ultradamno: I'm going to stick with car alarms for this.
	🤖 6:48pm chresti: The boobtube.
	6:48pm ?: My parents were raised in the depression pop served in Europe and mom always worked and my nana raised five kids as a widow and they all told me always how things were so much better back in the day. True sense of community. I thought it was crap but now I know. But even in the early seventies you could tell the pollution was brutal. Smokestacks everywhere prior to the EPA making a huge difference (along w de industrialization naturally) Bitcoin. Omg. What a waste of energy in keeping with the degenerate spirit of the age of murdering the planet so you can pack money into offshore banks. Nostalgia literally is the pain of looking back
	6:48pm coelacanth∅: autotune!
	🤖 6:48pm Bas NL: Autotune.
	6:48pm StringOFperils: The Frisbee totally kicked off global collapse.
	🤖 6:49pm Ken From Hyde Park: Do we recite our names / handles on the recording?
	6:49pm ultradamno: Autotune is a good one, though.
	🤖 6:49pm Bas NL: Hah Coel!
	🤖 6:49pm chresti: Haha StringO.
	6:49pm PJ: Free jazz!
	6:49pm melinda: Self-driving cars!
	🤖 6:49pm DjLorraine: LEDs hurt my eyes, seriously
	6:50pm earthwalker: When my Mom was young television was not yet invented. They had big wooden radios
	6:50pm coelacanth∅: yeah, self-driving cars. what a nightmare.
	6:50pm The Butterman: I thought it was just me with these frickin newfangled light bulbs breaking in two seconds.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: There was plenty of social media in 1999
	🤖 6:50pm Bas NL: Anything reachable through a 'portal'.
	6:51pm ultradamno: I don't know about "smart" bulbs, but I haven't had a problem with LEDs.
	6:51pm Megaroni: Yes Mark, when I went to hardware story it surprised me they no longer had a choice of lightbulbs, disturbing
	6:51pm earthwalker: In 70 years we went from horse and buggy to the Moon That was fast
	6:51pm (Murakami Whywolf))): A local Chinese market, either with the help of our state's energy scheme or by scamming it, has L.E.D. light-bulbs for $0.25 each. Note: not all L.E.D. light-bulbs are 'smart'; most aren't, in fact.
	6:51pm PJ: Interesting that Orwell called his book 1984 by rearranging the year in which he finished it (1948), and Glover set his book in that same year.
	6:51pm melinda: @earthwalker my parents too. We had big wooden radios in the house because my father collected them.
	6:51pm coelacanth∅: i've used really bad led bulbs and really good ones
	6:52pm Tom from Cotati: Autotone is proof the Devil is real and in charge of society. Also cars that try to do anything more than drive and play the radio.
	6:52pm StringOFperils: Monoculture farming and its giant faceless seed-keeper- punishing soil-murdering forest-erasing life-annihilating petro-chemical Mom. #1 Terminator coming your way.
	6:52pm ultradamno: My 'why' with car alarms is not only are they annoying, but that they go off all the time makes them pointless, who comes running or alerts the authorities when they hear one?
	6:52pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Worst technology? Religion, in all its forms, including that one you like: it turns people into people unable to properly observe, reality-test, and reason.
	6:52pm earthwalker: Smart phones kill brains
	6:53pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: LEDs need to be adjusted for light quality - absolutely. They were meant to last longer than incandescents as well ! Were they not ?! A useful analogy it may seem for alll the Digital 'Improvements' - as for Audio. We get seduced by new benefits - & do not appreciate the benefits - even the Artfulness - of what was already there! There is also over-engineering - on a similar track. & - deliberate market obsolescence ! Making an Operating System not reverse-compatible with previous ones is a choice... & I suggest a Fail.
	6:53pm PJ: Webhamster Henry: social media was minimal in 1999 as far as most people are concerned. But I recently read a Wired article from 1997 about a social media network called "the Well" which foreshadowed many of the terrible societal effects of social media in Facebook, etc., but on a much smaller scale.
	6:53pm Tom from Cotati: @ultradamno: The neighbors when it goes on and on.
	6:54pm (Murakami Whywolf))): Privileging the new! over the durable goes back to well before the Internet.
	🤖 6:54pm PaulRobeson1920: Truman kicked Paul Robeson out of the oval office. Paul was speaking forcibly and loudly & demanding A federal Anti-lynch bill!! Unpunished murder ruled the day. This is Years before the public face of lynching emerged in 1955 with Emmitt Till and his mother demanding an open casket! And always Remember the Vietnam conflict 1954-1975. We cannot have guns & Butter. War is profoundly Immoral. We need a department of Peace and a department of music! funded on Par with the defense department! We demand Massive expenditures on Livingly as opposed to killingry! Forever more. Where are we trending? Towards a brotherhood of man. I sware it’s not too late. While involved in one we invariably neglect the other.
