I listen to fun pods, educational pods, pods that are psychotherapy based, basketball pods, pods about marvel flicks, you get it…. what Ed does here is unmatched. The balance of left & right brain is on display. Ed’s passion & desire for tech to not suffer the same capitalistic sh💩t fate as other industries is admirable. He cares what is happening & wants to educate others.
Ed occasionally makes a few uniquely good points (I particularly enjoyed some of his takes on OpenAI’s overly dramatic PR misdirections), but the show is unfortunately almost entirely misinformed drivel. A great example of this is the CrowdStrike episode, in which Ed faults managerial cost-cutting for an alleged failure to catch a null-pointer dereference, which he describes as a rookie error. There’s simply no evidence for the cost-cutting claim, and if it were so easy to catch memory errors like null-pointer dereferences in all cases in unsafe programming languages (or if it were so easy to switch everything to safe languages), then the world would be literally hundreds billions of dollars richer. It’s not necessarily Ed’s fault that he didn’t know the specific technical root cause of the CrowdStrike disaster the day after it happened, but it was irresponsible for him to opine about it so confidently yet so wrongly. I also found it quite disturbing how in his conversation with Cory Doctorow and some other guy whose name I forget, the three of them express support without a hint of irony for the proposition that the government should spend large amounts of public money to pursue lawsuits to make consumer products worse for end users so long as doing so nebulously “improves competition”. There are absolutely instances of monopoly abuse in the technology sector (Qualcomm and Nvidia are prime examples), but it’s undoubtedly easier “to compete” against a product that the government has artificially hobbled by making any useful differentiation illegal. So-called “Big Tech” is not monolithic, nor should it be.
I want to like this but I think the host trips over his own polemic too much. I would genuinely love to listen to Isaac and Robinson discuss the current state of tech journalism, but in at least the first half hour they … don’t.
Instead you get the host on an extended rant with the esteemed guests nodding along.
The host’s writing is good! I’m a fan! I’d genuinely love to see what he could do in 30-40 minutes (rather than two hours), going in with a solid agenda and points to hit.
It is refreshing to hear someone examine tech through a skeptical eye, and then share actual opinions about it, regardless of how “negative” those opinions are.
For those who might criticize his disposition, I offer this: when the house is on fire, it does little good to observe how lovely the curtains are as they go up in flames.
Does a good setup of topics and generally knows what he’s talking about. Once I noticed a pattern of him leaving Apple out of many of the negative “big tech” topics or rather portraying them in the Kool-Aid drinkers perspective of “Privacy and Security” I knew I could no longer view him as objective and unbiased. Then when I heard him gushing over Apple and their products with someone from the Verge that was it. I know his PR firm doesn’t work for Apple, at least they aren’t listed but it feels like they’re only given softball scrutiny, something he accuses others of doing with other companies. Shows like this are needed but they need to call out everybody!
Also, the ads are horrendous and take up a quarter of the show time.
podcasts telling the sobering truth about what the tech giants are actually up to. Update: His delivery may come off as “too angry” for some but we should be mad at what big tech have been feeding us. Do the naysayers really trust them? If so, wake up.
A lot of the topics here aren’t disgusted enough. A lot of consumers just hit the button and don’t realize the extent of what they’re giving up when they do business with big tech. From my perspective, it would be good if the content were delivered in a more fact-based and even toned style. A lot of the content is emotionally presented, a decent amount of profanity is used and if you’re a believer a decent amount of blasphemy also. I think, as others have mentioned if things were delivered in a more journalistic way, and less bouncing all over the place, complaining about this that the other thing, this could be a good podcast. there’s just kind of a undertone of the host, trying real hard to be a subject matter expert. I’m not saying he doesn’t know a lot about the tech industry or business, but there’s just kind of a try hard approach to the delivery. Lighten up a little bit and deliver quality content that’s well thought out vs. getting the mic out and flying off the handle about tech personalities and you might have something that picks up a bigger audience.
A truly skeptical , and for me justified substantive rants on a future containing technology that no one asked and can’t seem to escape that is just funneling money to increasingly monopolistic bad acting tech giants who treat the media as their own PR agents . KEEP UP THE WORK!
This show offers a refreshing respite from the self-congratulatory hype that comes from a lot of tech reporting. Nevertheless, although I agree with 99% of the arguments posited, the last 10 minutes of each episode are always off putting.
The host doesn’t seem to trust his audience to make the right takeaway from his episodes. So, instead, he explains how you should feel in a needlessly incendiary, reactive, and redundant editorial dump. If you stop listening to each episode about 10 minutes before the end of each episode, the quality of the show goes way up.
I think the reporting is really important, but I’m not sure there’s enough subject matter to justify weekly episodes. I learn thing and mostly agree with the author, but I can’t deal with the prolonged whiny rants just to fill time😩
You’re translucent rage is more and more transparent with each episode, especially the ones without professional guest able to chime in with rebutted arguments.
I really don’t disagree with any of the stories that he’s done, but the delivery /feels/ kind of like propaganda. It kind of reminds me of my fb in 2016 and I think I’d much rather laugh a little while I get my bad news. Still support the pod, just not for me.
I agree with basically everything Ed says but I don’t think I can listen past episode 3. It’s like Lewis Black but not funny; not the content but the tone. Not very journalistic with this level of emotional editorializing. I wish Jake Hanrahan would come back with more Megacorp.
