Shawn Fain’s New Year’s Resolutions
The UAW has plans to organize more than 150,000 autoworkers in 2024.
Blog
Back to the Future
For 19th-century Americans, robots were practical Christians, potential spouses, and a serious threat to labor power.
Odd Bedfellows
Germany is Israel’s ride-or-die.
Economic Ennui
At the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the world’s 10 wealthiest countries by per capita income. As of 2021, it’s 86th. What happened?
Where Are All the Robots, Anyway?
Automation is booming in rural China, the strongholds of the US auto industry, and the world’s oldest countries.
Hollywood Welcomes Its Silicon Valley Overlords
Hollywood AI boosters claim that “democratized” movies based on personal choice await us, if only we can get rid of those pesky human beings.
Conversations With Friends
When chatbots take over the world, might they do it as members of a vanguard party?
Detroit Techno’s Dance with Death
As automation ravaged Detroit, black musicians created a new sound that merged human and machine. With it came a vision for working-class self-organization in the Motor City.
Cautionary Tales
The English science-fiction writer J. G. Ballard claimed to believe in nothing. Yet his prophetic dystopias reveal a deep awareness of the brutality of class rule and imperialism.
Two Intellectuals Trapped in the Matrix
If you want a picture of the future, imagine Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek talking to each other — forever.
High-Tech Desert Hellscape
Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia has a dream: a futuristic desert city stretching to the clouds. But down in the sand, it’s a cyberpunk dystopia.
Issue 52: Dossier
How to speak machine overlord.