	6:54pm earthwalker: Melinda. Do you have any extras you could ship to France. I’ll pay !
	6:54pm PJ: The fracturing of attention is one of the worst effects of the internet.
	6:54pm Old Dave: Well said, Mark. Thank you once again!
	6:55pm Steve: While I agree with your being critical of much of modernity, your going out there being critical of LED lighting.
	🤖 6:55pm DjLorraine: StringofPearls seed stealers, yup
	6:55pm melinda: @earthwalker no, sorry! they've all been sold off.
	🤖 6:55pm PaulRobeson1920: Livingry as opposed to killingry - Bucky Fuller terms
	6:56pm David in London: Thanks Mark, great show today.
	6:56pm melinda: Surveillance lightbulbs!
	🤖 6:57pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark!
	6:57pm ultradamno: Didn't they have bulbs that would change color in coordination with certain TV broadcasts? That was odd.
	🤖 6:57pm Webhamster Henry: Mint yer coins in your lightbulbs.
	6:57pm Mark Hurst: @Steve totally possible that I've just bought the wrong bulbs. But I've tried a bunch of types and consistently wish I could go back to the old type!
	🤖 6:57pm chresti: I like LED bulbs because they're cooler.
	6:57pm Mark Hurst: @DiL thanks
	6:57pm adampsyche: john deere (sp?) has an adobe licensing contract for their tractors, later for them
	6:57pm earthwalker: Go to duck duck go
	6:58pm Mark Hurst: @Webham shhh, don't give the bros ideas
	6:58pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: PaulRobeson1920 - I agree. Power to the Poor & the Peaceful ! This ultimately is my Politics.
	🤖 6:58pm Webhamster Henry: You can run an LED bulb forever and it'll cost abut 10 cents a year.
	6:58pm listener 126464: another bulb firmware update?
	6:58pm ultradamno: And turn on quicker and brighter than CFLs, which I legit did not like
	6:58pm Tom from Cotati: The Internet and computers in gereral are proof that humans brains have not evolved anough to understand abstract concepts or do more that one thing at a time.
	🤖 6:59pm chresti: They make LED lightbulbs that look like olde timey filament bulbs.
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: This bulb reset is like what you do to get a car fob to bond with your car.
	6:59pm coelacanth∅: i use incandescent bulbs for applications close to my face, like at my desk
	🤖 6:59pm Ken From Hyde Park: Thanks, Mark. Maybe the bulbs you purchased had down-level firmware?
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: @chresti yes - that's another (to me) irritating aspect of the design
	7:00pm Tom from Cotati: @listener 126464: Every so often, the firmware update bricks your lamp.
	🤖 7:00pm Webhamster Henry: Nice instruction track - was that a video, Mark? because: TikTok.
	7:00pm coelacanth∅: Thanks Mark! Thanks Dennis!
	7:00pm Steve Schwartz: I was employed by companies involved with LED development. The methods of use are just coming into a good stage of development now. Normal development life cycle.
	7:00pm Mark Hurst: @KfHP ugh do I have to evaluate firmware now with lightbulbs
	7:00pm PJ: There is a filament light bulb (developed by Edison I think) from 120 years ago still working in a firehouse in San Francisco. It never burned out, so Edison had the bulb redesigned to be able to sell billions of light bulbs instead of thousands.
	7:00pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Wait, is that procedure supposed to sound complicated to us and give us unhappy feelings? It sounds simple enough to me….
	🤖 7:01pm chresti: "They"= designers.
	7:01pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone!
	🤖 7:01pm chresti: Thanks Mark!
	7:01pm WR: Thank you Mark.
	7:02pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I really like the LED analogy for the whole Tech mess - because there's really good ideas & advances there ...but they forgot they were for LIGHTING for PEOPLE... which was perhaps a more human Craft ! Perhaps they can address that... Yerknow it's like the record companies going from weirdos to bean-counters...
	7:03pm Mark Hurst: @RevRabbit good point!
	7:03pm (Murakami Whywolf))): When I was a graduate student in the mid-1980s I was glad to finally get a small office, less happy that it was tiny, shared, and poorly heated (except in summer, when it was a tandoor). It was in a part of the building that hadn't been used much, I guess, as there was a pointy-ended Mazda™ bulb in the light socket outside my door….
	🤖 7:03pm Webhamster Henry: We used to go electricity-less on Sundays for a while. Candles. Victrola. We lived in a big victorian house with about 7 fireplaces. We only ran about 2 of them though.
	7:04pm Otis: Thanks Mark!
	7:06pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Record companiers were (or, more usually, employed) weirdos only sporadically most of their existences, and routinely only from (maybe) 1965-1972.

