Interview: “Make the future bright again”

by Jason Crawford · April 12, 2023 · 1 min read

I was interviewed by Sean Speer for the Hub Dialogues podcast, they ran it as “Make the future bright again: Jason Crawford on building a new philosophy of progress.” An excerpt:

… when the counterculture arose especially around the ’60s, I think what happened was a lot of people looked at that and they looked at these very techno-optimist folks, who were also very authoritarian. And they rejected the authoritarianism, and they also rejected the notion that we even wanted progress. They said, “If this is progress, if this is what progress consists of, if it consists of individuals losing autonomy, then we don’t want the authoritarianism and we don’t want the progress, let’s just throw all of it out.” There was this false dichotomy between technological and industrial progress, on the one hand, and individualism and autonomy on the other hand. One of the great tragedies of the 20th century is that things were set up that way, such that if you wanted to push back against authoritarianism, you were pushing back against progress as well.

Listen or read the transcript at the show page.

See all my talks and interviews here.

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