Clive Thompson: Tales of Technology

Episode 136
I spoke with Clive Thompson (x.com/pomeranian99) about:
* How he writes
* Writing about the climate and biking across the US
* Technology culture and persistent debates in AI
* Poetry
Enjoy—and let me know what you think!
Clive is a journalist who writes about science and technology. He is a contributing writer forWired magazine, and is currently writing his next book about micromobility and cycling across the US.
Find me on Twitter (twitter.com/spaniel_bashir) for updates on new episodes, and reach me at editor@thegradient.pub for feedback, ideas, guest suggestions.
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Outline:
* (00:00) Intro
* (01:07) Clive’s life as a Tarantino movie
* (03:07) Boring life and interesting art, life as material for art
* (10:25) Cycling across the US — Clive’s new book on mobility and decarbonization
* (15:07) Turning inward in writing
* (27:21) Including personal experience in writing
* (31:53) Personal and less personal writing
* (36:08) Conveying uncertainty and the “voice from nowhere” in traditional journalism
* (41:10) Finding the natural end of a piece
* (1:02:10) Writing routine
* (1:05:08) Theories of change in Clive’s writing
* (1:12:33) How Clive saw things before the rest of us
* (1:27:00) Automation in software engineering
* (1:31:40) The anthropology of coders, poetry as a framework
* (1:43:50) Proust discourse
* (1:45:00) Technology culture in NYC + interaction between the tech world and other worlds
* (1:50:30) Technological developments Clive wants to see happen (free ideas)
* (2:01:11) Clive’s argument for memorizing poetry
* (2:09:24) How Clive finds poetry
* (2:18:03) Clive’s pursuit of freelance writing and making compromises
* (2:27:25) Outro
Links:
* Clive’s Twitter (x.com/pomeranian99) and website (clivethompson.net)
* Selected writing
* The Attack of the Incredible Grading Machine (linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9907/nwo.html) (Lingua Franca, 1999)
* The Know-It-All Machine (linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/print/0109/cov…) (Lingua Franca, 2001)
* How to teach AI some common sense (wired.com/story/how-to-teach-artificial-intell…) (Wired, 2018)
* Blogs to Riches (nymag.com/news/media/15967) (NY Mag, 2006)
* Clive vs. Jonathan Franzen on whether the internet is good for writing (chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/is-the-intern…) (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2013)
* The Minecraft Generation (nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-…) (New York Times, 2016)
* What AI College Exam Proctors are Really Teaching Our Kids (wired.com/story/ai-college-exam-proctors-surve…) (Wired, 2020)
* Companies Don’t Need to Be Creepy to Make Money (wired.com/story/tech-companies-dont-need-to-be…) (Wired, 2021)
* Is Sucking Carbon Out of the Air the Solution to Our Climate Crisis? (motherjones.com/environment/2021/10/sucking-ca…) (Mother Jones, 2021)
* AI Shouldn’t Compete with Workers—It Should Supercharge Them (wired.com/story/ai-shouldnt-compete-with-worke…) (Wired, 2022)
* Back to BASIC—the Most Consequential Programming Language in the History of Computing (wired.com/story/back-to-basic-the-most-consequ…) Wired, 2024)

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