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from April 26, 2021

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Conversations with creators and thinkers who are charting the way forward in a tech-saturated society. In our shift to a digital future, we need alternatives to Big Tech. Homepage: techtonic.fm

Also available as an MP3 podcast. More info at our Podcast Central page.

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Upcoming events:

Mon. Nov 25th, 6pm - 7pm: Technology we're thankful for (More info...)
Amidst all the headlines about predatory tech companies and misbehaving billionaires, we're taking a moment to remember that some tech is actually good. Drawing on listener submissions, Mark will discuss the tools, gadgets, and systemsthat people are genuinely thankful for.
Mon. Dec 23rd, 6pm - 7pm: Don Fleming guest hosts Techtonic

April 26, 2021: Dennis Glover, author, "Factory 19"

Listen to this show: Pop-up listen Pop-up player!

Tonight: Dennis Glover, author, "Factory 19"

Links:

• Factory 19, by Dennis Glover, published by Black Inc. (Buy the book here, and not Amazon!)

• DennisGlover.net: "Dennis Glover is an Australian writer and novelist. The son of factory workers, Dennis grew up in the working class Melbourne suburb of Doveton before studying at Monash University and King’s College Cambridge where he was awarded a PhD in history. He has worked for two decades as an academic, newspaper columnist, policy adviser and speechwriter to Australia’s most senior political, business and community leaders."

• Dennis Glover interview on NPR with Scott Simon (November 2017) about his novel The Last Man in Europe.

• Living Like It's 99: No Social Media, No Smartphone (by Gregory Alvarez, Feb 19, 2021): "Technology and progress are awesome things, but they have their bad side too. The funny thing is that we are so addicted to them that it requires a tremendous effort just to realize it. ... Life is not just more peaceful without a smartphone, it has great effects on your productivity too. ... Opening your phone every time you are bored kills your creativity and imagination. I’ve been on both sides of the mirror, and this side is better. Don’t take my word for it, just try and see for yourself. After 3 years without social media and 2 years without a smartphone, I can tell you that I may go back to social media one day, however I will never have a smartphone again."

• From He Quit the Internet 2 Months Before the Pandemic (by Charlie Warzel in the NYT, March 10, 2021) - about Aron Rosenberg turning off all digital devices for a year:

That’s when he saw a change. Most obvious was his ability to engross himself in books for long periods of time. Academic texts that had previously felt onerous were unlocked. He started following the trail of endnotes and exploring more obscure works that he might have otherwise overlooked.

“I realized just how much reliance on the internet caused me to privilege what was simply new over more durable ideas,” he said. He began rereading books and articles, and found himself drawing connections he’d missed before. It dawned on him that for most of his life he’d been engaged in what some scientists refer to as “surface reading,” a superficial way of absorbing ideas that results in low retention. With his brain less clouded by digital input, he was able to engage in “deep reading,” which is believed to lead to better comprehension and increased empathy.

The article also quotes Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude about a village getting its first phone: “It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay.”

- - -

PAST EPISODES: techtonic.fm lists recent Techtonic shows

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Artist	Track	Approx. start time
Dennis Glover discusses his novel "Factory 19," imagining a community banning all digital devices & tech invented after 1948.
Tomaš Dvořák	Game Boy Tune "Game Boy Tune" by "Tomaš Dvořák"
	Mark's intro "Mark's intro"
	Interview with Dennis Glover "Interview with Dennis Glover"	0:04:09 (Pop-up)
	Mark's comments "Mark's comments"	0:35:19 (Pop-up)
	She Drives Me Crazy (Percusapella) GE remix	0:54:37 (Pop-up)

