Paris Marx

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.

Early life

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

Career

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

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

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

In 2026, Riverhead Books published Marx's Hyperscale.

Coverage of Elon Musk

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

Books

Selected articles

References

  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.