Hyperscale: book launch event with tech critic and author Paris Marx

(This event will also be livestreamed - just choose the 'online' option when booking tickets if you can't make it in person)

Paris Marx - Canadian writer and host of the podcast ‘tech won’t save us’ has a new book out. Come and hear him talk about it in Edinburgh!

Hyperscale: Ambition, power and the relentless rise of data empires investigates the growth of AI data centres and the global backlash building against these increasingly vast, noisy and polluting computer warehouses. Come and hear Paris talk about the book and what he has learnt from writing it.

Join us for a deep dive into the history and development of this infrastructure for the big tech billionaires’ AI project: from its military foundations, to its financialisation, and how the AI project came to be so out of sync with our planet’s future needs. Hear about the greenwashing of data centre developers, and stories of worldwide data centre resistance from Ireland to the US to Chile.

And consider the alternatives: what might it look like to have a global computational system that is also sustainable, and that delivers technology that actually works for people, rather than the ambitions and fantasies of the big tech bros?

This will be an accessible event for people new to the topic, with plenty of new and useful information and discussion for people who have been campaigning against the data centre rollout in Scotland throughout 2026.

There will be lots of opportunity for questions, as well as the latest from the Scotland-wide movement against these behemoths, and how you can continue to be involved.

Paris Marx is a Canadian tech critic and host of the acclaimed Tech Won’t Save Us podcast. He speaks around the world about the politics of technology and writes the Disconnect newsletter.

Paris Marx will be interviewed by Rachael Revesz, an award-winning journalist who is primarily focused on the environment and climate issues. She was previously a commissioning editor for The Independent and her podcast, 'Coatbridge: The Disappearance of Moira Anderson' was released as an Audible Original in 2024.

Hyperscale was longlisted for the 2026 Financial Times and Standard Chartered Business Book of the Year Award.

This book event is supported by Luminate.

It has been organised by Global Justice Now with Friends of the Earth and Action to Protect Rural Scotland.