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Listener comments!
	6:01pm ultradamno: Mark! Techtownunderoos!
	6:02pm Otis: Hello Mark & Tectonians!
	🤖 6:02pm DjLorraine: Right here, right now hi folks
	🤖 6:02pm Ken From Hyde Park: Hi, Mark and refugees from the Google Gulag!
	6:02pm listener james from westwood: Evening, Mark and all!
	🤖 6:03pm PaulRobeson1920: Goood evening Ya’ll!
	6:04pm David in London: Evening Technoids. Hello Mark and all assembled tech-groovers.
	6:05pm BNowB.: Good Evening
	🤖 6:05pm Bas NL: Hi Mark! All!
	6:05pm Constance De Witt: Hi Mark and everyone!
	6:06pm Dvs: Hello!
	🤖 6:06pm Webhamster Henry: Hi Mark & Dennis & al.
	6:07pm Mark Hurst: @ultra @Otis @DjL @KfHP @James @PaulR @DiL @BNowB @Bas @Constance @Dvs @Webham welcome! Thanks for joining in!
	6:08pm Carmichael: Heya Mark. Our weekly end of the world party.
	6:08pm B R M: I was raised in Flint, MI! Flint Central HS alum...!
	6:08pm StringOFperils: This sounds exactly like the place I grew up in.
	6:08pm Mark Hurst: @Carmichael well, welcome to it
	6:09pm Mark Hurst: @BRM cool!
	🤖 6:09pm herb.nyc: Come on, technology is important and needed. If not present, we’d not have Techtonic, and we wouldn’t know mark hurst. - - boo hiss, author said reagan and thatcher.
	6:09pm ultradamno: Apparently, people from that time are still getting tracked down for being in arrears on VHS rental returns.
	🤖 6:11pm herb.nyc: Did the Rand Corporation invent Atn Rand?
	6:11pm StringOFperils: Doctors and lawyers are next.
	6:11pm Mark Hurst: @herb I think no relation between Ayn & the corp. I think (but someone could correct me) that RAND had to do with R&D ("R and D")
	6:12pm listener james from westwood: "We're getting a computer! It's going to do lots of magical things, like make Harry Crane seem important." —Roger Sterling
	6:13pm Fox: I'm waiting for the Butlerain Jihad.
	6:13pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Interesting Sociological premise. With the pandemic - been feeling the acute contrast of our national identity now with the WWII & Eisenhower eras - when some senese of common purpose & even community benevolence & unity may have existed. Of course - only for a few or even just the Myth of it... Now when we need Unity we fail completely & catastrophically...
	6:13pm melinda: Hi everyone
	6:13pm Mark Hurst: @melinda welcome
	🤖 6:14pm Webhamster Henry: Where would we get our all-important Disruption?
	🤖 6:17pm PaulRobeson1920: Taft–Hartley passed in 1947! Please, look up Paul Robeson’s commentary on Taft-Hartly In his own words! Paul Robeson speaks on these issues! “The union makes us strong” and brings a decent standard of living for laboring people (work union live better)... now today less than 9% of public sector workers are unionized
	🤖 6:17pm herb.nyc: I wonder if there is a character(s) in Factory 19 who uses technology in the safety of his home. But he’s caught out when his bosses ping him and find out.
	6:18pm ultradamno: The main technology I'd like to live in the time before right now is car alarms.
	6:18pm Mark Hurst: @herb no spoilers, but there JUST MIGHT be a scene exactly like what you describe...
	🤖 6:19pm herb.nyc: Holy Fahrenheit 451, Batman!
	6:19pm WR: Listening. Laughing.
	6:19pm StringOFperils: Because the colours contained a range of uber-toxins no longer legal to produce/employ....for one thing
	6:19pm David in London: The other day I said to a colleague, “No, I don’t want to meet on Teams. Let’s speak on the phone instead“, and I could hear an almost audible intake of breath at the shock of it.
	🤖 6:20pm PaulRobeson1920: @Rev Rabbit- Having wholesome role models are important. The value of good role models cannot be overstated! “Man is an imitative creature” Yeah it went down hill because we Cannot have guns and better...
	🤖 6:21pm Ken From Hyde Park: I suspect there's less chrome on today's cars vs. the 1948 cars.
	🤖 6:21pm Webhamster Henry: Yeah Lead and Asbestos, vacuum tube radios, lots and lots of fossil fuels: oil, coal, gas, kerosene lamps.
	🤖 6:21pm PaulRobeson1920: It cost 100,000 dollars to Kill 1 Vietcong Solider, but only 53 dollars a year for each American enrolled in LBJ’s war on poverty program!
	6:21pm David in London: More chrome and less Chrome.
	6:22pm mrdonutsu: I dunno man. I'm not sure we should be holding up assembly line work in a factory as apotheosis of human development.
	🤖 6:22pm PaulRobeson1920: Guns and butter*** forgive The typos. Typing quickly Here. Free-forming my comments
