Techs on Texts

Jed Sundwall
  • 5.0 (7)
  • BOOKS
  • UPDATED MONTHLY

Techs on Texts is a podcast featuring conversations with technologists about the literature that has influenced them. Hosted and produced by Jed Sundwall. Learn more at https://techsontexts.net

  1. SEP 30

    Episode #20: Mark Chambers on Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

    Mark Chambers – my friend from high school (and former Chief Sustainability Officer of DC and NYC among other things) – joins us to discuss Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. We talk about the collision between money and science, the illusion of control, dignity, public service, how many humans there should be, why it may or may not be ok to grill, and positive visions for the future. Show notes: Jevons paradox – how technological efficiency can paradoxically increase resource consumptionWhat Michael Crichton Reveals About Big Tech and A.I. - Cal Newport's New Yorker piece about Jurassic ParkThe Weathering Podcast – exploring Earth systems, climate, and chaos. I don't talk about it in the podcast, but I should because it's relevant and so great. I love it.Colossal Biosciences Dire Wolf Project (Wikipedia article) – the real-world de-extinction effortThe 13th Warrior – A movie Mark loves that I still need to watchMark Coatney on A Wizard of Earthsea – our previous conversation about power and its pitfallsNine Inch Nails wins Country Music Award for "Old Town Road"Internet PowerThe Ministry of the Future (Wikipedia article) by Kim Stanley RobinsonNext month (hopefully): The Black Cloud by Fred Hoyle with George Dyson. Bonus announcements: CNG Conference 2026 announced for 6-9 October 2026New work podcast: Great Data Products If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 37m

  2. AUG 30

    Episode #19: Matt Price on Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

    Matt Price – technology historian and dedicated educator – joins us to discuss Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. We talk about egos, ego death, cults, academia, Christianity, Buddhism, and psychedelics. No insights, only more questions. Show notes: Susanna Clarke's official websitePiranesi on GoodreadsVery Bad Wizards on PiranesiGiovanni Battista Piranesi on WikipediaCarceri d'invenzione, Giovanni Battista Piranesi's "Imaginary Prisons"All Things Shining, the book I refer to as "Everything Shining" in the podcastGene Wolfe, who Ursula K. Le Guin referred to as "our Melville"Aleister CrowleyBodhisattvaNatural historyVarious soundtracks to Piranesi:"Everything Forgotten Flows" by Priori"Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo" by Francesco Messina and Raul LovisoniIn a Beautiful Place Out in the Country by Boards of CanadaNext month, will be Jurassic Park (the movie and the book!) with Mark Chambers. If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 33m

  3. JUL 26

    Episode #18: Noah Iliinsky on China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh

    Noah Iliinsky – most-esteemed information visualization expert, speaker and author – joins us to discuss Maureen F. McHugh's China Mountain Zhang. We talk about what matters, heavy furniture, sensible defaults, the burdens created by unnecessarily "innovative" design, pace layering, humans as instruments, and the double diamond bike. Show notes: Buy Noah's books!Noah's very excellent Guaranteed Successful Design presentation: 5-minute version, 45-minute versionNoah's unassailable guidance on using a dishwasherPace Layers from Stuart BrandThe Double Diamond bike frameWork on Stuff That Matters by Tim O'ReillyJared Rusten – my woodworker of choiceNext month, Matt Price will be on to talk about Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. New Secret School album! Enough? Remixes on Apple Music and Spotify. If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 13m

  4. JUN 23

    Episode #17: Daniel X. O'Neil on The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot

    Daniel X. O'Neil, the worldwide entertainment juggernaut of the 21st century, joins us to discuss T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. You will learn almost nothing about The Waste Land from this discussion, but you will learn about poetry, modernism, truth, hypermedia, (the "end" of) America, and enjambment. Show notes: [T.S. Eliot reads *The Waste Land* on YouTube](T.S. Eliot reads: The Waste Land)The Waste Land on WikipediaHypertext enjambmentBlueberry Boat by The Fiery FurnacesThe truly great Carl MalamudThe Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complexJack Dorsey talking about how dispatch systems influenced Twitter (Dorsey, like Eliot is from St. Louis, as is past guest Jason Goldman and Sam Altman)RashomonMy essay on Internet Power (thanks to Dan for pushing me over the edge to finally publish this)Trut from Emigre Magazine #41The Nature BookCahokia MoundsChildren of a Modest Star by Jonathan S. Blake and Nils Gilman for all those interested in the limitations of the nation stataThe end of the InternetAlways remember: There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous. — Cormac McCarthy 💖 Next month we'll be talking with Noah Ilinsky about China Mountain Zhang by Maureen F. McHugh. If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 14m

