It was a tough week in tech. The top US health official warned about the risks of social media to young people; tech billionaire Elon Musk further trashed his reputation with the disastrous Twitter launch of a presidential campaign; and senior executives at OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT, called for the urgent regulation of "super intelligence". But to Doug Rushkoff – a leading digital age theorist, early cyberpunk and professor at City University of New York – the triple whammy of rough events represented some timely corrective justice for the tech barons of Silicon Valley. And more may be to come as new developments in tech come ever thicker and faster. "They're torturing themselves now, which is kind of fun to see. They're afraid that their little AIs are going to come for them. They're apocalyptic, and so existential, because they have no connection to real life and how things work. They're afraid the AIs are going to be as mean to them as they've been to us," Rushkoff told The Guardian in an interview.

Last year, a factory in China replaced 90% of its workers with robots. In call centers across the world, AI voices are replacing human customer service agents. Eventually, taxi and Uber drivers could be replaced by self-driving cars. The displacement of workers by technological advances is nothing new. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff's new book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus traces the origins of "digital industrialism," which has increasingly removed humans from the equation, granting power to corporations and stakeholders instead.

Sometimes when you are on the brink of a rebellion, it's hard to see what's happening around you. Chandler, Arizona, has become a hot bed of attacks on autonomous vehicles (AVs). Over the past three years, people have assaulted self-driving cars in the city nearly two dozen times, pelting them with rocks, trying to run them off the road, challenging them to games of chicken, and slashing their tires. One man even threatened an AV with a .22-caliber But police chief Sean Duggan says Chandler is "absolutely not" at the forefront of a rebellion between humans and machines.

Sometimes when you are on the brink of a rebellion, it's hard to see what's happening around you. Chandler, Arizona, has become a hot bed of attacks on autonomous vehicles (AVs). Over the past three years, people have assaulted self-driving cars in the city nearly two dozen times, pelting them with rocks, trying to run them off the road, challenging them to games of chicken, and slashing their tires. One man even threatened an AV with a .22-caliber But police chief Sean Duggan says Chandler is "absolutely not" at the forefront of a rebellion between humans and machines.

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. It was just 10 years ago that I attended a lecture about Big Data and had my mind blown. Using an understanding of social networks, along with the emerging tools of artificial intelligence and machine learning, I thought we were at the dawn of new age -- allowing us to finally manage the complexity of human society for the well-being of all. It hasn't turned out that way. With fake news, Russian election hacking, and the general meanness of our online world, many know the utopian sheen is off our digital technologies.

At least 21 such attacks have been leveled at Waymo vans in Chandler, as first reported by The Arizona Republic. Some analysts say they expect more such behavior as the nation moves into a broader discussion about the potential for driverless cars to unleash colossal changes in American society. "People are lashing out justifiably," said Douglas Rushkoff, a media theorist at City University of New York and author of the book "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus." He likened driverless cars to robotic incarnations of scabs -- workers who refuse to join strikes or who take the place of those on strike. "There's a growing sense that the giant corporations honing driverless technologies do not have our best interests at heart," Mr. Rushkoff said.

Douglas Rushkoff: U.S. Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technology He says technology affecting jobs market; not enough workers needed to run the technology He says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivity Rushkoff: Technology lets us bypass corporations, make our own work -- a new model Douglas Rushkoff: U.S. Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technology He says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivity Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That's 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms. We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks. But the real culprit -- at least in this case -- is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps.