In Part 2 of this conversation, Gavin Mueller traced Marx's own ambivalence toward machinery through the split between orthodox and heterodox Marxism, Taylorism's theory of workplace control, the Technocracy Movement, and Norbert Wiener's early warnings about automation. In this final part, Mueller brings that history into the present — from Shoshana Zuboff's early research inside computerized factories to her later work on surveillance capitalism, and from there into his own reading of artificial intelligence: the training data question, cognitive offloading, and the growing resistance movement against data centers. He closes with what he calls Luddism's real legacy — not a rejection of the future, but the insistence that a different one is still possible.
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Gavin Mueller is an Assistant Professor of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam, where he also teaches Marxist Theory for the Critical Studies MA at the Sandberg Instituut. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from George Mason University. He is a Contributing Editor at Jacobin and a member of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine. He is the author of Breaking Things at Work: The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job (Verso, 2021), the book at the center of this three-part conversation, and Media Piracy in the Cultural Economy (Routledge, 2019).
KEY TOPICS COVERED
– Shoshana Zuboff's early industrial sociology inside computerized factories, before her later, better-known work on surveillance capitalism
– How abstracting embodied factory work into displays, buzzers, and lights previews the same goals Taylor was already after
– Mueller's argument that AI depends on data most people never agreed to hand over — scraped books, forums, and social media posts
– The Anthropic author-settlement detail Mueller raises, and why he finds it telling
– “Cognitive offloading” — what happens to independent thought when a chatbot does the thinking for you
– Mueller's case that a less critical, less capable public is also an easier one to govern
– The rapidly growing, cross-partisan resistance movement against AI data centers
– Why Mueller isn't a “doomer” about any of this — resistance is itself a byproduct of the same power structures it opposes
– Mueller's closing argument: the good life was never dependent on new technology, and nothing about the current AI moment is inevitable
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:21 Shoshana Zuboff and Computerized Labor
05:18 AI and the Automation of Work
07:50 Training Data Without Consent
09:54 Cognitive Offloading and Social Degradation
14:30 Resistance and Data Center Opposition
18:03 The Good Life and Luddism's Legacy
23:01 Next Time on Notions of Progress
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ABOUT NOTIONS OF PROGRESS
Notions of Progress is a podcast tracing ideas of progress from antiquity to the age of artificial intelligence. Hosted by Marshall Madow — an independent researcher whose MA in History (Cambridge) examined Georges Sorel's epistemology of myth, and whose MSc (Oxford, Saïd Business School) focused on Complexity Science and Leadership — the show surfaces the debates rather than settling them, tracing how thinkers from Hesiod to Hayek, Plato to Peter Haff, have understood what it means for humanity to move forward, at what cost, and for whom.
TRANSCRIPT
Full transcript available at notionsofprogress.com
— Description — End —
#NotionsOfProgress #GavinMueller #ArtificialIntelligence #ShoshanaZuboff #SurveillanceCapitalism #Automation
