Computer Says Maybe

Our first exploration of The Vaporstate takes us to India, home of Aadhaar: a mammoth digitisation project that charts a path from technical solution for public service delivery, through mission creep and popular opposition, to a knotty but inescapable part of Indian existence today.
More like this: Is Digitisation Killing Democracy? w/ Marietje Schaake

Joining Alix for part one of The Vaporstate is Mila Samdub, Astha Kapoor, and Usha Ramanathan. Together they discuss the conception of Aadhaar, India’s key piece of digital public infrastructure, and how it morphed from a simple digital ID to something that unifies payments, phone plans, and biometrics.
Further reading & resources:
More about Usha Ramanathan — legendary lawyer and activist who has been pushing back on the Aadhaar programme for over a decade
More about Astha Kapoor — co-founder of the Aapti Institute
More about Mila Samdub — designer, writer, and current Open Future fellow
Computer-vision research powers surveillance technology — by Abeba Birhane et al, Nature Journal
Aadhaar 2.0 workshop
Walmart Takes Ownership of PhonePe from Flipkart — The Times of India, 2022
Walmart invests $200 million in Indian mobile payments giant PhonePe — TechCrunch, 2023
Google launches India mobile payments app Tez — BBC, 2017
Identity Verification Standards in Welfare Programs: Experimental Evidence from India — Karthik Muralidharan et al, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021
Aadhaar: Costs of Digital Red Tape — Reetika Khera & Amod Moharil, Economic & Political Weekly, 2024
Overload, Creep, Excess – An Internet from India — Nafis Hasan et al, Institute of Network Cultures, 2022
Aadhaar: A Biometric History of India's 12 Digit Revolution — Shankkar Aiyar, Westland, 2017
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Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

This is The Vaporstate, a new series on the worldwide government bonanza of enthusiastic digitisation: Digital IDs, digital payment systems, massive data exchange platforms. What are the every-day impacts of these digitisation projects, and why now?
The Vaporstate is a deep exploration of digital public infrastructure: we will hear from the journalists, civil society groups, and lawyers from around the world who are watching these projects develop, and how this digital scaffolding shapes our lives.
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

Infinite AI slop means we are moving away from our the age of information into what Eryk Salvaggio calls ‘the age of noise’.
More like this: Straight to Video: From Rodney King to Sora w/ Sam Gregory

We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy!
What happens if you ask a generative AI image model to show you what Picasso’s work would have looked like if he lived in Japan in the 16th century? Would it produce something totally new, or just mash together stereotypical aesthetics from Picasso’s work, and 16th century Japan? Can generative AI really create anything new if it can only draw from existing imagery?
Further reading:
What I Read About AI in 2025 — by Eryk Salvaggio
Visit Eryk’s Website
Cybernetic Forests — Eryk’s newsletter on tech and culture
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

Welcome to the final boss of scams in the age of technology: Enshittification
More like this: Nodestar: The Eternal September w/ Mike Masnick

We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy!
Is platformisation essentially just an industrial level scam? We will deep-dive the enshittification playbook to understand how companies lock users into decaying platforms, and get away with it. Cory shares ideas on what we can do differently to turn tide. Listen to learn what a ‘chickenised reverse centaur’ is…
Further reading & resources:
Buy Enshittifcation now from Verso Books!
Picks and Shovels by Cory Doctorow
On The Media series on Enshittification
Pluralistic — Daily Links and essays by Cory Doctorow
Conservatism Considered as a Movement of Bitter Rubes — Cory on why conservatism creates a friendly environment for scams
How I Got Scammed — Cory on his personal experiences of being scammed
All of Cory’s books
All (Antitrust) Politics Are Local — the entry to Pluralistic that Cory wrote on the day of recording
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**

Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou

Litigator David Seligman describes how big tech companies act brazenly as legal bullies to extract wealth and power from the working class in the US.
More like this: The Human in the Loop: The AI Supply Chain

We’re replaying five deep conversations over the Christmas period for you to listen to on your travels and downtime — please enjoy!
Alix and David talk about legal devices such as forced arbitration and monopolistic practices like algorithmic price fixing and wage suppression — and the cases that David’s team are bringing to fight these practices
Further reading & resources
Seligman for Attorney General Colorado
Towards Justice California drivers lawsuit
Eichman in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banal State of Evil by Hannah Arendt
The Dual State by Ernst Fraenkel
Prohibiting Surveillance Prices and Wages by Towards Justice
Gill VS Uber — class action led by Towards Justice
**Subscribe to our newsletter to get more stuff than just a podcast — we run events and do other work that you will definitely be interested in!**
Post Production by Sarah Myles | Pre Production by Georgia Iacovou