Future Histories: What ADA Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology

Lizzie O'Shea

ISBN 10: 1788734319 / ISBN 13: 9781788734318

Editore: Verso Aug 2021, 2021

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Neuware - The key to understanding technology lies not in the future--but in the past. That's the contention of Lizzie O'Shea's Future Histories, a grand tour through past and present to explore the practical--and sometimes revolutionary--possibilities of our digital age.Searching for new ways to think about our networked world, O'Shea asks what the Paris Commune can tell us about the ethics of the Internet and finds inspiration in the revolutionary works of Thomas Paine and Frantz Fanon. She examines Elon Musk's futuristic visions only to find them mired in a musty Victorian-era utopianism. Instead of current-day capitalist visionaries, O'Shea returns us to the Romantic age of wonder, when art and science were as yet undivided, narrating the collaboration between Ada Lovelace--the brilliant daughter of Lord and Lady Byron--and polymath Charles Babbage, who together designed the world's first computer. In our brave new world of increased surveillance, biased algorithms, and fears of job automation, O'Shea weaves a usable past we can employ in the service of emancipating our digital tomorrows. Codice articolo 9781788734318

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Titolo: Future Histories: What ADA Lovelace, Tom ...

Casa editrice: Verso Aug 2021

Data di pubblicazione: 2021

Legatura: Taschenbuch

Condizione: Neu

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Riassunto:

A highly engaging tour through progressive history in the service of emancipating our digital tomorrow

Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australia

When we talk about technology we always talk about tomorrow and the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to even get there. In Future Histories, public interest lawyer and digital specialist Lizzie O'Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and progressive social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O'Shea constructs a “usable past” that can help us determine our digital future.

What, she asks, can the Paris Commune tell us about earlier experiments in sharing resources—like the Internet—in common? How can Frantz Fanon's theories of anti colonial self-determination help us build digital world in which everyone can participate equally? Can debates over equal digital access be helped by American revolutionary Tom Paine's theories of democratic, economic redistribution? What can indigenous land struggles teach us about stewarding our digital climate? And, how is Elon Musk not a future visionary but a steampunk throwback to Victorian-era technological utopians?

In engaging, sparkling prose, O'Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and how when we draw on the resources of the past, we can see the potential for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our technological present. Future Histories is for all of us—makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites—who find ourselves in a brave new world.

Informazioni sull?autore:

Lizzie O'Shea is a lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. An experienced lawyer in Australia and internationally, specializing in human rights and Aboriginal rights in Australia, she has represented refugees, activists, and people targeted by national security legislation. O'Shea is regularly featured on national television programs and radio to comment on law, digital technology, corporate responsibility, and human rights, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, and The Sydney Morning Herald, among others. She holds degrees from the University of Melbourne and an Masters in Law from Columbia University, specializing in corporate responsibility and digital technology, and sits on the boards of numerous non-profit community organizations, including Digital Rights Watch Australia.