As a new listener to the show I've bern feeling more hopeful for the future than I have in a long time ..I’m an illustrator who was starting to believe the hype about AI eliminating the need for creatives …and oh yeah …replacing and or enslaving society at large !😳…but thanks to Ed I'm starting to see through the dog and pony show were all being force fed !…you Rock Mr. Zitron !!👍🏻✌️😀looking forward to further episodes!
This podcasts scratches a part of my brain that’s been itching for years. I think what Ed is doing is important. This kind of reporting is hard to find, even for those who look. Perhaps the tone is a little aggravated, but I understand and mirror these emotions. If you aren’t a VC or tech exec you probably will too. As with the vast majority of podcasts this one is more centered on grievance than solutions, but it seems that’s just where we are right now: In a big mess. Conversations like these can build awareness and help generate solutions. If you grieve for Reply All, this is the show for you.
Found Ed on Doughboys & later on QAA. Wonderfully opinionated and fun listens. I run marketing for a small business and it’s hard to shovel through the dookie on google to find some real insider perspective on trends and forces in real time. Ed is great at parsing why I am miserable every time I follow Meta or Google’s “experts” best practices.
I look forwards to this podcast and Ed’s newsletter now. Totally worth the trouble of fast forwarding through the annoying ads! A very “emperor has no clothes” takedown of tech hype.
I just finished a few episodes and this particular episode gave me a braingasm. Never before
have I learned fundamentals, and basics of how AI works that I can understand. More importantly, this episode also taught me the “secrets” of why AI will never work. Rot economy indeed.
Another banger from Cool Zone Media! This podcast is worth a listen. It explains so much of why the internet has not lived up to the promises we were given. Oh yeah and go donate to Wikipedia. They need some love too!
He actually does a good job setting up the context of most topics, however the opinions stated as facts are just unbearable to hear. Rich people ruin everything, there I saved you a listen. I’m totally fine with that being a conclusion, but support your opinion. In reality, most of these topics are more nuanced than that and it gets tiring hearing the same 4chan opinion repeated over and over.
Ed always does a great job in explaining the links between the current state of technology and its direct connections to Capital and the growing disdain many of us have regarding current trends. The first episodes have been a great overview of larger issues stifling real innovation with how it relates to the economy and day to day life as we know it. I’m excited to see where this goes and what other topics, both broad and niche, will be explored in the future.
A very well written show featuring notable guests, with the host Ed Zitron adding enough humor to keep me laughing through the destruction of the internet as we knew it.
I have been a reader of Ed’s work on Substack (now elsewhere due to reasons) and when he announced this podcast I leapt at the opportunity to subscribe. Every episode is informative, enlightening, and fun. Ed’s experiences and his delivery enhance the podcast, and I look forward to every episode.
Totally worth the subscription fee. You will not regret it!
Ed is one of the few people online who is both very knowledgeable about the tech sector and technology in the 21st century, *and*, importantly, is rightfully skeptical of the direction things are heading with regards to AI, NFTs, the “Metaverse”, etc.
If you’re sick of hearing journalists breathlessly evangelizing everything that comes out of Silicon Valley for fear of losing their access to these people, you’ve come to the right place.
Whether you fully agree with all of his takes or not, Ed is very informed on the tech industry and one of the few who will (imo) responsibly critique their actions. The tech industry impacts every one of us on a daily basis - important to elevate voices like these.
Typical far left hypocrisy that is commonly found here in the US by some of our self entitled young people. You could not have this podcast,your smart phone or many of the high standard of living luxuries without the so called “tech oligarchs”…capitalism isn’t perfect…but I’ll take my chances over what you would propose..
Ed is great and I really get a lot out of his guest appearances on other podcasts. I think that such articulate and critical analysis of tech is sorely lacking in the press and this podcast fills that huge void.
But seriously, you need to add some jokes or have a guest every episode. The rant monologue format becomes grating after a while, even if you agree with him.
The internet feels like it’s getting worse because the worst most tiresome dolts are allowed to muck with it and it’s nice to get a rundown of how and why that’s happening and also how and why that’s a thing worth being concerned about.
i like ed and generally agree with him. got turned on his work with his recent guest star tour. the pod is a little ranty; his approach works a little better as a guest than a host. that said, never hurts to know a little more about how and why the tech industry (hi apple!) is stuck in a cycle of endlessly bilking us without pioneering much of anything anymore.
sounds like a whiny rich guy paid to have a podcast so he can complain to apple after the manager at the local san francisco store blocked him on twitter. love cool zone tho so 3 stars
This guy gets it. It’s tough to call out the things that are genuinely wrong without it devolving into lizard brain rage bait, but from what I’m hearing this show seems to do a great job of walking that line. These issues deserve a prominent place in the public consciousness and if you’re someone like me who has felt this way for a long time, it can be frustrating watching other people in your life go along without seeming to be bothered by any of these things, which is itself another concern. I often find myself worrying that attempting to reach other folks with this information will be received as me appearing to be some sort of elitist even though I really just hope for more people to develop a more complete understanding of what they’re participating in every day when they engage with social media, or indeed, the corporate world in general. Maybe I’ll just play this show in the car and let someone else do the talking for once. Keep up the great work!
