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Paris Marx

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Paris Marx
Marx in 2023
EducationMA in Urban Geography from McGill University
OccupationsJournalist, author
Notable workRoad to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation
Websiteparismarx.com Edit this at Wikidata

Paris Marx is a Canadian technology journalist, author, podcaster, and critic. Marx is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (2022) and Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires (2026) and hosts the tech industry–critical podcast Tech Won't Save Us.[1]

Early life

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Marx was born in Newfoundland and raised in St. John's.[2]

Career

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Marx earned a master's degree in urban geography from McGill University, researching Silicon Valley and its influence on transportation.[3] He also studied as a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland.[4][5]

Marx began writing about the tech sector in 2015, producing the blog Radical Urbanist.[6][7] As of October 2023, Marx's commentary and interviews have appeared in Time, Wired, NBC News, MIT Technology Review, Jacobin, and CBC News.[8][9] 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.[10][11] 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"[12] without being "doom-laden or scaremongering."[13]

In 2022, Verso Books published Marx's Road to Nowhere, a critical study expanding on his Master's work.[14] The book explores Silicon Valley's proposed visions of the transportation sector and how its products often exploit the material conditions of economic structures.[15] 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.[7]

In 2026, Riverhead Books published Marx's Hyperscale.[16][17]

Coverage of Elon Musk

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Marx has been playfully described as a "Muskologist" given his consistent critical coverage of Elon Musk.[18][19] 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."[20] 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.[21] The Washington Examiner suggested that Marx holds a "special disdain for Musk’s dreams of a Mars colony."[22]

Books

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Selected articles

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References

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  1. ↑ Wilt, James. "Paris Marx: Improving the world is a political project, not a technological one". canadiandimension.com. Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  2. ↑ Marx, Paris (16 September 2018). "I travelled to 37 countries and 6 continents, all with a single carry-on". CBC.ca. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
  3. ↑ "Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation with Paris Marx | Center for Urban and Regional Analysis". cura.osu.edu. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  4. ↑ "Marx, Paris". Verso. Archived from the original on 4 June 2023. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  5. ↑ "Paris Marx". Literary Hub. Archived from the original on 1 November 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  6. ↑ "Paris Marx". Ricochet. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  7. 1 2 Jones, Stephen. "Don't trust 'narcissistic, self-interested' billionaires like Elon Musk to improve transport, author says". Business Insider. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  8. ↑ "Paris Marx | Muck Rack". muckrack.com. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  9. ↑ "Paris Marx | Bookshop". Bookshop.
  10. ↑ Hayes, Kelly (3 August 2023). "AI Won't Overthrow Us, But It Will Optimize the Capitalist Death Machine". Truthout. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  11. ↑ Jones, Stephen. "Don't trust 'narcissistic, self-interested' billionaires like Elon Musk to improve transport, author says". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  12. ↑ "The 22 best tech podcasts (that aren't 'Reply All')". Mashable. 28 May 2022. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  13. ↑ Dibdin, Emma (3 June 2023). "6 Podcasts to Make Sense of A.I." The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 October 2023.
  14. ↑ "The future of transportation beyond Silicon Valley: interview with Paris Marx". 18 August 2022. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  15. ↑ "Marx Paris, Podcast Host, "Tech Won't Save Us"". McMaster Faculty of Social Sciences. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
  16. ↑ Charpentier, Marisa (26 June 2026). "Fall 2026 Fiction & Nonfiction Preview: Business & Economics". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
  17. ↑ "Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech's Data Empires". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 23 October 2026.
  18. ↑ Bleyer-Simon, Konrad. "Why the Transport Visions of Tech Billionaires are a Dead End".
  19. ↑ "Road to Nowhere: a Letter from the Editor". Verso. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  20. ↑ "Beyond Elon Musk: Why humanity should think twice before buying into his vision of the future". Texas Standard. 19 August 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  21. ↑ "Musk Backlash Continues With Time Magazine Calling Out Hyperloop Idea as Spoiler For High-Speed Rail". SFist - San Francisco News, Restaurants, Events, & Sports. 11 August 2022. Archived from the original on 31 October 2023. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
  22. ↑ "Elon Musk's vision for the future is a positive one". Washington Examiner. 30 August 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2023.
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