	6:23pm Mark Hurst: @DiL exactly
	6:23pm Constance De Witt: String good point about toxic products. Also film has a greater tonal range than digital.
	🤖 6:24pm herb.nyc: Boston Globe has op-Ed by Damon krakowski and joyce Linehan on Spotify’s royalty practice
	🤖 6:24pm Webhamster Henry: It takes longer to mine a Bitcoin using 1948 tech. 8^)
	6:24pm mrdonutsu: Anyone ever see Lous Malle's Humain, Trop Humain? That didn't look very fun to me.
	6:24pm ultradamno: On the other hand...I expect large swaths of the population would right feel the prospect of going back to the forties would be intensely unappealing and find an real upside to tech within this past week.
	6:24pm (Murakami Whywolf))): Growing-up I was in terror of ending-up in a factory. Seeing "Modern Times" certainly helped that, but the notion that an human's waking life could mostly be spent doing the same motions over and over again was (and is) horrifying. All that comraderie sounds nice (if you're not autistic), but you can do that on your ow time—invoking it seems analogous to invoking the love get allowed to feel each other during war. Let's automate _all_ those jobs out of existence and put all of us on Relief, just like the Surrealists and Pigmeat Markham called-for.
	6:25pm ed: As an illustrator, I'd love to go back to 1948. It was the Golden age of Illustration and I'd be paid a hell of lot more for my work!
	6:25pm (((Murakami Whywolf): I'll bet that after a few years in a factory and a lot of exposure to lead, they'll be happy to back the White Australia Policy.
	6:26pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Recent Psychedelic Salon on NFTs : psychedelicsalon.com... ...with consideration of both sides of it - including the environmental impact of data-mining. But the potentntial for Artists & Creatives to reclaim profit from Distribution is intriguing.
	6:26pm ultradamno: (did I just unintentionally introduce this chunk?)
	🤖 6:26pm PaulRobeson1920: I gotta get a copy of this book. No going back. We have a deep well of lessons and horror to draw from. A well that must never be exhausted.
	🤖 6:27pm PaulRobeson1920: 1948 murder was legal in America!!! In so many words. Do u know what i mean?
	6:28pm StringOFperils: No black vote til '65. Community. Benevolence. Unity. A fair and warm golden age. For some. Others, not so much at all. Golden age narratives are far too simple. A better world in the future requires real political will...maybe we'll see another 1789 of some sort, maybe not.
	6:28pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ' The most radical position to have in [U.S.] America is to have a Memory. '
	🤖 6:29pm Webhamster Henry: "History doesn't stop" - me, wearing my historical organization hat
	6:30pm (Murakami Whywolf))): I am incapable of nostalgia because I have near-perfect memory. Remembering is very different to nostalgia, which in practice tends to be more-or-less worship…which is the inability or refusal to see fault.
	6:30pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: This Crumb comes to mind : imgur.com...
	6:31pm Fredericks: Did Dennis use "Arcadian" as the opposite of dystopian? If not, what word did he use?
	6:31pm melinda: I heard arcadian too
	6:32pm Mark Hurst: @Fredericks not as an opposite, but as different from a dystopia, yes he used the word "arcadian" (referring to Eden)
	6:32pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: ...this one he has three possible endings on the bottom : www.austinauction.com...
	6:32pm Tom from Cotati: Nostalgia mainly seems to involve remembering a past that never actually existed.
	🤖 6:32pm Ken From Hyde Park: More planned obsolescence these days. Back then, you'd get things like shoes repaired, but now throw things away and get new stuff. Chuck your $1000 cell phone for a new one!
	6:33pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: KenFHP : Production & Consumption - & a Market that can only ever expand & expand into Infinity.
	6:34pm mrdonutsu: Blame Craigslist for the demise of the local newspaper, not Google or FB.
	🤖 6:36pm DjLorraine: I loved getting real shoes repaired.
	🤖 6:36pm Webhamster Henry: We all know home taping killed the music industry.
	6:38pm ed: Another great show Mark!
	6:38pm StringOFperils: Publishers are also, even as individual people, employees and functionaries of large mega-corporations, where divergent voices are quashed,internally, and also silenced with the might of money, externally.
