Silicon Valley has a solution for everything, but who do its ideas really serve? Every Thursday, Paris Marx is joined by a new guest to critically examine the tech industry, its thought leaders, and the worldview it spreads. They challenge the notion that tech alone can drive our world forward by showing that separating tech from politics has consequences for us all, especially the most vulnerable. But if tech won't save us, what will? This podcast isn't simply about tearing tech down; it also presents radical ideas for tech designed for human flourishing instead of surveillance, acquisitions, or to boost stock prices. A better world is possible, and so is better technology.
Don’t Praise Bill Gates w/ Tim Schwab
Paris Marx is joined by Tim Schwab to discuss why the story we hear about Bill Gates and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation doesn’t reflect their real impact on education and health around the world.
Tim Schwab is an investigative journalist and the author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.
Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.
The podcast is produced by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.
Also mentioned in this episode:
- Bill Gates was pied in Belgium in 1999 and made fun of on The Simpsons.
- You can watch highlights from Gates’ deposition in the antitrust trial on YouTube.
- Gates had a reputation about questionable and inappropriate conduct toward women below him in the workplace.
- Aaron Gordon wrote there’s an adage that “everyone thinks Musk is a genius until you hear him talk about a subject you know something about.”
- In 2008, the head of the World Heath Organization’s malaria program criticized the growing dominance of the Gates Foundation in the research area.