22 episodes
Better Offline Cool Zone Media
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- Technology
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4.0 • 23 Ratings
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Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build.
Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes and scams of everyone from cryptocurrency scumbags to the greediest of the venture capital elite. Tech industry veteran Ed Zitron and a dynamic coterie of guests will help listeners understand the who, how and why of how tech’s most powerful players are changing the world - for better or for worse.
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The Rot-Com Bust
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through what happens when tech's growth-at-all-costs epoch begins to collapse, and how the only way to save Silicon Valley is to put power back in the hands of those who actually build things - and reject the management consultant mindset killing innovation.
Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
The Rot-Com Bubble
Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI.
Episode Links: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
AI Is Breaking Google
On May 14th 2024, Google introduced their Search Generative Experience, a service that uses hallucination-prone artificial intelligence to generate answers to queries rather than just presenting links, all so that they could Wall Street that they're innovative and future-forward. The result is an even-more-broken search experience, and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the rotten state of Google, and speaks with Lily Ray, a 15-year veteran of the search engine optimization industry, about how Google abandoned the web.
LINKS:
Lily Ray: https://lilyray.nyc/ https://twitter.com/lilyraynyc
The Verge's Interview With Sundar Pichai: https://www.theverge.com/24158374/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-search-gemini-future-of-the-internet-web-openai-decoder-interview
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
We're Watching Facebook Die
For three years, Facebook's monthly active users have been declining dramatically, with Facebook.com losing 397 million unique monthly visitors since May 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how Mark Zuckerberg's abominable growth-at-all-costs mindset has turned Facebook into a dystopia of AI-generated slop, dangerous misinformation and outright pornography, all as a result of Zuckerberg's intentionally harmful approach to social media.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
How Mark Zuckerberg Deliberately Made Facebook Worse
In the last decade, Mark Zuckerberg and his internal growth team have repeatedly and intentionally made Facebook and Instagram harder and more dangerous to use in the pursuit of perpetual growth, and in this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through multiple horrifying insider stories about Facebook's disgusting approach to user happiness.
LINK for documents: https://www.wheresyoured.at/killingfacebook/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. -
OpenAI's Video Generating AI Is Dead On Arrival
Earlier in the year, OpenAI debuted Sora, an AI that can generate videos that almost look realistic. In this episode, Ed walks through why generating video with AI is a near-impossible task, and speaks with Walter Woodman of Shy Kids, who made a movie called "Air Head" using the tool. LINKS: Shy Kids' Air Head - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4wJ4WeJrz4 Mira Murati Interview with Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/video/series/joanna-stern-personal-technology/openai-made-me-crazy-videosthen-the-cto-answered-most-of-my-questions/C2188768-D570-4456-8574-9941D4F9D7E2
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Customer Reviews
Love it
After 20 years of working in IT (not in Silicon Valley or in the cutting edge field of AI) I’ve become cynical and jaded. I’ve worked under managers that unquestioningly buy into the latest hype and trends. They all know better than the developers at the coal face despite in many cases, never having coded in their lives. I’ve had to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Nothing is learned, management changes and the cycle continues. I think this is pretty common in large IT companies. In this podcast, Ed articulates how I feel much better than I could. That’s what I like about it. There’s a lot of rhetoric which can feel a bit performative so I can understand why some negative reviews - especially when listeners disagree on the views expressed but for me that’s the appeal of the show. I listen during my working day and for a while, I feel a bit better hearing someone who’s on my side have a good rant.
Refreshing, important and much-needed
Ignore the negative reviews on this page - yes there are ads, but you know to expect that with iHeartRadio and indeed erm, oh yes, every podcast ever.
This podcast puts a voice to the frustrations we all feel about being forced to live in an always-on, always-connected world with EVER-WORSENING PRODUCTS. I find myself nodding along with the analysis - one which I don’t find in many mainstream places - and shaking my head at the background behind a lot of this stuff. This is a vital podcast and these are things which need to be said and HEARD.
So, thank you.
Grotesquely hypocritical
Berating how monetisation has ruined the internet and ranting about how profit over people has ruined the consumer experience, while sandwiching every two sentences of content between five minutes of ads. Hilarious!
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