Podcast / Tech Won’t Save Us / Oct 16, 2025

Smart Glasses Are Ushering In an Antisocial World

On this episode of Tech Won’t Save Us: Chris Gilliard on how tech CEOs are hawking their latest luxury line of AI-powered smart glasses.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

Smart Glasses Are Ushering In An Anti-Social World w/ Chris Gilliard | Tech Won’t Save Us
byThe Nation Magazine

Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss how tech CEOs are pushing a new generation of AI-powered smart glasses by promising they’ll be stylish and indispensable to workers in a desperate attempt to convince us we should want their luxury surveillance gadgets.

Chris Gilliard is the co-director of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and is working on a book called Luxury Surveillance.

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$799 Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Paris Marx is joined by Chris Gilliard to discuss how tech CEOs are pushing a new generation of AI-powered smart glasses by promising they’ll be stylish and indispensable to workers, in a desperate attempt to convince us we should want their luxury surveillance gadgets.

Chris Gilliard is the codirector of the Critical Internet Studies Institute and is working on a book called Luxury Surveillance.

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

How Effective is Australia’s Social Media Age Limit? w/ Cam Wilson | Tech Won’t Save Us
byThe Nation Magazine

Paris Marx is joined by Cam Wilson to discuss the new social media age limit in Australia, including how successful the rollout has been so far and the missed opportunities of taking a more nuanced regulatory approach.

Cam Wilson is an associate editor at ⁠Crikey⁠ and writes ⁠The Sizzle⁠ newsletter. He’s a co-author of Conspiracy Nation: Exposing the Dangerous World of Australian Conspiracy Theories.

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Subscribe to The Nation to Support all of our podcasts

Paris Marx

Paris Marx is a tech critic and host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He writes the Disconnect newsletter and is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.

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