Politico December 19, 2025
A tech worker turned art critic, Mike Pepi has carefully chronicled how Silicon Valley’s true evolution since the dot-com era has been defined not by the development of new digital tools, but rather by a fundamental rethinking about how society should be structured. His latest book, Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia, traces the downfall of the egalitarian ideals from the earliest days of the internet. Pepi talks to us about his proposal for a Slop Tax, and why the pursuit of artificial general intelligence is doomed. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s one underrated big idea?
That nothing is inevitable. I’m starting to see this more in the critique of Silicon Valley and their deployment of...
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