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Technoskepticism: Between Possibility and Refusal
From Munchausen by Tiktok to wellness apps to online communities to AI, the DISCO Network explores the possibilities that technoskepticism can create.
This is a book about possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies. Though refusal is an especially powerful mode―particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no―people of color and disabled people have long navigated the space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies. Technoskepticism relates some of these stories to reveal the possibilities skepticism can create.
The case for technoskepticism unfolds across three sections: the first focused on disability, the creative use of wellness apps, and the desire for diagnosis; the second on digital nostalgia and home for Black and Asian users who produced communities online before home pages gave way to profiles; and the third focused on the violence inherent in A.I.-generated Black bodies and the possibilities for Black style in the age of A.I. Acknowledging how the urge to refuse new technologies emerges from specific racialized histories, the authors also emphasize how care can look like an exuberant embrace of the new.
This is a book about possibility and refusal in relation to new technologies. Though refusal is an especially powerful mode―particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no―people of color and disabled people have long navigated the space between saying yes and saying no to the newest technologies. Technoskepticism relates some of these stories to reveal the possibilities skepticism can create.
The case for technoskepticism unfolds across three sections: the first focused on disability, the creative use of wellness apps, and the desire for diagnosis; the second on digital nostalgia and home for Black and Asian users who produced communities online before home pages gave way to profiles; and the third focused on the violence inherent in A.I.-generated Black bodies and the possibilities for Black style in the age of A.I. Acknowledging how the urge to refuse new technologies emerges from specific racialized histories, the authors also emphasize how care can look like an exuberant embrace of the new.
240 pages, Paperback
Published February 11, 2025
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March 3, 2025
Technoskepticism is the position that technologies can enable opportunities and reinforce the status quo, which is always stacked against somebody. This text was written as a collective, in one voice. The collective is made up of people who identify as disabled, queer, and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) academics. Their mission is to call out the rose-tinted shades of technophilia and the discrimination embedded in and reinforced by technology ... while offering a different take, a different history, a different future.
The breadth of the material and perspectives is this volume's strength. I can't get behind every sentiment, especially around medical pseudoscience, but the collective doesn't necessarily ask us to. This is written to be read, taken in, taken as-is ... mind- and heart-expanding.
The parts that stood out to me most were about nostalgia. I grew up as a white kid in the 90s ... but I dodged much of the early (and present-day) social media sites, so I felt like two kinds of interloper reading these accounts. It was also refreshing for the technosphere to be called what it is: a reification of white patriarchy in electronic form as "colonial machinery." The "critical play" exercises with "breaking" ChatGPT so that it would not use the (deemed by white overseers) "possibly offensive" Black vernacular was laughable and enlightening, almost chilling. Technology is not neutral, not by any stretch.
A powerful idea from across the work is refusal. Technoskepticism, when applied, means generating appraisals of existing systems: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And when the ugly is unearthed, we can refuse it. Perhaps the most striking example was the well-meant but ill-fated Black-centred Internet browser, which was immediately criticized by Black folks who didn't need to be othered or patronized with the assumption of low tech literacy. It was also chilling to learn about the forced obsolescence of crip tech.
Access to things—data, technology, platforms, and so forth—does not necessarily guarantee more equal worlds. We refuse the equation of access with liberation.
I really only have two misgivings. This was US-centric, but fair enough. And the name of the collective was unfortunate: DISCO. This has nothing to do with disco, the 70s, synth-pop and dance, etc. I'm not sure why they went with this abbreviation.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Stanford University Press for the advance copy.
The breadth of the material and perspectives is this volume's strength. I can't get behind every sentiment, especially around medical pseudoscience, but the collective doesn't necessarily ask us to. This is written to be read, taken in, taken as-is ... mind- and heart-expanding.
The parts that stood out to me most were about nostalgia. I grew up as a white kid in the 90s ... but I dodged much of the early (and present-day) social media sites, so I felt like two kinds of interloper reading these accounts. It was also refreshing for the technosphere to be called what it is: a reification of white patriarchy in electronic form as "colonial machinery." The "critical play" exercises with "breaking" ChatGPT so that it would not use the (deemed by white overseers) "possibly offensive" Black vernacular was laughable and enlightening, almost chilling. Technology is not neutral, not by any stretch.
A powerful idea from across the work is refusal. Technoskepticism, when applied, means generating appraisals of existing systems: the good, the bad, and the ugly. And when the ugly is unearthed, we can refuse it. Perhaps the most striking example was the well-meant but ill-fated Black-centred Internet browser, which was immediately criticized by Black folks who didn't need to be othered or patronized with the assumption of low tech literacy. It was also chilling to learn about the forced obsolescence of crip tech.
Access to things—data, technology, platforms, and so forth—does not necessarily guarantee more equal worlds. We refuse the equation of access with liberation.
I really only have two misgivings. This was US-centric, but fair enough. And the name of the collective was unfortunate: DISCO. This has nothing to do with disco, the 70s, synth-pop and dance, etc. I'm not sure why they went with this abbreviation.
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Stanford University Press for the advance copy.
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