Ep 383: Why Is Everyone Talking About “Against the Machine”? (w/ Tyler Austin Harper)

At some point last year, I received an advanced reader copy of a book titled Against the Machine. It was written by Paul Kingsnorth, a former environmental activist turned novelist turned poet turned essayist. And the first thing that caught my attention about this was actually the cover. It's really cool. It features what looks like a primeval green forest, but as if it's being displayed through an old analog computer monitor that's starting to distort it. It also had a sort of Stranger Things style nineteen eighties font. So it's a really cool looking cover. It's like, you know what? I'm gonna read this book. And I did, and you know what? I was captivated. It was about technology, but it was also about culture, and it was also about politics and the environment. King's North talks about techno capitalism and how it's choking civilization and destroying the earth. It's not a politically careful book. It eschews jargon. It doesn't align with preexisting tribes. It embraces its own hypocrisy and lobs its share of rhetorical bombs. It reminded me less of the sort of hand wringing anti technology op eds that we see today, and more like those sort of confident full throated polemics of past voices like Lewis Mumford or Jacques Ellul or Neil Postman. It was, in short, exactly the type of book that someone like me was going to enjoy. But then earlier this fall, the book actually came out. And when it was finally published, it turns out that King's North hit a much bigger nerve than I would have expected. He was basically everywhere. The New York Times ran a long profile of King's North. It opened with a description of the author, spending his fiftieth birthday in a cave in County Clare, Ireland as a storm drove, quote, great nails of rain, quote, into the ground. Kings War Kings North and the reporter tells the the article tells the reporter, I want to know what's real. And the the reporter went on to call the book a searing indictment of a society hooked on technological innovation. Soon after, King's North was profiled in my own home publication, The New Yorker, the author, who also named Cal, called the book part summa, part broadside, part testament. And then there's a recent review in the Atlantic, which called against a machine, quote, one of the most insightful works on culture, technology, and the environment published in some time, end quote. So what's going on here? Why is this particular book about technology making such an impact? And what can we learn as people who are struggling to cultivate deep lives and distract the world? What can we learn or take away from this book? These are the questions that fascinated me after I saw King's North was everywhere. These are the questions that I wanna answer today. I'm gonna have some help. I'm bringing on the show to help me get into who King's North …