	🤖 6:39pm Webhamster Henry: I can see a community like the Factory 19 one being set up here in Ulster County to make artisanal gee-gaws!
	6:39pm Tom from Cotati: Hey, remember how much coal they used to burn to run those big ol' factories and printing plants?
	6:39pm coelacanth∅: and the cars were extremely inefficient; and the newspapers came from trees... etc
	6:40pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Music & News are like everything: More & More owned by Fewer & Fewer.
	6:40pm ed: Oh. crap . Now that I think about it. 1948 would have sucked for me. I would have been blacklisted as a commie pinko.
	6:40pm Tom from Cotati: @Webhamster Henry: I thought that was the DAT?
	🤖 6:41pm chresti: I think television changed a lot of things.
	🤖 6:41pm Webhamster Henry: @Tom/Coatati it was the MiniDisc !
	6:41pm coelacanth∅: no autotune!
	6:41pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I see it as what Bernie says : We just want something that is WORTH working for. (In terms of wages to cost of living, health - &tc.)
	6:42pm ultradamno: Eden...like I want to wander around in the woods all day talking to snakes.
	6:42pm Tom from Cotati: @Webhamster Henry: Wait - wasn't it Napster?
	6:42pm PJ: Coelacantho: Like bitcoin, etc., is a good use of energy? The point of examining the past is to figure out what was good about it and try to conserve it or recreate it, and to obviously get rid of the bad things about it. The past 40 years have seen this country swallow entirely the right wing / tech arguments for destroying workers and creators rights. In this respect, the current world is way worse than it was 40 or 50 years ago.
	6:44pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I think it's a great exercise. Looking down the other end of the Telescope of my (I will not say 'our' but our) Future Shock...
	6:44pm Marci: PJ well said!
	6:44pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Back in 1948, the number of people who thought that the destruction of the past were inevitable was even larger than now. Both Left and Right—except for the most right-wing traditionalists like Buckley and Russell Kirk—saw Modern Life as sweeping-away All That Was. There was very little disagreement about that, much as how both American Capitalism and Russian Bolshevism were dedicated to Production! Above All, and screw both traditions and the environment.
	6:45pm coelacanth∅: PJ i'm pretty sure that's what Dennis and Mark have made clear already
	6:45pm PJ: @Mark: The media and government have blindly repeated and embraced so much of the rhetoric of the tech industry over the last 30 years that they have become mantras: "Disruption is great!", etc. Google's motto is "Don't be evil", when they are perpetrators of some of industry's biggest evils, etc.
	6:45pm melinda: Nostalgia gets a bad rap, in my opinion. One can look back fondly on a time because of certain aspects of it while acknowledging the suck part too. It's natural to mourn losses.
	🤖 6:46pm Webhamster Henry: [ ] click here if you agree to being tracked to improve your experience.
	6:47pm PJ: @Mark: Which is me just repeating things you've brought up time and again on this program.
	6:47pm WR: In the past I browsed Lewis Mumford, guess I should go back and read.
	6:47pm Tom from Cotati: If newspapers had been smart and not cheap and clueless, they would have jumped on the Internet in 1997, avoided the ad aggregators, and would still be powerful and relevant today. Taking on tons of debt by buying up all their competitors did not help any, though.
	🤖 6:47pm chresti: I think TV replaced reading newspapers and books.
	6:48pm earthwalker: It’s proven Facebook causes depression Face to Face days were better !
	6:48pm ultradamno: I'm going to stick with car alarms for this.
	🤖 6:48pm chresti: The boobtube.
	6:48pm ?: My parents were raised in the depression pop served in Europe and mom always worked and my nana raised five kids as a widow and they all told me always how things were so much better back in the day. True sense of community. I thought it was crap but now I know. But even in the early seventies you could tell the pollution was brutal. Smokestacks everywhere prior to the EPA making a huge difference (along w de industrialization naturally) Bitcoin. Omg. What a waste of energy in keeping with the degenerate spirit of the age of murdering the planet so you can pack money into offshore banks. Nostalgia literally is the pain of looking back
	6:48pm coelacanth∅: autotune!
	🤖 6:48pm Bas NL: Autotune.
	6:48pm StringOFperils: The Frisbee totally kicked off global collapse.
