Your Computer Is on Fire

by Thomas S. Mullaney (Editor), Benjamin Peters (Editor), Mar Hicks (Editor), Kavita Philip (Editor)

Overview

Technology scholars declare an emergency: attention must be paid to the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

This book sounds an alarm: we can no longer afford to be lulled into complacency by narratives of techno-utopianism, or even techno-neutrality. We should not be reassured by such soothing generalities as "human error," "virtual reality," or "the cloud." We need to realize that nothing is virtual: everything that "happens online," "virtually," or "autonomously" happens offline first, and often involves human beings whose labor is deliberately kept invisible. Everything is IRL. In Your Computer Is on Fire, technology scholars train a spotlight on the inequality, marginalization, and biases woven into our technological systems.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262539739
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	03/09/2021
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	1,106,506
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of History at Stanford University and the author of Coming to Terms with the Nation: Ethnic Classification in Modern China.

Benjamin Peters is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Tulsa and affiliated faculty at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

Mar Hicks is Associate Professor of History at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Kavita Philip studies colonialism, neoliberalism, and technoscience using history and critical theory. She is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

Introductions

Your Computer is on Fire Thomas S. Mullaney 3

When Did the Fire Start? Mar Hicks 11

Part I Nothing is Virtual

1 The Cloud is a Factory Nathan Ensmenger 29

2 Your AI is a Human Sarah T. Roberts 51

3 A Network is Not a Network Benjamin Peters 71

4 The Internet Will Be Decolonized Kavita Philip 91

5 Capture is Pleasure Mitali Thakor 117

Part II This is an Emergency

6 Sexism is a Feature, Not a Bug Mar Hicks 135

7 Gender is a Corporate Tool Corinna Schlombs 159

8 Siri Disciplines Halcyon M. Lawrence 179

9 Your Robot Isn't Neutral Safiya Umoja Noble 199

10 Broken is Word Andrea Stanton 213

11 You Can't Make Games About Much Noah Wardrip-Fruin 231

Part III Where Will the Fire Spread?

12 Coding is Not Empowerment Janet Abbate 253

13 Source Code Isn't Ben Allen 273

14 Skills Will Not Set You Free Sreela Sarkar 297

15 Platforms are Infrastructures on Fire Paul N. Edwards 313

16 Typing is Dead Thomas S. Mullaney 337

Afterwords

How to Stop Worrying About Clean Signals and Start Loving the Noise Kavita Philip 363

How Do We Live Now? In The Aftermath of Ourselves Benjamin Peters 377

Contributors 385

Index 387

Editorial Reviews

Strategy & Business Best Business Books 2021, Tech & Innovation

"An all-star collection of readable and complex stories, all aimed at ensuring the naive view of neutral technology gets buried and, please, left in the past." —Public Books

"The collection of impactful tech issues interrogated over the span of decades in this book makes it recommended reading for anyone interested in the impact of tech policy in businesses and governments, as well as people deploying AI or interested in the way people shape technology."
—VentureBeat

"Technology is so embedded in our lives that we can sometimes forget it is there at all. Your Computer is on Fire is a vital reminder not only of its presence, but that we urgently need to extinguish the problems associated with it."
—New Scientist

"The book tech critics and organizers have been waiting for."
—Los Angeles Review of Books

"The authors fearlessly dismantle the technology industry’s most sacred assumptions, forcing a rethinking of everything we’ve come to accept as true about our digital lives and the multibillion-dollar digital transformations going on inside our companies. Titles such as 'Gender Is a Corporate Tool,' 'A Network Is Not a Network,' and 'Coding Is Not Empowerment' pull no punches.”—Strategy & Business

"A compelling case for the value of the humanities – and of history, in particular – in offering us a critical perspective to challenge the fantasies of genius innovators and streamlined progress."—Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher