Your Computer Is on Fire - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 026253973X ISBN 13: 9780262539739

Publisher: The MIT Press, 2021

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of History at Stanford University, a Guggenheim fellow, and the author of The Chinese Typewriter: A History.

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 the President's Excellence Chair in Network Cultures in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia.

Edition details

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 026253973X
• ISBN 13: 9780262539739
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Mullaney Thomas S., Peters Benjamin, Hicks Mar, Philip Kavita