	🤖 6:49pm Ken From Hyde Park: Do we recite our names / handles on the recording?
	6:49pm ultradamno: Autotune is a good one, though.
	🤖 6:49pm Bas NL: Hah Coel!
	🤖 6:49pm chresti: Haha StringO.
	6:49pm PJ: Free jazz!
	6:49pm melinda: Self-driving cars!
	🤖 6:49pm DjLorraine: LEDs hurt my eyes, seriously
	6:50pm earthwalker: When my Mom was young television was not yet invented. They had big wooden radios
	6:50pm coelacanth∅: yeah, self-driving cars. what a nightmare.
	6:50pm The Butterman: I thought it was just me with these frickin newfangled light bulbs breaking in two seconds.
	🤖 6:50pm Webhamster Henry: There was plenty of social media in 1999
	🤖 6:50pm Bas NL: Anything reachable through a 'portal'.
	6:51pm ultradamno: I don't know about "smart" bulbs, but I haven't had a problem with LEDs.
	6:51pm Megaroni: Yes Mark, when I went to hardware story it surprised me they no longer had a choice of lightbulbs, disturbing
	6:51pm earthwalker: In 70 years we went from horse and buggy to the Moon That was fast
	6:51pm (Murakami Whywolf))): A local Chinese market, either with the help of our state's energy scheme or by scamming it, has L.E.D. light-bulbs for $0.25 each. Note: not all L.E.D. light-bulbs are 'smart'; most aren't, in fact.
	6:51pm PJ: Interesting that Orwell called his book 1984 by rearranging the year in which he finished it (1948), and Glover set his book in that same year.
	6:51pm melinda: @earthwalker my parents too. We had big wooden radios in the house because my father collected them.
	6:51pm coelacanth∅: i've used really bad led bulbs and really good ones
	6:52pm Tom from Cotati: Autotone is proof the Devil is real and in charge of society. Also cars that try to do anything more than drive and play the radio.
	6:52pm StringOFperils: Monoculture farming and its giant faceless seed-keeper- punishing soil-murdering forest-erasing life-annihilating petro-chemical Mom. #1 Terminator coming your way.
	6:52pm ultradamno: My 'why' with car alarms is not only are they annoying, but that they go off all the time makes them pointless, who comes running or alerts the authorities when they hear one?
	6:52pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Worst technology? Religion, in all its forms, including that one you like: it turns people into people unable to properly observe, reality-test, and reason.
	6:52pm earthwalker: Smart phones kill brains
	6:53pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: LEDs need to be adjusted for light quality - absolutely. They were meant to last longer than incandescents as well ! Were they not ?! A useful analogy it may seem for alll the Digital 'Improvements' - as for Audio. We get seduced by new benefits - & do not appreciate the benefits - even the Artfulness - of what was already there! There is also over-engineering - on a similar track. & - deliberate market obsolescence ! Making an Operating System not reverse-compatible with previous ones is a choice... & I suggest a Fail.
	6:53pm PJ: Webhamster Henry: social media was minimal in 1999 as far as most people are concerned. But I recently read a Wired article from 1997 about a social media network called "the Well" which foreshadowed many of the terrible societal effects of social media in Facebook, etc., but on a much smaller scale.
	6:53pm Tom from Cotati: @ultradamno: The neighbors when it goes on and on.
	6:54pm (Murakami Whywolf))): Privileging the new! over the durable goes back to well before the Internet.
	🤖 6:54pm PaulRobeson1920: Truman kicked Paul Robeson out of the oval office. Paul was speaking forcibly and loudly & demanding A federal Anti-lynch bill!! Unpunished murder ruled the day. This is Years before the public face of lynching emerged in 1955 with Emmitt Till and his mother demanding an open casket! And always Remember the Vietnam conflict 1954-1975. We cannot have guns & Butter. War is profoundly Immoral. We need a department of Peace and a department of music! funded on Par with the defense department! We demand Massive expenditures on Livingly as opposed to killingry! Forever more. Where are we trending? Towards a brotherhood of man. I sware it’s not too late. While involved in one we invariably neglect the other.
	6:54pm earthwalker: Melinda. Do you have any extras you could ship to France. I’ll pay !
	6:54pm PJ: The fracturing of attention is one of the worst effects of the internet.
	6:54pm Old Dave: Well said, Mark. Thank you once again!
