Hello, I’m Edward Ongweso Jr—I’m an independent writer, researcher, tech critic, and evangelical Luddite.
Here at The Tech Bubble I mainly write about the political and economic conditions that shape how we finance, develop, and deploy technology:
I have an ongoing series of essays on artificial intelligence that look at its relationship to resurgent eugenicist ideologies, its historical origins as a tool for social control and labor discipline, and the similarity of AI hype to the Medieval Church’s indulgence economy.
Some of my more popular essays have been on Las Vegas’s annual Consumer Electronic Showcase, Dune’s Butlerian Jihad, AI skeptics and boosters, ride-hailing apps, and ritual sacrifice in the 21st century.
I’ve written about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse for Slate, the historic role of water and tech in Israel’s occupation of Palestine for Logic(s), Silicon Valley’s super-app dream for WIRED, Silicon Valley’s history and future for the The Nation, AI’s financialization for The Boston Review, public finance for Dissent, Uber and Lyft’s business models for The Guardian, and how crypto & defense tech profited from both the Biden and Trump administrations for Fast Company. I’ve also profiled Boots Riley for Broken Pencil, reviewed some books for The Baffler and The New Republic, and wrote my first science-fiction story for Logic(s).
With Jathan Sadowski, I co-host This Machine Kills—a podcast that also talks about the political economy of our technology. We’ve been doing it together since 2020, available anywhere you get your podcast.
I’ve appeared in/on C-SPAN, CNN, NBC, France24, Der Spiegel, NPR, MarketWatch, ABC News, BBC News, Jacobin, The Guardian, Embedded, The Dig, Better Offline, Citations Needed, Tech Won’t Save Us, Panic World, Verso Podcast, and XEW-FM. I’ve spoken at New York University, Columbia University, City University of New York, Brooklyn Public Library, The New School, University of Pretoria, and SXSW. I’ve moderated discussions for the Economic Security Project, the Open Markets Institute, and various book launches. (I am still patching together an exhaustive list of all my media appearances and links to them—if you see something, say something)
Each week I write at least one free essay and send out one paywalled post (usually an extensive list of recommendations, sometimes essays). Subscriptions make this work possible. If you want to help support me, consider a paid subscription for $7 a month or $70 a year. You can even give more if you feel compelled to do so! With your help, I can make this financially feasible and keep doing for the foreseeable future.
I also love to hear from my readers. If you have tips, recommendations, letters to the editor (me), then you have two options: hit me up on signal (bigblackjacobin.29) or email me at edwardongwesojr@gmail.com.
