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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.

Paris Marx

October 16, 2025

$799 Meta Ray-Ban Display AI glasses at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California.(David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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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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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

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 Mass Layoffs Changed Working in Tech w/ Clarissa Redwine & JS Tan / Tech Won’t Save Us
byThe Nation Magazine

Not long ago, tech jobs were sought after for their security, benefits, wages, and the progressive values promoted by Silicon Valley companies. But now workers are barely hanging on. Clarissa Redwine and JS Tan join Paris Marx to discuss the state of worker organizing in the tech industry, including how it’s changed since the mid-2010s and where it needs to go from here.

Clarissa Redwine is a tech worker and labor activist. JS Tan is a PhD candidate at MIT and writes the Value Added newsletter. They are the authors of Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry.

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Paris MarxParis Marx is the author of Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires. He hosts the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast and writes the Disconnect newsletter.


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