	6:55pm Steve: While I agree with your being critical of much of modernity, your going out there being critical of LED lighting.
	🤖 6:55pm DjLorraine: StringofPearls seed stealers, yup
	6:55pm melinda: @earthwalker no, sorry! they've all been sold off.
	🤖 6:55pm PaulRobeson1920: Livingry as opposed to killingry - Bucky Fuller terms
	6:56pm David in London: Thanks Mark, great show today.
	6:56pm melinda: Surveillance lightbulbs!
	🤖 6:57pm Bas NL: Thanks Mark!
	6:57pm ultradamno: Didn't they have bulbs that would change color in coordination with certain TV broadcasts? That was odd.
	🤖 6:57pm Webhamster Henry: Mint yer coins in your lightbulbs.
	6:57pm Mark Hurst: @Steve totally possible that I've just bought the wrong bulbs. But I've tried a bunch of types and consistently wish I could go back to the old type!
	🤖 6:57pm chresti: I like LED bulbs because they're cooler.
	6:57pm Mark Hurst: @DiL thanks
	6:57pm adampsyche: john deere (sp?) has an adobe licensing contract for their tractors, later for them
	6:57pm earthwalker: Go to duck duck go
	6:58pm Mark Hurst: @Webham shhh, don't give the bros ideas
	6:58pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: PaulRobeson1920 - I agree. Power to the Poor & the Peaceful ! This ultimately is my Politics.
	🤖 6:58pm Webhamster Henry: You can run an LED bulb forever and it'll cost abut 10 cents a year.
	6:58pm listener 126464: another bulb firmware update?
	6:58pm ultradamno: And turn on quicker and brighter than CFLs, which I legit did not like
	6:58pm Tom from Cotati: The Internet and computers in gereral are proof that humans brains have not evolved anough to understand abstract concepts or do more that one thing at a time.
	🤖 6:59pm chresti: They make LED lightbulbs that look like olde timey filament bulbs.
	🤖 6:59pm Webhamster Henry: This bulb reset is like what you do to get a car fob to bond with your car.
	6:59pm coelacanth∅: i use incandescent bulbs for applications close to my face, like at my desk
	🤖 6:59pm Ken From Hyde Park: Thanks, Mark. Maybe the bulbs you purchased had down-level firmware?
	6:59pm Mark Hurst: @chresti yes - that's another (to me) irritating aspect of the design
	7:00pm Tom from Cotati: @listener 126464: Every so often, the firmware update bricks your lamp.
	🤖 7:00pm Webhamster Henry: Nice instruction track - was that a video, Mark? because: TikTok.
	7:00pm coelacanth∅: Thanks Mark! Thanks Dennis!
	7:00pm Steve Schwartz: I was employed by companies involved with LED development. The methods of use are just coming into a good stage of development now. Normal development life cycle.
	7:00pm Mark Hurst: @KfHP ugh do I have to evaluate firmware now with lightbulbs
	7:00pm PJ: There is a filament light bulb (developed by Edison I think) from 120 years ago still working in a firehouse in San Francisco. It never burned out, so Edison had the bulb redesigned to be able to sell billions of light bulbs instead of thousands.
	7:00pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Wait, is that procedure supposed to sound complicated to us and give us unhappy feelings? It sounds simple enough to me….
	🤖 7:01pm chresti: "They"= designers.
	7:01pm Mark Hurst: Thanks, everyone!
	🤖 7:01pm chresti: Thanks Mark!
	7:01pm WR: Thank you Mark.
	7:02pm Revolution Rabbit Nov63: I really like the LED analogy for the whole Tech mess - because there's really good ideas & advances there ...but they forgot they were for LIGHTING for PEOPLE... which was perhaps a more human Craft ! Perhaps they can address that... Yerknow it's like the record companies going from weirdos to bean-counters...
	7:03pm Mark Hurst: @RevRabbit good point!
	7:03pm (Murakami Whywolf))): When I was a graduate student in the mid-1980s I was glad to finally get a small office, less happy that it was tiny, shared, and poorly heated (except in summer, when it was a tandoor). It was in a part of the building that hadn't been used much, I guess, as there was a pointy-ended Mazda™ bulb in the light socket outside my door….
	🤖 7:03pm Webhamster Henry: We used to go electricity-less on Sundays for a while. Candles. Victrola. We lived in a big victorian house with about 7 fireplaces. We only ran about 2 of them though.
	7:04pm Otis: Thanks Mark!
	7:06pm (((Murakami Whywolf): Revolution Rabbit Nov63: Record companiers were (or, more usually, employed) weirdos only sporadically most of their existences, and routinely only from (maybe) 1965-1972.

Techtonic with Mark Hurst: Playlist from April 26, 2021

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