Paris Marx

Paris Marx is a Canadian technology journalist, author, podcaster, and critic with articles written for Time, Wired, NBC News, and other publications. Marx is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (Verso Books) and hosts the award-winning Tech Industry-critical podcast Tech Won't Save Us.[1]

Paris Marx
EducationM.A. in Urban Geography from McGill University
Occupation(s)Journalist, Author
Notable workRoad to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation
WebsiteParismarx.com

Career

Marx earned a master's degree in urban geography from McGill University, researching Silicon Valley and its influence on transportation.[2] He also studied as a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland.[3][4]

Marx began writing about the tech sector in 2015, producing the blog Radical Urbanist.[5][6] As of October 2023, Marx's commentary and interviews have appeared in Time Magazine, Wired, NBC News, the MIT Tech Review, Jacobin, and CBC News.[7][8] Much of the focus of Marx's work explores the "Silicon Valley hype machine" and its greater effects on American culture, while advocating for a greater emphasis on collective methods to tackle issues the Tech Industry attempts to address through privatization.[9][10] Marx's podcast Tech Won't Save Us, started in 2020, provides a leftist perspective on "the underbelly of both the [tech] industry and digital culture"[11] without being "doom-laden or scaremongering."[12]

In 2022, Verso published Marx's Road to Nowhere, a critical study expanding on his Master's work.[13] The book explores Silicon Valley's proposed visions of the transportation sector and how its products often exploit the material conditions of economic structures.[14] Marx ultimately argues that viewing technology as the sole solution for inner-city traffic and climate change in turn does little to help society as a whole.[6]

Coverage of Elon Musk

Marx has been playfully described as a "Muskologist" given his consistent critical coverage of Elon Musk.[15][16] His Time article "Elon Musk Is Convinced He's the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him" argues that Musk's "vision doesn’t align with what’s best for humanity."[17] Much of Marx's most recent work fits into a "spate of negative press about Musk" that the SFist linked to a "collective rethinking" of how to report on the billionaire.[18] The Washington Examiner suggested that Marx holds a "special disdain for Musk’s dreams of a Mars colony."[19]

Selected articles

Marx, Paris (August 8, 2022) "Elon Musk Is Convinced He's the Future. We Need to Look Beyond Him". Time Magazine.

References