Understand - The Value Crisis: 2. We've Been Here Before
Download The Value Crisis: 2. We've Been Here Before
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
Published on Wednesday, 16th September 2026.
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