Understand

The Value Crisis: 2. We've Been Here Before

September 16, 2026·42 min
Episode Description from the Publisher

Technology is transforming what we value at breakneck speed. But is this really new?In this episode, Ros Atkins looks to four moments when earlier technologies forced a reckoning with value: the printing press, which flooded the world with words and upended who got to claim knowledge and authority; the Luddite rebellion, a skilled workforce fighting not technology itself but their own devaluation by it; the scandalous arrival of photography in Victorian England, when images could suddenly be captured, copied and faked; and the dot-com boom and bust of the 1990s, when a generation learned how quickly value can be invented, and lost.Featuring historian Ada Palmer, technology reporter Brian Merchant, cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins and New Yorker journalist John Cassidy.A Tempo & Talker production for BBC Radio 4

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