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Future Histories
What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us About Digital Technology
By: Lizzie O'Shea
eBook | 14 May 2019
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A highly engaging tour through history in the service of emancipating our digital tomorrow
When we talk about technology we always talk about the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O’Shea constructs a “usable past” that 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? Can debates over digital access be guided by Tom Paine’s theories of democratic economic redistribution? And how is Elon Musk not a visionary but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians?
In engaging, sparkling prose, O’Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and what potential exists for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our digital present. Future Histories is for all of us—makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites—who find ourselves in a brave new world.
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australia.
About the Author
Lizzie O’Shea is a lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. She 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, Guardian, and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.
When we talk about technology we always talk about the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories, Lizzie O’Shea argues that we need to stop looking forward and start looking backwards. Weaving together histories of computing and social movements with modern theories of the mind, society, and self, O’Shea constructs a “usable past” that 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? Can debates over digital access be guided by Tom Paine’s theories of democratic economic redistribution? And how is Elon Musk not a visionary but a throwback to Victorian-era utopians?
In engaging, sparkling prose, O’Shea shows us how very human our understanding of technology is, and what potential exists for struggle, for liberation, for art and poetry in our digital present. Future Histories is for all of us—makers, coders, hacktivists, Facebook-users, self-styled Luddites—who find ourselves in a brave new world.
Shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award, Australia.
About the Author
Lizzie O’Shea is a lawyer, writer, and broadcaster. She 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, Guardian, and Sydney Morning Herald, among others.
Read on
Android
eReader
Desktop
IOS
Windows
ISBN: 9781788734325
ISBN-10: 1788734327
Published: 14th May 2019
Format: ePUB
Language: English
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: Verso
You Can Find This eBook In
This product is categorised by
- Non-FictionEngineering & TechnologyTechnology in GeneralHistory of Engineering & Technology
- Non-FictionSociology & AnthropologyAnthropologySocial & Cultural Anthropology, Ethnography
- Non-FictionPolitics & GovernmentCentral GovernmentCentral Government Policies
- Non-FictionHistoryEarliest Times to Present Day20th Century History from 1900 to 2000
- Non-FictionEngineering & TechnologyOther Technologies & Applied Sciences
- Non-FictionComputing & I.T.Digital Lifestyle & Online World: Consumer & User Guides
- Non-FictionHistoryGeneral & World History
- Non-FictionArchaeology