  5. MAY 30

    Episode #16: Alex Merose on Convenience Store Woman

    Alex Merose extols the virtues of lazy action and calls on us to embrace Duchamp into our hearts through discussion of Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman and Maurizio Lazzarato's essay "Marcel Duchamp and the Refusal of Work." We explore themes of conformity, work, resistance, lazy action, and whether or not Duchamp was right that "language was a mistake." Shout out to Maxime Lenormand for production assistance. Many show notes! Alex Merose's websiteConvenience Store Woman by Sayaka MurataMarcel Duchamp and the Refusal of Work by Maurizio LazzaratoCoffee Mill - Marcel Duchamp's 1911 painting at the TateBaudrillard's Simulacra and SimulationVaporwaveHeraclitus the obscureDavid Reich on the Dwarkesh Podcast - discussing genetics and human history, including some theories about the emergence of languageIf on a winter's night a travelerOpening keynote from CNG Conference 2025Many thanks to Alex for sending these references: How Food Played a Role in the Rise of PatriarchyNagarjuna (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)Alex's photos of Art by and inspired by Marcel Duchamp from the National Museum for Modern and Contemporary Art in SeoulAlex's photos of Duchamp's works mentioned in the Lazzarato paper from the Museum of Modern Art in NYC - Work: A Deep History by James SuzmanWork podcast on Spotify If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 8m

  6. APR 30

    Episode #15: Johnny Rodgers on A Pattern Language

    Johnny Rodgers, my friend from Tumblr (among other things), joins us to discuss Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language. We explore how Alexander's design philosophy has endured and influenced not just physical infrastructure, but also the software and algorithms that increasingly encroach on our built environment. Show notes: A Pattern Language on WikipediaOn Surfing and Reading Books from Manso (my olde Tumblr)View Source, Johnny's TumblrRenaissance Philanthropy's Playbooks, inspired by A Pattern LanguageDesign Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software, a seminal software engineering book heavily influenced by A Pattern LanguageMartha Stewart on Elio'sIn May, we will be reading Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and Marcel Duchamp and the Refusal of Work by Maurizio Lazzarato. If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 25m

  7. APR 1

    Episode #14: George Dyson on Childhood's End

    I had the pleasure of recording this on-site with George in his Bellingham workshop (a former tavern). I experimented with having Claude write shownotes for this episode, and it proposed this as a "key theme" of our discussion: "The parallels between Clarke's Overlords and modern artificial intelligence as agents of human transformation." This is a pretty remarkable guess given that I only told Claude that the episode was a conversation with George Dyson about Childhood's End. In any event, that is precisely what George and I talk about. We also talk about many other things, including AI and social media as "overlord technologies," analog computing, ESP, and why he believes every company should employ an historian and a biologist. Show notes: Buy George's new edition of Project OrionGeorge's 2002 TED Talk about Project OrionSolar cigarette lightersMina Rees, first female head of the mathematics department of the Office of Naval ResearchTim O'Reilly: The End of Programming as We Know ItMore show notes at techsontexts.net If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 26m

  8. MAR 1

    Episode #13: Keith Garrett on The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling

    Keith Garrett, coy technologist, father, and former marine, comes on to discuss Ted Chiang's masterful "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling." We talk about the benefits of forgetfulness, the limits of attention, the difficulty of assessing the benfits of cognitively affecting technologies, biases, colonialism, religion, and traffic. Show notes: Read "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"! Online or buy Exhalation wherever you buy books.Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi driversToward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of BiasesThe Internet’s Final Frontier: Remote Amazon TribesSocratese's story of Egyptian king Thamus and the invention of writingTed Chiang on the dangers of runaway AI relative to the dangers of no-holds-barred capitalism: Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear If you enjoyed this, please share it. Produced by Jed Sundwall. Write to jed at techsontexts.net with feedback and suggestions for books or guests. Intro music by Secret School. Outro music is "3/10th of the Population" by WE™. Please donate to Radiant Earth.

    1h 25m
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

Techs on Texts is a podcast featuring conversations with technologists about the literature that has influenced them. Hosted and produced by Jed Sundwall. Learn more at https://techsontexts.net

Information

  • Creator
    Jed Sundwall
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024-2025 Techs on Texts
  • Show Website
    Techs on Texts

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